Options for the next generation

Here at our Taunton office we will shortly be welcoming our first legal apprentice to the team. Lauren will be joining us fresh from sixth form and, while many of her friends are dealing with the mixed fortunes of freshers week, Lauren will be heading straight into a legal career, working full time while studying initially for the CILEx level 3 diploma in providing legal services.

Although this is all very new and exciting for the Taunton office, we are already two
years into the apprenticeship programme, with the first
intake now embarking on
the second stage of the higher apprenticeship, at CILEx level 4, and seven new joiners this year.

So why go down this road, when you have A-levels which could take you to university? The obvious answer is money, of course. The apprenticeship scheme offers bright school leavers the opportunity to ‘earn while you learn’. Training and assessment, delivered in partnership with CILEx, is of no cost to the apprentice, and the apprentices get half a day per week study time in the office.

It was all very different in my day. Finishing school in the mid-eighties with a decent crop of A-levels meant university was the obvious route. Not only was the tuition free, I also got a maintenance grant, housing benefit and even qualified for the dole in the long holidays.

Those days are long gone, and we can debate, guilt-ridden, whether higher education should be free or not, but given the reality of tuition fees and student accommodation costs, the opportunity for bright young people to enter the profession another way can only be a good thing.

Let’s face it, although possession of a degree certifies that you have the learning and communication skills, even a law degree does not a lawyer make. Many solicitors of my vintage remember working with senior lawyers who weren’t actually qualified solicitors or graduates.

Senior clerks or legal executives were the backbone of many legal teams. These people seemed to have been around since the dawn of time, unstuffy, knew everything and everyone. They were not only experts in the law, but also in how to get things done, and guided fresh-faced articled particles, as we then were, through the pitfalls of our early careers.

Colleagues in the London office have recently paid their respects to Harry Hails, who
died earlier this month. He played a huge role in the early development of the firm and nurtured many of its partners. Harry had been a semi-professional footballer for Spurs and completed National Service before joining Clifford Turner as a solicitor’s clerk, where he rose to lead their insurance department.

In the 1970s he moved, with Clifford Turner’s blessing, to Kennedys, which was then a small four to six partner firm. He brought with him key insurer clients, built a team around him and the firm grew from there. His impact was described to me by a colleague who worked with him: “To put it frankly we all owe Harry an immense personal debt. He was one of the best lawyers I ever met; he researched thoroughly, gave clients easy to follow advice and gave his time with generosity. You could never ask a stupid question and looking back he taught us so much without one realising it.”

I have similar memories of experienced clerks I worked with years ago, but who seem now to be a scarce resource.

The expansion of the university system, and improved access to degree courses, may have up-skilled a generation who might previously have missed out on higher learning, but the financial hurdles which go with it have undoubtedly deterred some talented people from taking on the cost risk of a degree, plus post-graduate LPC, with highly uncertain prospects of a training contract at the end of it.

This year 600 candidates applied for the seven places on our legal apprenticeship scheme. Most of them had projected A-levels which would have taken them onto a degree course if they had chosen to
go down that road. There are clearly a large number of able would-be lawyers looking for an alternative to the degree/
LPC route.

By operating an apprenticeship scheme in tandem with graduate training contracts, law firms can access a much more diverse pool of candidates in selecting the next generation of lawyers, and provide career development opportunities for people who might otherwise take their talents elsewhere. SJ