Legal Education and Training Review: new beginnings or missed opportunity?

The course provider: law degree as a critical-thinking programme

Rebecca Huxley-Binns, reader in legal education at Nottingham Law School, said it was “a pleasant surprise” to see proposals that the balance of the foundation subjects in the qualifying law degree and GDL should be addressed, but disappointing that their value had not been questioned or existence defended. 

“What is the value of criminal law over commercial or company law in today's legal services sector?” Huxley-Binns asked. “I remain to be convinced that there is a relationship between content and standards.”

She endorsed the emphasis on professional ethics and values in the 'initial stages' of education and the call for a project or dissertation in the second or final year of the degree.

Huxley-Binns said although apprenticeship was mentioned in the report, the executive summary did not make it clear how it differed from what CILEx had been offering for years.

However, she agreed with the LETR on a voluntary system for the regulation of paralegals, even if a compulsory scheme was likely in the next 10 years.

Huxley-Binns said she was in favour of a single regulator for legal services, but it would have been like “asking turkeys to vote for Christmas” for the LETR to suggest it.

“So, will this review take legal services education and training where it needs to go over the next 40 years (the same time as has elapsed since the Ormrod review?). Sorry to say over such a long term, no. It is a vital and important precursor towards that future, though.

“Eventually, legal services activities will be regulated, and vocational legal training will be aligned to those activities (reserved or otherwise) in terms of content, standards, quality and outcomes, leaving the undergraduate law degree as a pure liberal arts, critical-thinking programme.” 

Solicitors: non-plussed and disappointed

Solicitors appear non-plussed, if not downright unimpressed, by the LETR report. There seems to be little fuss about the scrapping of minimum CPD hours. Most lawyers, both in law firms large and small, already seek to ensure their knowledge and competence are beyond reproach.

"We've just started new personal development programmes and already we give our lawyers more than their minimum hours," says Higgs and Sons practice manager ?John Smith. Over at Russell-Cooke, associate ?Michael Stacey says solicitors should as a matter of course determine their CPD training on the basis of individual personal development plans. "You should be making sure that you have identified training needs and are addressing them. It's very much the way it already works in many firms: there will be discussions with a supervising partner about performance as against skills and what training is appropriate to develop."

This being said, making outcomes-focused training a formal requirement should be seen as "a positive response to the changes going on in the legal profession," according to Rix and Kay's managing partner Bruce Hayter. Hayter (pictured) said this would help level the playing field between traditional law firms and new entrants, and could be particularly beneficial for law firms. "Firms that embrace this approach will thrive in the new environment," he says, especially if lawyers can develop a real customer focus.

Even sole practitioners, who do not have the benefits of personal development teams, are usually diligent, according to Sole Practitioner Group chair Clive Sutton. "Being professional means going beyond basic outcomes," he says. And while sole practitioners may not have the same peer interaction as their colleagues in large firms, "most are diligent and resource themselves well - because we have to, as sole practitioners".

There was clear disappointment too. The report did not address the issue of "oversupply of students with unrealistic expectations", says John Smith, who is also disappointed that the report did not address the continued unfairness of the education system, where graduates coming through elite universities are perceived to be better than those graduating from the new universities. And while Smith - and others - welcomes the recognition of paralegals as key members of the legal services community, he says there should be a clear acknowledgement of the specific skills involved in dealing with complex legal issues such as corporate work, tax planning, or commercial property.

Meanwhile Michael Stacey regrets that the report has merely tinkered around the edges. "We may look back in five years and say it was a missed opportunity to take a more fundamental look at how the education and training framework should change to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing market," he says.

Stacey takes issue in particular with the current one-size-fits-all approach which the report mostly validates, whereby the qualification route is the same whether a solicitor ends up working in a small high street firm or in a large commercial practice. "The training has to cover all the reserved activities because on day one you can carry out all reserved activities," he says. "The report could have looked at whether you separate qualification point as a solicitor and the entitlement to carry out the individual reserved activities. This could involve further accreditation, with stages depending on the reserved activities you need in your chosen practice area."

More bluntly, Clive Sutton calls the report "convoluted and bureaucratic" and says it has failed to consider the wider issue of quality standards in the profession, with "too many people of lesser grade" involved in the provision of legal services. Even more worrying, Sutton says, there is no mention in the report of the importance of complying with accounting rules. "The biggest bane is people unable to get on top of thing like accounts. They're the ones ending up in the newspapers, and there is a need for specific training on this." 

Alternative pathways: 'step in the right direction'

“Much of the recommendations are entirely laudable and to be welcomed but do they provide an opportunity for significant change?,” asks Co-operative Legal Services policy director Christina Blacklaws.

“The recommendations for a common framework for standards and outcome based learning are entirely to be expected and had been the received wisdom for some time,” says Blacklaws, but on some potentially contentious areas “LETR is short on recommendation which is left for later consideration”.

Blacklaws says the link between morality and the law identified in the report should “form a golden thread throughout legal training and practice” but regrets that while LETR expresses strong support for equality, diversity and inclusion, it “does not conclude - at this stage - that ethics should form a fundamental part of legal training”.

The training of paralegals and non-title based education and training was another source of disappointment for Blacklaws, whose organisation is set to launch its own Learning Academy in September.

The academy, she says, will ensure all Co-op Legal Services staff “will be mapped into a development and learning programme which covers internal and external training.”

She also supported the setting up of a voluntary single scheme for licensing paralegals. “Given the current multiplicity of barriers to entry which prevent many of the bright and able from developing a legal career, this must be urgently addressed by regulators and representative bodies alike”.

Meanwhile, solicitor and Accutrainee founder Susan Cooper says the report has “identified the key issues we’ve been worrying about for a while”. Cooper accepts there was no desire to come out with something radical but is “heartened by the recognition that there should be different routes to qualification”.

“The key question has to be what exactly we’re looking at in terms of access”, she says in relation to the recommendation to make more information available about realistic job prospects. “Graduates must be made more aware of what the problems might be and every piece of information you can put out there will be useful,” she says, “but there comes a point at which individuals need to take responsibility for a decision as to whether they want to burden themselves financially.”

“Perhaps we’re not there yet as a profession in recognising the scale of what the change is going to be,” she continues, suggesting that it may not be as dramatic as some observers predict – “leveraging skills in higher volume less complex work is not new” – but that new, different careers were likely to emerge around areas such as management and risk.

The concept of Day One competencies should be welcomed, she says, as should the recognition of alternative routes and the focus on client needs and what the public is entitled to expect.

Young lawyers: 'after 70 years council is needed'

While Executive committee member of the Junior Lawyers Division (JLD) Alexia Binns is pleased to see the report address much of what the JLD has already been discussing, she points out that a lot of the report's content is not new. 

"The issues which have been high on the agenda of the JLD and which the LETR have reported on are unpaid work, the bottleneck at the point of entry into the legal profession via training contracts, social mobility, lack of initial information about the likelihood of obtaining employment as a legal professional, paralegals who have been given false hope of training contracts and exploitation related to the same."

Binns continued: "It was interesting to note that solicitors were under represented as a proportion of respondents relative to the profession as the report was commissioned as a way of engaging with legal professionals and it was an opportunity to speak their minds."

The JLD, said Binns, is keen to see equality and diversity information published by education institutions and employers. 

"I am pleased with the LETR's suggestion to have a clearing house to advertise work experience, an advice shop to provide careers information and a data archive to house diversity monitoring and evaluation of diversity initiatives.

"The legal market is rapidly changing due to globalisation, consumer preferences and legislation. I agree with the LETR that they need to put in place a Legal Education Council as after 70 years of debate in general on legal education and training this has not been achieved."