SRA 'bonfire' of legal education and training regulation set to continue

The SRA is consulting on abolishing more requirements following a 'bonfire' of education and training regulations.

Speaking at the Westminster Legal Policy Forum, Julie Brannan gave a retrospective look at the progress made since the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) reforms.

The director of education and training at the SRA said: "We promised a bonfire of education and training regulations: those rules, processes and procedures that do nothing to assure standards, but which we had continued with for no other reason than that we'd always followed them. They've all been scrapped. We're now consulting on more requirements we think can go."

This year, the SRA jettisoned the requirement for students to enrol with the SRA; restrictions on the number of trainees a firm could train; prescribing the terms and conditions of employment of trainee solicitors; and a raft of other rules and regulations.

Brannan added that "flexible pathways and rigorous standards" lay at the heart of the regulator's educational reform programme.

She continued: "We've already started the process of opening up pathways to qualification. We are fully signed up to the new apprenticeship schemes in England and Wales which will enable people to qualify as a solicitor through working in a legal environment rather than going to university.

"Our training framework must recognise this. Encouraging bright, ambitious people from all backgrounds to qualify as solicitors can only strengthen the profession and therefore better protect clients. We need to focus not just on admission, but on progression, too, to see a properly diverse profession in all parts of the legal services market.

Reform reflection

Brannan added that the landscape for legal education and training had been transformed since the 1990s, when the legal practice course (LPC) was introduced and university was free. She admitted that the cost of qualification was now a significant barrier to some students who had aspirations of becoming solicitors. Therefore, any training reform needed to reflect this.

Brannan also gave an overview of the recent launch of the SRA's consultation on a proposed Competence Statement for solicitors: "We see the Competence Statement as an essential tool for achieving this, and we would particularly encourage strong responses on diversity issues in our consultation."

She went on to thank consumers, practitioners, businesses, educators and for their "input" into the 'research-based evidence' underpinning the SRA statement.

Brannan's speech can be read in its entirety here.

John van der Luit-Drummond is legal reporter for Solicitors Journal