General transferable skills: teaching skills

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

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Law schools have been concerned about liberal education as well as vocational education for a long time. It is fair to say that some law schools have traditionally been more focused on liberal education than others.

Some, like the University of Leeds and many other civic universities, started by educating the local professions and then moved on to develop a more general liberal education. The general virtues of liberal education have usually been expressed in terms which include many general transferable skills.

The project conducted one general survey of law schools and a further survey specifically related to its outcome statements, which included a survey of assessment practice. The conclusions to be drawn are that most law schools find statements of general transferable skills to be articulations of their own expectations of law graduates.

However there are wide divergences in the way that institutions set about communicating those expectations to students, specifically supporting the development of those skills by students, providing them with feedback on performance, and assessing them. Assessment practice leans heavily towards individual written coursework assignments and examinations, rather than, for example, assessment of oral communication and teamwork.

The claims of law schools

As is noted in the report on the survey of law schools, law schools providing undergraduate degrees in law claim to be providing a liberal education, rather than preparation directly for the legal profession. They claim that their programmes promote general intellectual skills, such as being able to present, communicate, analyse and reason, in ways which are applicable to a variety of further destinations. Even most of those providing vocational courses consider that their development of students’ skills is of broader application than just to the legal professions.

There are three main problems with such claims. In the first place, the claim that a law degree develops general transferable skills is often based on an assumption about what is implicit in being a graduate, rather than being made explicit as part of the definition of a programme or communicated to students as an explicit expectation.

The response from one law school is typical; “most skills developed on the course are transferable – we have always taught these skills but not as an explicit part of the degree”. The various academic activities involved in a law degree are assumed to develop certain intellectual skills. A graduate is assumed to have acquired them without attention to specific training or evaluation of individual performance.

Secondly, even this implicit assumption is now being reinforced sometimes by explicit policies. The general policies seemed currently limited in their elaboration and implementation.

A substantial number of law schools surveyed now have explicit policies on skills development and have some specific activities in their programmes where skills can be developed. In many cases, there seemed to be limited evidence that a specific attempt is made to ensure that students develop their skills out of the formal activities by means of training in the skill itself.

There was little evidence of formal support for students who had problems, even if assessment did focus in part on the skills. The result is still that for many institutions which have an overarching policy on skills, there is a fragmented approach to implementation.

Thirdly, the claim to develop general transferable skills is not matched by evidence that law schools seek to be in touch with the wider range of employers either directly or indirectly through careers services. They are thus not focused on how skills developed in the context of law can be applicable in other contexts and what activities would best promote such relevant skills.

This leads us to question how far law schools consider that the development of general transferable skills is integral to being a law graduate and how far it is something useful which the university education provides to its students additional to the main programme of study, and so is closer to the careers service.

At least with regard to careers in professions such as financial services, management consultancy, accountancy, business management and the civil service, there is a case that law schools should be more aware of how what is developed in the law curriculum could be transferable to these different, but related professional contexts.

The dominance of the legal world

The last comment on the lack of contacts with the wider world of employment brings to the fore the dominance of the world of legal professions as the point of reference for the content of the law degree and, even more so, for the vocational courses.

The survey suggests that only in about a third of law schools responding was there evidence that students were encouraged to reflect on how their skills relate to a wider range of activities than those presented by the legal professions. Legal knowledge and legal skills not only dominate, as one would expect, but become the totality of what’is explicitly taught and supported as part of student learning.

In such a context and typically unconsciously, students do not receive positive images of the non-legal contexts to which their skills might also become applicable.

While law schools are conscious that students need to be aware of the wide range of legal and non-legal contexts in which their skills may be relevant, the world of legal professions is the dominant image in prospectuses, allusions in classes, and in extra-curricular activity in student law societies.

Law schools often do not take positive steps to discover and relate what they do to the external world. The dominance of professional requirements on the curriculum, the desire of students to have placements and employment in legal professions and the desire of employers to attract the best law students all reinforce the close relationship between the law school and the legal professions.

