Law Society immigration reaccreditation scheme: how does it work and how can we help?

The Law Society is launching its latest round of reaccreditations for senior caseworkers and supervising senior caseworkers in immigration law. Here we take a look at what we know and do not know about the scheme and then turn to how we can help you at Free Movement.

Before we go any further, we know the way this has been announced and the pretty sketchy information and communications available have caused a lot of anxiety. For what it’s worth, experienced lawyers hopefully have very little to fear from the reaccreditation exam itself (although Sonia is still a little traumatised from the last round of this). 

What is the Law Society immigration accreditation scheme?

To understand what all the reaccreditation fuss is about, you first need to know what the accreditation scheme is.

The accreditation scheme, officially called Immigration and Asylum Law Accreditation, is run by the Law Society. To work under a legal aid contract from the Legal Aid Agency, you have to be accredited under the scheme. You can also optionally apply for accreditation even if you don’t do legal aid work, in which case it operates as a sort of quality mark.

The various bits of information on the scheme are not easy to track down on the Law Society website. To make it worse, a lot of the information seems to be in pdfs, some of which have no obvious internal link from their website. So we’ve tried to provide information and links in what seems to us a logical way.

There are four levels of accreditation: casework assistants, senior caseworkers, supervising senior caseworkers and advanced caseworkers.

Casework assistants

Casework assistants who have passed the exam can conduct tasks delegated to them by a senior caseworker other than reserved matters but cannot have conduct of their own cases or matters. You can only be a casework assistant for one year maximum, though.

Trainee caseworkers are those who have not yet passed the exam and have to pass the exam within nine months.

Senior caseworkers

Senior caseworkers can have conduct of any case or matter. They can delegate most tasks to assistants but will remain responsible for the overall conduct of the matter. They cannot delegate matters for children, those who lack legal mental capacity or those in immigration detention.

Supervising senior caseworkers

Supervising senior caseworkers can have conduct of any case or matter. They are also responsible for the supervision and training of up to four accredited staff and for the allocation of tasks.

Advanced caseworkers

There is no need to be accredited as an advanced caseworker. For those working under a legal aid contract, as set out at paragraph 8.103 of the 2024 standard civil contract category specific rules for immigration and asylum, a 5% uplift can be claimed on Controlled Work paid at hourly rates that has been personally done by an advanced caseworker. In addition to this, it’s kind of a personal satisfaction or professional prestige thing in recognition of your advanced skills and knowledge.

To get accredited at one of these levels, you have to apply to the Law Society and sit and pass an exam. There are different exams for the different levels, each of which has its own exam guide from the Law Society:

• Casework assistant exam guide (if anything more detailed does exist, we can’t find it on the Law Society website)
• Senior caseworkers exam guide (pdf)
• Advanced caseworker application guide (pdf)

There is also a slightly bewildering set of other documents available:

• A general set of candidate’s assessment guidance (pdf) available which includes an outline syllabus.
• A general set of application form guidance notes (pdf) available which explains the whole scheme in a bit of detail, as well as the format for the different exams for the different levels.
• A general set of candidates’ guidance (pdf) which explains in more detail about the exam, including a more detailed look at the syllabus.
• A set of exam rules (pdf) which explains (unsurprisingly) the rules for the exams themselves.

Those seeking accreditation have to pay for it. Or, perhaps more accurately, their firms have to pay for it. Perhaps in recognition of the ever-declining number of immigration lawyers and law firms willing to work at legal aid rates, funding for accreditation was introduced by the Ministry of Justice from January 2024.

What is the immigration reaccreditation scheme?

The accreditation scheme has been running for over twenty years now and accreditation only lasts for three years at a time. Caseworkers therefore have to seek reaccreditation from time to time if they want to carry on doing legal aid work (an ever-decreasing number of people, sadly) or they want to maintain their quality mark.

Reaccreditation has worked in various different ways in the past. Currently the process involves an assessment (multiple choice exam) along with an application form which must demonstrate at least six hours of professional development in immigration and asylum in each of the preceding three years.

The Law Society has now announced that the updated assessment will be available shortly. Some updated reaccreditation guidance notes (pdf) have also been produced.

We know that it will be a two hour exam consisting of 30 multiple choice questions. But we don’t know much more.

How do I apply for Law Society immigration reaccreditation?

The first step in the process is to pass the assessment. In theory you can apply for reaccreditation up to three months before your accreditation expires, however as the assessment is not currently available existing accreditation will need to be extended. Page 7 of the guidance states that “On enrolling for the examination, you will have four months to complete the examination.” It appears that the act of enrolling for the exam will extend your accreditation, but this is not said explicitly anywhere that we could see.

As stated in the guidance under “Outcome of assessment”, once you have passed the exam you will have to submit your reaccreditation application form within 30 days. This guidance says that “Your application form must be submitted prior to expiration of accreditation, unless you have received an extension for submitting your application form. Your accreditation status will remain active while the application form is being assessed.” So it is important to understand the exact nature of the extension that is to be granted and the Law Society should be a lot more clear about this, somewhere that is easily accessible such as the reaccreditation page.

