Why reflection matters more than training records

The SRA’s consultation, ‘Strengthening our continuing competence approach’, closed on 15 July 2026. We do not yet have the SRA’s response, but the direction of travel is already clear. Solicitors should be able to show that they have identified their learning needs, addressed them and kept a record of doing so.

We are generally better at keeping records than undertaking the reflection that should precede them. Most firms use a platform that logs a course, ticks a competence and produces a tidy report at renewal. What receives far less attention is the part that comes first: working out what we need to learn and reflecting honestly on where we are now and where we need to get to.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. The SRA’s own 2025 assessment found gaps in both record keeping and meaningful reflection. It also noted that learning tends to concentrate on technical legal knowledge rather than the wider skills that competence requires. In reviewing training records, the SRA found entries that simply listed courses attended without showing how those courses had helped the solicitor remain competent. It seems we are better at logging what we did than working out what we needed in the first place.

A record tells you what happened. Reflection is what moves you forward. It is the difference between ticking a box and understanding yourself a little better than you did last year. One is administration. The other is how anybody, in any profession, genuinely improves at their job. A firm can hold a complete training log and still have learned nothing from it, because the log was never the point.

The distinction becomes particularly important when solicitors move from technical practice into leadership.

Technical knowledge we do well. Legislation changes, a judgment shifts the settled position or a client’s matter raises something we have not encountered before. The gap is obvious, and so is the answer. We research it, talk it through with a colleague or take advice from someone more experienced.

Leadership does not work like that. Nothing sends you an alert to say that your delegation is not landing as you think it is, or that you have avoided a conversation about performance for the third time. Much of this comes down to a shift that the profession rarely names openly: the shift from legal expert to leader. It tends to happen without ceremony, often when someone is made up to partner, and almost nobody is asked beforehand what it will require of them.

Following the Court of Appeal’s decision in CILEX and others v Mazur and others [2026] EWCA Civ 369, the SRA published considerably fuller guidance in June on what effective supervision looks like. One of its examples describes a solicitor three years qualified supervising staff with far more experience than they have. That solicitor is performing a leadership role every day, making decisions about people, workload and risk under real pressure, while carrying their own targets. If they stopped tonight to reflect honestly on how it was going, they would have a great deal to consider and very little against which to measure themselves.