Employability and work-related learning in legal education

Interested in exploring employability and employer engagement?
UKCLE supports the development and dissemination of innovative approaches to learning and teaching law by providing seedcorn funding – if you would like to investigate, evaluate or develop academic practice in these emerging fields contact UKCLE on ukcle@warwick.ac.uk.

Law graduates are viewed as highly employable in a variety of careers. In addition to subject specific knowledge, the law degree develops a good range of transferable skills and attributes:

• problem solving
• research
• analysis
• writing concisely
• confident oral communication
• attention to detail

National employer surveys suggest that employers generally are also looking for a range of other graduate attributes, including adaptability, self reliance, business acumen, leadership, networking and team working skills. Are these attributes necessarily shared by the typical law graduate? Are there ways of enhancing these skills and capabilities within legal education? UKCLE has developed a number of resources to help you enhance the employability of your students.

Resources on employability and enterprise

• The Leeds integrated skills model – case study of the Leeds approach to employability, presented at the Learning in Law Annual Conference 2010
• Enhancing employability in law schools – outlines the approach to employability taken in four law schools
• Enterprise in Law project – initiatives to introduce business and social entrepreneurship skills into the law curriculum
• Law employability profile – one of the Higher Education Academy’s student employability profiles, including a mapping of skills against the Quality Assurance Agency’s law benchmark statement
• Learning and employability series – booklets from the Higher Education Academy on various aspects of employability
• Mapping of support for enterprise and entrepreneurship within law schools in England and Wales (Word 97 file) – report (April 2007) by UKCLE for the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship
• What do employers want? Review of the research evidence – a review of the literature on employer preferences and employer engagement in legal education
• Creating future-proof graduates – cross-disciplinary resources considering numerous situations graduates might face, and how they can be prepared for them

In addition, three UKCLE research projects have explored issues concerned with the suitability of legal education to meet the demands of legal practice:

• Hitting the ground running: does the LPC prepare students adequately for the training contract?
• Legal education as vocational preparation? Perspectives of newly qualified solicitors
• Examining the effectiveness of the undergraduate law curriculum in preparing black Caribbean students for entry into the legal profession

Resources on clinical and work-based learning

There is growing recognition that clinical and work-based learning methods are a useful way of building an experiential dimension into UK legal education, with many potential benefits for students and higher education institutions alike, including the development of interpersonal skills, group working, ethical awareness and understanding of the ‘law in action’. Clinical models are also recognised for their ability to enhance capacities for reflection and independent learning.

UKCLE has published a range of guidance notes and resources to support teachers in developing and delivering clinical and related forms of experiential learning in law, including:

• Designing and delivering clinical legal education (teaching resource note)
• Holistic legal education? Integrating the academic and vocational stage (case study of the exempting law degree programme at Northumbria)
• Mapping best practice in clinical legal education (research project)

The Creating future proof graduates project has created a set of multimedia resources aimed at helping students identify and prepare for ‘critical incidents’ epitomising the problems graduates encounter when they start work. The resources cover issues such as cultural awareness, providing relevant answers, professional ethics, networking and social confidence, unexpected and extreme emotions and reactions, social responsibility, research skills, and bullying and the misuse of power.

Employability events

• Success in developing student employability – Employability CETL Conference 2010

Last Modified: 4 June 2010