CPD: something to muse on

CPD: can be a heavy burden but it always
relevant to practitioners' needs?

Earlier today, when casting around for interesting subjects that never get written about in IP journals, I found myself musing about the requirements imposed on IP practitioners in some jurisdictions with regard to continuing professional development -- the magical letters "CPD".  What I found myself wondering was whether the regime for CPD was in need of a substantial degree of rationalisation.  In the UK, which is itself divided as between England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, four species of practitioners ply their expertise: solicitors, barristers, patent attorneys and trade mark attorneys.  Each profession has its own criteria, its own rules, its own notions as to what counts as training at all.  And the professions in the UK are in competition with those elsewhere in Europe, many of which -- this blogger suspects -- have rudimentary CPD rules or none at all.

Beyond that, there are questions of convenience.  Large firms generally self-certify their staff's CPD points, which means that they can gain the requisite number of hours with the inconvenience of leaving their place of work or the risk of meeting interesting people who work for other firms.

Then there is the question of relevance of the continued professional development.  This blogger well recalls attending a one-day conference on IP and Sport some years ago, at which one of the registrants was an in-house solicitor with a public utility.  No, he said, this event had nothing to do with any work he had ever done or was likely to do, but he needed those CPD hours. How far should actual and expected work be allowed to dictate CPD requirements, if at all?

All of this leads this blogger to wonder: do the inconsistencies in CPD requirements as between jurisdictions and as between the IP professions impose greater burdens on the sole/small practitioner than on large firms and those who work for them, and do they have an undesirable effect on competition both within the professions and between them.

Any thoughts?