Up for debate

I recently had the dubious pleasure of attending a debate on the future of legal education at UCL. The event was entitled 'Do lawyers need to be scholars?' and was loosely based around the future of legal education and the continuing Legal Education and Training Review. It was certainly an esteemed panel, but unfortunately it was predominantly a panel of experienced academics. The opportunity to engage with those who were going through the process of legal education or with those who had just completed their academic and post-graduate experience was cleverly avoided or intentionally ignored by the academic (of course) chair. Sadly, the 'debate' didn't really get off the ground. It was more a series of generally well-intentioned statements, such as going back to the '3 Rs of law', namely research, writing and reasoning and introducing an additional two Es: ethics and economics.

When the chair opened the debate to the audience, I hoped some of the many students and young solicitors and barristers in attendance who were keen to speak would be given the opportunity. Instead, further comments were made by yet more academics, including Baroness Deech, chair of the Bar Standards Board, who expects the introduction of ABSs to see students 'stacking shelves at night and giving legal advice by day'. Further suggestions from Professor John Flood of Westminster University that the profession has taken no interest in legal education before and that it was wrong for the profession to be involved in deciding how lawyers should be educated went unchallenged.

Once again the chair preferred her own friends and colleagues over those having gone through '“ and paid for '“ the system as it exists. Surprisingly, the only practising lawyer on the panel, David Bickerton, managing partner of Clifford Chance, does not see any problems with the current system, yet at the same time acknowledged that his firm recruits approximately half of its annual intake of 130 graduates from non-law degree backgrounds. As a law graduate, this both disappoints and intrigues me.

Different paths

It was with this in mind that the topic of legal education was developed further in a podcast with legal journalist Alex Aldridge. On the night following the debate we invited a recent graduate to join us to discuss the merits (and occasional flaws) of the current education and recruitment system. It was generally agreed that, on the basis of recent experience, law firms were taking an increasing number of graduates from non-law degree backgrounds. This trend has been developing for a while, not only in City and magic circle firms, but across the country. I commented that if I were to live my career again, I would consider more carefully when deciding on what I studied at university and might have followed a different path. Like a fool, I thought that if I wanted to be a lawyer, a law degree might help. Nowadays, statistically, it might not.

Rather than stopping there, however, I went on to say that I might instead prefer to have done a less time-intensive degree and one that I knew I would enjoy, such as history. I now realise the error of my ways '“ not in what I said, but in not qualifying it further. The following week, my gaffe was picked up on by legal website RollOnFriday, which kindly pointed out that many esteemed lawyers have studied history as a first degree. But I stand by my point. The skills required to succeed in law '“ either academically or practically '“ are often new and certainly different to those developed in the course of a usual comprehensive education. Many undergraduate courses, arts subjects especially, are not contact-time intensive and will build on many of the skills and knowledge previously learned and developed. Law is tough and requires a lot of commitment, not least in terms of time. What surprises me still is the number of students graduating in law and the intense competition for training contracts and pupillages, even more so given the hugely increased costs of undergraduate (and postgraduate) courses. It will take more than just a review of legal education to resolve the current difficulties facing aspiring lawyers over the next few years.

As for the debate, my conclusion is that what is best for the profession cannot be resolved by scholarly analysis alone. I hope that Sir Mark Potter and Dame Janet Gaymer, the joint chairs of the Legal Education and Training Review which is currently being undertaken, will take time to gather the views of the profession but also those who have recently experienced the many and varied routes to becoming a solicitor, barrister or too often forgotten legal executive. There is a time and place to consult with academics on this issue, but, given the time of year, it's unlikely that many of those particular turkeys will be voting for Christmas.