The Solicitors Regulation Authority has set a deadline of 31 October for 2013 practising certificate renewals. 

In a statement today Rachel Lewis, SRA authorisation manager, said the authority has introduced changes ’to reduce some of the issues users experienced in completing the renewals process last year’.

Last year an estimated 4,500 applicants missed the deadline. This will be the third year in which the SRA handles renewal and payments through its mySRA portal. In its first year, 2011, thousands of solicitors missed the renewal deadline because of difficulties with the system.

The SRA said that this year’s changes to mySRA would ’not be as visible as in 2012’ when it had prioritised those with the greatest impact. These include revised guidance text, pre-population of the client money section, and a more ’user-friendly’ way of updating address information. 

’Some of the changes may appear relatively minor or behind the scenes, but their effect is significant,’ Lewis said.