After you have submitted your application form, the Law Society will send an invoice for the application and membership fees. Once that is paid you should receive your new certificate shortly after.

The guidance says that reaccreditation will be granted for three years. Last time this was backdated to when the previous accreditation was due to expire. So when Sonia did this her timescales were: submission of her application on 22 December 2021, receipt was acknowledged on 28 January 2022, her application was approved on 16 March 2022 and new certificate issued valid until 31 December 2024. The guidance now says that the “three years will renew from date of award, regardless of when you apply” so it seems that this has been changed for the better.

Costs and Ministry of Justice funding

There are various costs associated with reaccreditation, as follows:

• Application fee: £127 plus VAT (this can be waived for those who are eligible under Ministry of Justice funding arrangements as below)
• Membership fee: £228 plus VAT
• Law Society Immigration and Asylum Law: Re-accreditation Preparation Training: £150 plus VAT (optional)
• Law Society Immigration and Asylum Law: Re-accreditation Preparation Training and Mock Questions: £175 plus VAT (optional)
• Law Society Immigration and Asylum Law Re-accreditation: Mock Questions: £40 plus VAT (optional, and note that as of 24 October 2024 the mock questions do not appear to be available)

For those who work at a firm that holds a legal aid contract, funding is available to cover the application fee only, this is provided by the Ministry of Justice. In the guidance under “Eligibility for Ministry of Justice funding” it explains that to “take advantage of the funding, you must visit the enrolment page that will be available after the 1 November 2024 on the Law Society Learning platform and use the coupon code as instructed.” The funding is available until 31 December 2024 and you must have sat the exam and submitted the application by then.

What are the criteria for Law Society immigration reaccreditation?

There are three elements to reaccreditation.

Exam

It seems that it is not yet possible to take the reaccreditation exam but there is a bulk enrolment registration process available for the assessment which is only available until 1 November 2024 but can be used by anyone who is due to reaccredit before 31 March 2025 (page 7 of the guidance). All that is required is your name, email, firm, any reasonable adjustments needed and that’s it. Once you click “Next” the form is submitted. After 1 November 2024 people will need to book onto the assessment individually via the Law Society Learning page, it seems that a code will be needed and should have been emailed to you already.

Once available, the assessment will consist of 30 multiple choice questions and you will have two hours to complete it. At four minutes per question, that sounds OK on the face of it. But without knowing what the questions look like, it is hard to be all that reassuring. The important point is to start revising now, even though the assessment and mock questions are not yet available.

The assessment questions can be on any aspect of the syllabus. This includes (with links to Free Movement courses for members):

• Protection appeals
• Judicial review
• Domestic violence
• Human trafficking and modern slavery
• Detention and Bail
• Deportation
• Asylum best practice (we have a few different asylum courses available)
• Public funding
• Professional conduct

The Law Society runs its own reaccreditation courses as mentioned above and we’ve always assumed at Free Movement that there would be little demand for us to develop specific courses for Law Society accreditation, so we’re not planning on changing our policy. But we do have existing online training courses covering several of these topics if you are a Free Movement member and want to revise. We also have an upcoming webinar on making bail applications on 18 November.

Where we can perhaps be more directly helpful is on providing proof of your professional development activities, as we’ll see in a moment.

Fitness and propriety check

The Law Society say that their accreditation office will carry out vetting checks on applicants. It’s not clear what this involves.

Professional development check

The Law Society say that in order to be reaccredited

You must provide full PD records for the last three complete PD years preceding submission of your application. A PD year is between 1 November and 31 October. You must have gained at least six PD hours in each of the PD years in the subject area of immigration and asylum law. Preparation training that you may have undertaken may be used as PD where it was undertaken in the last three complete PD years.

At least four of the professional development hours per year must consist of “structured activities / courses.” Observation, reading, discussion and team meetings are not sufficient for this purpose, although presumably they are fine for the other two hours.

This is where we really can help you. We’ve got loads of structured courses online you can take in your own time and you can download a certificate at the end of them all as proof. Our monthly podcast comes with a quiz available for members, which is an excellent way of showing you’ve been staying up to date with the latest developments. We also run live webinars and workshops and have a selection of recorded past webinars available as well (scroll to the bottom of that last page).

A Law Society professional development year runs from 1 November to 31 October every year. We can’t help you travel back in time, sadly. If you haven’t already, there is just about time to get your professional development activities done for this year, though, before 31 October 2024.

What if I fail the exam?

The pass mark for the exam is 70%. But if you fail you can resit once. After that, you can still resit a final time but first you have to seek feedback and guidance from the Law Society. If you fail again, you have to go through the whole accreditation rigmarole all over again.

This article was a joint effort with Sonia Lenegan.