Your guide to earning CITMA Paralegal CPD in 2025
Discover how to make every CPD hour count with our practical guide to earning, recording, and leveraging your development activities.
As a CITMA Paralegal, your professional development doesn't just fulfil membership requirements, it builds your career toolkit, enhances your marketability, and positions you for advancement opportunities.
With our newly enhanced CITMA Paralegal Competency Framework and the upcoming CITMA Paralegal Conference offering five CPD hours in a single day, 2025 presents new opportunities to advance your career through targeted professional development.
Why we have CPD
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is your pathway to career advancement and professional growth. We've designed our CPD scheme to help you sharpen your skills and expand your knowledge base, making you more valuable to your current employer and more attractive to future ones.
By actively participating in CPD, you demonstrate your commitment to excellence in the trade mark profession. CITMA Paralegals who engage with regular professional development often find themselves better positioned for career progression, increased responsibilities, and leadership opportunities.
The skills you develop through CPD can directly translate to your daily work. Whether it's staying current with changing legislation, mastering new filing systems, or developing advanced searching techniques, your CPD activities help you become more effective and confident in your role.
How to earn CPD
We've designed our CPD scheme to be flexible, allowing you to tailor your learning to your specific professional needs and interests. The requirement to maintain your CITMA Paralegal membership is to complete eight hours of CPD each year.
There are numerous ways to earn your CPD hours:
- Attending CITMA events and seminars
- Speaking at CPD events
- Participating in "in-house" educational meetings or discussions
- Preparing lectures, seminars, articles or law reports
- Undertaking personal study of relevant books, articles, law reports, conference papers or recordings (up to 50% of your requirement can be completed this way)
- Serving on a committee or working group of CITMA expressly concerned with IP law and practice
This scheme is self-certifying, so it gives you flexibility to find resources that suit your specific needs and does not need to be earned at CITMA events.
If you are unsure where to focus your development efforts, we recommend consulting the CITMA Paralegal Competency Framework. This resource can help you identify your strengths and areas for improvement, allowing you to create a targeted development plan that aligns with your career aspirations.
All CITMA events clearly state the number of CPD hours you can earn by attending, making it easy to track your progress throughout the year.
Click here to read the full guidance notes
When to submit your CPD
Towards the end of 2025, we'll send you a link to submit your CPD hours through our website. The submission process is straightforward and takes just a one minute to complete.
While there's no formal requirement to log all your CPD activities throughout the year, we strongly encourage you to keep records of your development activities. This not only helps you track your progress but also provides evidence should you be randomly selected for our compliance monitoring.
To support you in recording your CPD, we've created a downloadable spreadsheet that you can use to log your activities as you complete them. As the scheme is self-certificated, you'll determine whether an activity qualifies for CPD based on what you've learned during the activity.
CITMA Paralegal Competency Framework
We're excited about our recently updated CITMA Paralegal Competency Framework, which now includes advanced knowledge and understanding for certain skill sets, as well as advanced competences.
The enhanced framework supports CITMA Paralegals in developing core skills in filing, searching and watching, while also improving leadership and management abilities. These advanced sections are particularly valuable for those with more than five years' experience after passing the CITMA Paralegal Course.
The framework isn't prescriptive – we recognise that not all CITMA Paralegals will need to undertake all areas outlined in the document. You can decide which areas will be most beneficial in supporting your working environment based on your business needs and client base.
For senior staff and HR departments, the framework provides an excellent tool for mapping out progression routes and identifying skills gaps across your firm.
CITMA Paralegal Conference
Mark your calendars for the CITMA Paralegal Conference: "The modern paralegal - emerging trends and challenges" at BMA House, London.
This flagship event offers you the opportunity to earn five CPD hours in a single day while engaging with industry-leading experts and making valuable business connections to grow your career.
The conference focuses on the unique challenges and opportunities facing today's paralegals, with sessions led by specialists from across our industry. You'll gain practical insights into both private-practice and in-house career pathways, boost your business development skills, and learn about international practices.
We've designed the day to include substantial networking opportunities, allowing you to connect with fellow paralegals, industry leaders and carefully selected exhibitors during break-outs, coffee breaks and lunch. The post-event drinks reception provides further chances to build your professional network.
By attending the conference, you'll not only make significant progress towards your annual CPD requirement but also gain valuable knowledge and connections that will benefit your career for years to come.