Back to Future….
So, the three largest legal regulators in the UK have decided to launch a Legal Education and Training Review (“LETR”), to consider the education and training requirements of the post Legal Service Act “regulated” and “unregulated” worlds.
I like that fact that they are looking at training but I am less keen on their looking at education. Of course, they need to set the entry requirements for those wishing to take a training course with them – I get that.
I also understand why the regulatory bodies need to set the “qualifying” criteria for someone wishing to start a training course.
But that’s it. Law degrees, whilst a useful course for lawyers are not there for the sole purpose of producing lawyers (we’ve got too many now!).
No, studying law is an excellent discipline for young aspiring minds – even if they have no wish to be a practicing lawyer. The skills we develop through the study of law can be applied to a number of careers which do not necessarily require us to know “legal fact”. Not dissimilar to studying psychology.
In fact, one of the great skills learnt on a law course is learning to think in a structured way. I fear that if the professional bodies get their hands on the law degree, then young aspiring minds may be “overstructured” thinking as a practitioner rather than as a scholar.
This is not new, the study of law was the very origin of scholastic pursuits. Doctorates being issued by “Gloassators” (forebears of the university) were law degrees and the first ever University, in the beautiful city of Bologna, was a law school.
Studying the law meant learning to assess facts, understand the machinations of society and judgment. It was seen as a foundation degree for many other fields of study.
Even Dr Faustus studied law. Ok, not a great example.
Separate the academic and the vocational and maybe those that go on to be practitioners may learn more than the practice of law alone can teach them.
Perhaps then, the professions can stop living in the recent past and get back to the future…
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Very well said. The professional entry examination courses for the bar and solicitors are and should be to transition academic lawyers to professional law. Heaven forebid that the professional regulators should have the right to dictate to legal educators.
Mark Lewis
21/06/2012
Mark (my mentor for all these years) thank you!
LexFuturus (Stephen Allen FRSA)
21/06/2012
Really interesting topic Stephen.
Part of the problem is firms only taking trainees with a particular educational background. The insistence of firms for the highest academic grades means that in order to secure a training contract students can really only focus on their studies to the exclusion of other valuable experiences that would probably in the end make them better lawyers.
I remember sitting in a lecture theatre with around 250 other students, including a big portion from the law school who were taking management electives to tick off their future employers need for ‘commercial awareness’. I guess this is just the sort of course the regulators might add to legal education to help ’round out’ students knowledge of the real world. The lecture started, and the professor ask students to raise their hand if they’d ever had a job. Mine went up, thinking this was one of those questions designed to link the topic of the day to our own experience – but was flabbergasted to look around and see maybe 20 other hands in the air. Less than 10% of the students I was sharing the room with had ever done a days work. As the room was most likely filled with A grade students, one can only conclude that it is not possible to find time to get the best grades and simultaneously hold down gainful employment.
My point is this: an understanding of the real world is essential for working effectively with clients, yet the demands of the education system prevents students from getting that experience if they want to achieve the best grades (there aren’t enough hours in the day). This presents a skills gaps that ought to be closed.
There are two ways this skills gap can be closed: either law firms lower their academic standards to afford young people the chance to get commercial experience, or else it falls to the education system to provide that understanding. Since the first I unlikely to happen, I can only conclude that legal education does need to be reformed to equip lawyers with the skills they need to understand their client’s needs.
The regulators role is to represent clients’ interests. If clients are complaining of a skills gap amongst new lawyers that firms and educational institutions (and perhaps the new lawyers themselves) are not addressing, then it does fall to the regulator to impose a remedy – even, I’m sad to say, if that remedy comes at the expense of the romantic notion that university education should be study for study’s sake.
Mike Bean
21/06/2012
I entirely agree with you Mark.
kefa nsubuga
21/06/2012
I also agree. Legal training needs to prepare students to become not just lawyers but business leaders too.
Jonathan Beak
21/06/2012