Lawyers should undergo five-yearly competence testing and there should be peer review of the advice they provide to clients, the chairwoman of the Legal Services Consumer Panel has said.

Dianne Hayter said continuing professional development was an insufficient check of quality, and she would like to see a more formal system of testing, similar to that being put in place for doctors.

‘The problem with CPD is that you go for more and more ­training in areas that you’re interested in, rather than the areas you’re not very good at,’ she told new regulation website ­LegalFutures.co.uk this week.

Hayter said that compliance currently focused on issues such as the speed with which a letter was sent to a client, rather than what it actually contained. ‘If you’re a lawyer and you send a letter to somebody, it could be absolutely bad legal advice and no one would ever know because there’s no peer review,’ she said. ‘There’s no checking.’

Hayter said she wanted to see a scheme similar to the revalidation system being introduced for doctors, whereby they will have to demonstrate, normally every five years, that their knowledge is up to date and they are fit to practise.

The panel has yet to discuss Hayter’s ideas, though the Legal Services Board’s business plan indicates that it will seek the panel’s advice on quality assurance.

Law Society chief executive Desmond Hudson said: ‘Regulators of the legal profession – as elsewhere – are under an obligation to ensure the protection of the public and that regulation is proportionate. We would be interested to see the evidence on which Dr Hayter has concluded that mandatory periodic competence testing across the board is necessary to achieve that.’

Hudson argued that the current regulatory regime is ‘extremely rigorous’ and that the majority of firms are practising to very high standards. ‘It will also be interesting to see how peer knowledge of confidential advice from solicitor to the client can be expected to operate,’ he added.

Samantha Barrass, executive director of regulation at the Solicitors Regulation Authority, said that as part of its changing approach to regulation, the SRA will look at how education and training requirements can become ‘more risk-based and outcomes-focused’.

She said: ‘This will include consideration both of explicit requirements on individuals in key roles and a new scheme for CPD. We welcome the contribution of the Legal Services Consumer Panel to this debate.’

Legal regulation specialist Iain Miller, head of commercial litigation in the London office of Bevan Brittan, said a market system should push out those unfit to practise without the need for a test.