The criticism of students who do not enter the legal professions (see the graduate questionnaire and focus group report) that their law degree did not prepare them well for other contexts is the reverse side of this dominance of the legal world.

This dominance of legal knowledge and skills rests on an assumption that law schools know that these are required for effectiveness and employability in the legal professions. Yet the professions themselves often assert that they want more broadly educated students with a variety of more general transferable skills and, for this reason, they recruit graduates with degrees in other subjects.

Any debate on general transferable skills has to take account of this reality. The dominance of the legal world over law schools is structural, rather than accidental. Law schools are delivering liberal education, but are also having to satisfy student and professional demands to achieve at least minimum entry standards for specific professional careers. The presentation of general transferable skills has to be related to the focus of attention of students and be seen to be integral to the legal world which dominates the law curriculum and law school life.

How general transferable skills are developed

The survey conducted elicited information on the development of specific general transferable skills.

As one might expect, all law schools mentioned general intellectual skills coursework exercises focused on students demonstrating these abilities together with legal knowledge through written examinations, dissertations, essays, problem-solving exercises, tutorials and moots. Subjects taken in other disciplines would typically develop and assess the same abilities, linked to different kinds of knowledge.

In relation to problem-solving, all law schools are able to point to the use of problem questions in tutorials and examinations and to project work. In our outcome statements problem-solving is defined as an ability to identify issues, assimilating, evaluating, and analysing information as the product of independent or group research; an ability to come to a practical solution making effective use of the time and resources available.

Similarly employers would define problem-solving as identifying an issue as a problem in a particular setting and then adopting appropriate steps to resolve it. Many of the exercises in the law school are not fully problem-solving in these senses, but rather involve the preliminary stages, ie such as problem spotting, identifying that this is a situation to which a particular rule or conflicting rules apply and thereby demonstrating knowledge of applicable legal rules, rather than producing a final solution. All the same there are some contexts, such as research or law clinics, where problem-solving in our sense is genuinely developed.

Written communication in the form of essays and dissertations is dominant in assessments in law schools. These are highly specific writing skills and, obviously, others are needed in an employment context.

There is little concentration on oral communication, nor is it often assessed. A small number of institutions assess oral presentation skills, typically in optional modules where numbers are limited. More generally, however, law schools consider that class participation, often involving formal presentation, gives the opportunity to develop oral skills.

Mooting and negotiation are sometimes part of the law curriculum, but are often extra-curricular activities which are fostered and made available in the law school, so it is wrong to confine attention solely to what is done within the modules comprising the law programme.

In addition, few institutions pay specific attention in oral or written communication to non-legal audiences, for example debating or writing on current affairs, or communication to a non-specialist audience, for example explaining the law to groups of non-law students as part of a project.

The personal skills of self-reliance, ability to accept and provide constructive feedback, and to reflect on one’s learning are assumed by law schools to be developed through their law programmes. Typically implicit in the structure of law programmes is the suggestion that students are required to be more independent in their research and learning in their final years. They are also expected to be able to assess their own progress in personal skills.

Some law schools are encouraging such self-assessment by providing students with assessment criteria and helping students to make use of these to assess their own learning. This is the particular focus of the SAPHE project at Southampton Institute, and the Universities of Bath, Bristol and the West of England.

Work in groups is an increasing feature of student learning in law schools. The detailed summaries from law schools list a wide variety of activities now undertaken by students. For the most part, these are not formally assessed, but performance may be noted on a student record and incorporated in a reference for employment. While the ability to work in groups is thus increasingly required, few institutions reported specific efforts to train and improve the teamworking of students.

By and large, most institutions did not consider that professional responsibility was part of the undergraduate law curriculum, even though it was not defined in vocational terms and was limited to an ability to act with self-critical reflection and responsibility and with an understanding of ethical standards in the use of knowledge or in the performance of a professional role.

