General transferable skills: City Law School

(Transcript of a section of the General transferable skills report, 1998)

Strategy and target group (academic)

The main course offered by the City Law School is the Bar Vocational Course (BVC). Students taking this course will already have a law degree or a CPE/Diploma in Law. Staff at the school developed the BVC to be entirely skills based, so that relevant substantive law is taught in a skills context.

It is a principle that every part of the course is as realistic and practical as possible, using exercises based closely on what students are likely to encounter in the early years of practice.

It is also a principle that all skills are taught in a transferable way, so that they can be used not just in the context of a specific exercise, but in any circumstance in which someone working in a legal context might need to use the skill.

A voluntary programme provides opportunities for students to visit relevant environments such as courts, legal advice centres and prisons. It is not possible to provide opportunities for all students to work with real clients, but students have the option of working on a free representation unit case as part of their assessed work.

As far as possible the course seeks to replicate the atmosphere of practice, so that students develop skills in time management, prioritisation and working with others. The course includes topics such as business associations, tax and accounts that are likely to be useful in many working environments. It has always been the case that a proportion of those who passed the course did not ultimately go on to private practice as barristers, and therefore the course has always had to bear in mind the need to prepare students for a wider working environment.

Our course is postgraduate and has a specific professional focus. We would not expect undergraduate courses to teach professional skills as we do, but we do find that students whose undergraduate degrees have not laid a specific broad foundation for skills work do find our course more difficult. We would be happy to talk to any interested institutions about this.

Specific skills module or integration of skills?

The skills listed in the following section are all taught in separate streams of classes. However, all parts of the course are integrated as far as possible after the first few weeks of the course. For example, for most exercises two or three skills are relevant.

Each skill is deconstructed as far as possible in materials, classes and assessment criteria so that students can see the wider skills that underlie the skills specifically taught. For example all the constituent elements of writing clearly and presenting material effectively are unpacked. Problem-solving is specifically addressed. Negotiation is taught in a way that shows that skills such as risk management, are important.

Specific skills

The following skills are specifically taught on the course:

• advocacy
• negotiation
• conference skills
• opinion writing
• drafting
• legal research
• case management

In addition the following options are taught in a skills context:

• criminal law
• family law
• employment law
• landlord and tenant
• company law
• sale of goods and consumer credit
• European Community competition law
• law of international trade
• property law

Last Modified: 30 June 2010