A different route

There is no doubt that the legal services market is
at a transformative stage and the impact of this on young lawyers is already making itself felt. Reports indicate there will be over 12,500 law graduates this year unable to secure a trainee solicitor position or pupillage due to a shortage
of available jobs. Therefore, aspiring young lawyers have to be flexible if they want a career in the law.

Fortunately, the market has responded and aspiring young lawyers are adopting an open mind and realising that there’s more than one option for those who want to have a rewarding and challenging legal career.
At the Association of Costs Lawyers (ACL) we’ve received
an unprecedented number of applications for our new costs lawyer training course.

Just like solicitors and barristers, costs lawyers are trained, regulated and undertake reserved legal activities. Their growing importance in the post-Jackson era was recognised in the recent guideline rates review, which sees costs lawyers able to recover up to Grade B rates under recommendations accepted by the Master of the Rolls, from this month.

The demographic of the students on the new ACL course this year has been telling, with
a real mixture of law graduates and non-law graduates. Fifty-four per cent of our new students already have prior accredited qualifications and over half of those students have completed
a postgraduate qualification in legal practice; whereas, 46 per cent of our new students have had no prior legal training.

It has, however, left me questioning whether those
54 per cent should have changed their path to qualification earlier. It’s a sad reflection of the profession’s insistence to hold solicitor and barrister out as the only real routes for law graduates.

Future mobility

Almost all our students are working in costs and are being funded through the qualification by employers. These range from large law firms to small costs consultancies. Yet we need to
be realistic about future career prospects, not just of costs lawyers, but of anyone pursuing
a legal career given the evolving nature of the market. My advice for students now is that when deciding which path to undertake, and the provider to study with, they should consider future mobility.

In designing the course we went to great lengths to ensure learning outcomes and thresholds reflected the content and standards expected of employers and clients; that meant looking beyond the
costs landscape. A considerable amount of time and planning
has gone in to ensuring those learning outcomes, many common to other areas of the profession, are cascaded throughout the programme,
a recommendation contained within the LETR.

Central to this is the new bespoke internet-based e-learning platform; one of the most sophisticated in the legal sector. The platform encourages independent continual review
of the learning outcomes, which is designed to ensure students acquire the skills that will assist them in their continual development once the qualification has been attained. Importantly, students can use their learning to facilitate cross qualification between the branches of the profession, enabling prior accredited learning to be evidenced, which in turn will promote mobility.

Students need to be aware of the evolving nature of the legal market and must therefore look at course content and learning methods that are transferable
to other areas of the profession.
This will be essential as the legal landscape changes. SJ