Legal education in Wales: opportunities and challenges

Prior to the establishment of the National Assembly for Wales in 1999 reference to Wales in legal matters often meant no more than a brief realisation that English law extended westwards beyond Chester, Shrewsbury and Hereford. In this article from the Summer 2005 issue of Directions Rob East (University of Glamorgan) examines the impact of the changing nature of the Welsh legal environment on legal education in the principality.

The National Assembly for Wales lacks the primary legislative powers of the Scottish Parliament, but its existence has nevertheless substantially changed the legal landscape of Wales. Its secondary lawmaking powers, undertaken within the primary law making framework of Westminster, have clearly had an impact.

Aside from the greater contacts inevitably arising from Wales being a much smaller political unit, the relationship between the Assembly and local authorities differs from that of Westminster to English local government, with Welsh local authorities having substantial influence on the Assembly’s work. In addition, there is the issue of the Welsh language. The startling success of Welsh language education, particularly in the traditionally non-Welsh speaking South Wales Valleys, has meant that almost one quarter of secondary pupils now study through the medium of Welsh. Devolution has provided a further impetus to this trend and the Welsh language is becoming increasingly important in legal and administrative matters.

The Assembly has already had an impact in the area of higher education, where ‘reconfiguration’ is the current buzzword. The aim is to reduce the number of higher education institutions in Wales from the current 13. This process will embrace institutional mergers as well as greater institutional collaboration and ‘functionally meaningful clusters’. Already Cardiff University and the Welsh National School of Medicine have merged. The University of Wales Bangor and the North East Wales Institute (NEWI) have announced an intention to do so, while the Assembly and Assembly Government are seeking to kickstart the stalled merger of the University of Glamorgan and the University of Wales Institute Cardiff (UWIC).

Partly in response to this process the two formerly separate law schools at the University of Wales Swansea and Swansea Institute have combined as part of the University. With Aberystwyth, Cardiff, Glamorgan and the recently established law school at Bangor, five Welsh universities currently provide law undergraduate and complementary programmes, not forgetting the Open University.

To what extent has the Welsh legal education community responded to the substantial changes taking place within the legal culture of Wales? Perhaps the most obvious example has been the emergence of Legal Wales, an organisation established in 2001, which, uniquely for the UK, brings together judges, lawyers, administrators and legal academics, most obviously in the annual Legal Wales Conference.

The agenda for Legal Wales is to focus on the making, practice and teaching of law, as well as the administration of law and justice. An associated development has been the establishment of the Wales Law Journal in 2001, renamed the Wales Journal of Law and Policy in 2004.

In respect of curriculum development to reflect these changes, Welsh law schools face something of a dilemma. With around 50% of law undergraduates currently coming from outside the Principality, there are clearly pressures not to bespoke degree programmes too heavily towards the new Welsh legal regime. Nevertheless, there have been important developments. Joint or major/minor degree programmes combining Law and Welsh are offered at Cardiff, Swansea and Aberystwyth, with Bangor also aiming to do so. These law schools, along with Glamorgan, deliver through the medium of Welsh, although this is very much embryonic at the moment, hampered by a dearth of legal materials in Welsh and a paucity of Welsh speaking staff.

A particularly valuable contribution of the Welsh legal academic community has been the emergence, also admittedly in its early stages, of research focusing on the legal needs of Wales. The UKCLE funded Mapping Legal Education in Wales (MaLEW) project, for example, has undertaken ground breaking work in examining all aspects of post 16 legal education. Amongst its findings it observed, of undergraduate legal provision, evidence of a growing interest in reflecting distinctly Welsh aspects of basic legal subjects. The curriculum for courses such as Legal Method and Public and Constitutional Law are examples of where there is a clear need to reflect the implications of devolved government.

In the six year period since devolution Welsh law schools have taken some, albeit limited, steps to develop a specifically Welsh dimension to legal education. The extent to which this will be further developed is open to conjecture. While the Welsh legal environment is changing, the continuing economic realities of the need to recruit students from outside Wales is likely to temper the extent of such developments substantially.

Last Modified: 4 June 2010