This definition taken from the outcome statements in contains features which have been put forward by others do not fit the perceptions of institutions about what is relevant in law degrees. All the same, a number of institutions do engage students in a consideration of professional ethics. The growing emphasis on legal ethics in general (for example to what purposes law and legal services are being put) in, for instance, the ACLEC report, has not yet filtered through into law school syllabuses.

Information technology is seen by all law schools as important and basic. Basic induction is now typically provided by law school, rather than by a central university service. Whereas five or so years ago IT training might have appeared peripheral, it has become central to student learning and law staff have become more proficient in its use.

Students are typically introduced to wordprocessing, computer-based retrieval systems and the Internet. Increasing numbers of law schools require student work to be wordprocessed. The skills developed here are both generic and law specific, with a strong emphasis on the former, even if they are actually used in a law setting.

By numeracy we mean the ability to make use of numerical and statistical information as part of an argument or report, rather than to do calculations or complex manipulations of numerical information. Our workshop discussions reveal that law schools often feel uncomfortable with the idea that this skill forms part of the definition of a law graduate, and we identify similar feelings among recent law graduates.

While students may in fact be required to evaluate statistical and quantitative information as part of an argument in evaluating recent reforms of civil justice or in criminology, or in assessing a legal situation such as a damages claim or the division of shares in a company takeover, often little attention is paid to the accuracy of the use of number in these situations. While recognising the need for an ability to work with numbers proficiently, law teachers are concerned about their ability to help remedy deficiencies in this area.

Evaluation and assessment

As has already been noted, the skills components of exercises do not contribute significantly to assessment in law schools. Only infrequently at undergraduate level is performance in skills a component or the totality of a mark in any assessment.

Assessment is usually indirect, either through its contribution to overall success in a module which is focused on legal knowledge or, more specifically, because of the nature of the exercise, for example a dissertation involves the ability to work independently.

Though expert in assessing areas of legal knowledge, staff often state that they are uncomfortable with the assessment of skills. While some institutions specifically mention to students that the skills they are developing are transferable, few institutions make students articulate those skills in a formal way.

By and large, it is for the student to pull together the various experiences s/he has had over the law programme and to make these into a coherent presentation of achievement. S/he may receive informal support from a law tutor or more formal assistance from a careers service, but only a few institutions formally encourage this kind of reflection.

As is noted in the summaries from law schools, some institutions have an institution-wide skills policy and certificate, while other institutions leave this to law schools to develop. Some of these have structured schemes, such as the Newcastle skills passport scheme.

Those running vocational courses have very formalised assessments in legal skills, but they would not typically encourage reflection on general transferable skills, except insofar as they overlap with the specifically legal skills with which their courses are concerned.

The rationale for skills development

Within existing law programmes there are a variety of rationales for the increasing attention to general transferable skills. On the one hand, like the rest of higher education, law schools recognise the importance of the broader employability of their students.

British forms of pastoral care make tutors aware of the employment needs of their students, since they have to provide references for them and can see the kinds of criteria which are now used to judge suitability for employment.

The demand for general transferable skills is evidenced as much in the criteria enunciated in requests for references by solicitors or in the CACH form for barristers as in the reference requests received from non-lawyer employers.

On the other hand, there is an indirect attention to general transferable skills as part of changes in teaching methods. It was unclear to us how far the increase in group work was a deliberate strategy to improve the general transferable skills of students or the indirect consequence of reductions in the unit of resource for teaching and the increase in the number of students to be taught by each staff member.

Self-directed learning may be a consequence of such reductions in resources, but may also follow from the emphasis which is increasingly placed on student-centred learning as part of the pedagogy of higher education.

Finally, and not insignificantly, that pedagogy claims that student motivation is improved where the student has more responsibility and involvement, and many tutors experience such greater enthusiasm. The promotion of general transferable skills may not be the direct focus of attention, but it may be an indirect consequence of other changes taking place in higher education.

Last Modified: 4 June 2010