Practising Certificates
Requirements for Practising Certificates
Section 24 of the Legal Profession Act 2011 (as amended) provides that save for law officers of Government, a person shall not practise law unless he/she has his/her name entered on the Roll and is the holder of a valid Practising Certificate. A Practising Certificate is valid for one year. Whilst the first and initial application for a practising certificate does not require the applicant to show proof of continuing profession development, all subsequent applications made will require the applicant to show proof of continuing professional development in accordance with section 26 (5) of the Legal Profession Act. 2011. In this regard the Council has developed an accreditation program to guide what will meet the ‘continuing professional development’ requirement.
The Accreditation Program
(i) A credit based system would be used to measure accreditation.
(ii) A single credit would be the equivalent of 1 hour attendance at an educational conference/workshop/ seminar/lecture or similar event by whatever name.
(iii) An attorney-at-law would be required to achieve 12 credits per year to satisfy the continuing professional development requirement.
(iv) Mandatory conferences/workshops/seminar/lectures that must be attended annually are those on the subjects of: (a) legal profession ethics, and (b) business management and finance.
(v) Acceptable providers of conferences/workshops/seminars/lectures or similar events would be the: General Legal Council, Attorney General’s Chambers, Director of Public Prosecution’s Chambers, Grenada Bar Association, Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States Bar Association, Organization of Commonwealth Caribbean Bar Associations, other Bars and Commonwealth Caribbean’s Council of Legal Education and Universities.
(vi) Where an Attorney-at-Law wishes to attend a conference/workshop/seminar/lecture or similar event put on by an institution other than one of those named at (v), then he/she may inquire either before or after of the Council whether attendance would be or is acceptable towards accreditation.
(vii) Retroactive credit will be given to persons who attended the OECS Bar conference lectures at September 17th 2021 and the Commonwealth Law Association conference at September 5th – 9th 2021.
(viii) An Attorney-at-law would be required to produce a certificate of attendance at the conference/workshop/seminar/lecture that he/she wishes to be considered by the General Legal Council as part of their continuing profession development program over a given year.
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