Training providers are out of touch with the profession

The traditional route to qualification is fading,
as legal executives, paralegals and apprentices deviate from the usual
three-step process. Recently,
the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s director of education and training, Julie Brannan, indicated that such reform is far from over while proposals
to introduce a ‘statement of competence’ and a final entrance exam for solicitors suggest that the most radical change is yet to come.

If plans for a new compliance framework are implemented, the SRA will take a back seat when it comes to monitoring and regulating the training and standards of the profession. If the regulator is happy that the statement of competence is in place and an appropriate entrance exam is keeping standards high, training establishments will be able to decide on the intricacies of what they deliver.

Changes have been a long time coming. Despite recent efforts to make training more practical, it is still more suited to academics than those involved in business.

SRA chief executive Paul
Philip has summarised that the proposed changes to regulation are to “ensure people are properly trained to become solicitors; not just bright boys and girls with the technical knowledge base but that they have the right behavioural competencies and values”. In others words, there is too much Donoghue v Stevenson and not enough business skills.

The proposed changes will allow firms of all shapes and sizes to tell training providers where they feel trainees are excelling and where they are lacking. What better response to the criticism than to allow firms to shape the trainees of the future?

So, is the future of the modern solicitor bright? Yes. But there are a number of caveats. We cannot ignore that allowing firms to influence training may reduce the practical focus on ethics in the profession, which is an area that, even now, many say does not transfer well from the classroom into the office.

Additionally, there is a danger that we will move too far the other way. Instead of being seeped in legal culture from day one of training, could aspiring solicitors be taught how to pass the entrance exam and not absorb any legal knowledge whatsoever?

Undoubtedly, the debate about the future SRA regulation of training will wage on and when change happens, we must ensure that it’s real and not just an advertising campaign for the next cohort of LPC students.

It’s a sad fact that such radical change may leave the increasing number of LPC students and graduates who are without a training contract out in the cold.

And there is a real risk that, through no fault of their own, these aspiring legal professionals will be viewed as legal dinosaurs, and suffer the same fate. SJ

Stuart Price is a second-year trainee at Warners Solicitors and president of the West Kent & Weald Junior Lawyers Division