You are under a wide duty to provide a competent service. This includes maintaining appropriate legal knowledge, keeping your skills up to date, supervising others appropriately and providing advice that meets the standard expected of a reasonably competent solicitor. Whilst an isolated error will not ordinarily amount to a regulatory matter, serious, repeated or systemic competence failings may give rise to regulatory consequences in addition to any civil liability to the client.
This means keeping an accurate CPD record has never been more important. It also means that, if you are acting for a client who is bringing a professional negligence claim against other lawyers, you should consider whether the alleged failures are so serious that they also give rise to a duty to report the defendant solicitor or firm to the SRA. There is a separate note available that considers your regulatory reporting obligations; if you would like to read this, please get in touch with the General Counsel. However, the test for reportability is serious misconduct, so any failure would need to be systemic or the cause of major damage to the client. See, for example, Preiss v GDC, where the Privy Council said that gross negligence can amount to professional misconduct. It would certainly be up to you to probe the other side on their compliance with the duty to provide a competent service and to say you assume they have reported the matter to their COLP, who in turn has considered his reporting duties to the SRA.
The relevant sections of the Code (paragraph 3) reads as follows:
(a) you remain accountable for the work carried out through them; and
(b) you effectively supervise work being done for clients.
The SRA has published a guidance note on Competence and standard of service which confirms that mere negligence will not be regarded as a regulatory matter, but the SRA will €˜investigate competence or service issues where these are particularly serious or suggest multiple failures or repeated or persistent poor conduct'.