Chair's report: Jane Ching

Parallel Session 2 (Panorama 1)

Chair: Jane Ching (Nottingham Trent University)

Both papers in this session involved the learning, and the recognition of learning, of lawyers in practice.

QLTS: client-centred assessment of qualified lawyers

Paul Maharg, Mandy Gill and Jenny Rawstorne provided a discussion of the new Qualified Lawyer Transfer Scheme, described as “quite revolutionary in some respects” as focussing on knowledge and skills and on obtaining “snapshot” of the way in which the individual lawyer might act in specific circumstances. As is consistent with the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s move to “outcomes focussed regulation”, the scheme assesses the day one outcomes identified as representing the minimum for the point of qualification, and does so by a variety of means. The most fascinating for legal educationalists is the adoption of the OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination) from the medical and veterinary professions; assessing knowledge, skills and behaviours by asking candidates to move through a series of stations involving, for example, client interviews and advocacy exercises. This move to capture a “more rounded picture of lawyerly performance” than has hitherto been possible will be of particular interest to those involved in skills teaching, at the vocational stage or elsewhere.

Professional competence: can it be taught? A workplace perspective

Hugh Anderson McKnight then approached the learning of practitioners from a different direction in his report of a qualitative study of experience of the Professional Competence Course, which is mandatory for trainee solicitors in Scotland. From a series of responses which, at least at first, indicated that the programme was not seen as useful, Hugh was able to draw fascinating conclusions about trainees’ articulation of what was being learned (knowledge, skills or behaviours); what constituted learning in comparison to what, probed more deeply, they actually seemed to have learned, concluding, amongst other things, that the experience of working with others in the classroom in collaboration was as important as the content of the training. Hugh’s materials will be of particular interest to those working with trainees and in CPD programmes.

Last Modified: 7 February 2011