The LPC is dead...long live the LPC

Editorial from the Autumn 2006 issue of Directions by Julian Webb (UKCLE Director) – see our Legal Practice Course review page for full details of the Training Framework Review.

The Law Society of England and Wales’ Training Framework Review (TFR) has borne its first fruit in a document entitled ‘Legal Practice Courses: Framework for authorisation, delivery and assessment’. These proposals, published by the Law Society’s Regulation Board (LSRB) in May 2006, reflect some of the desire for greater flexibility advanced by the Society’s Training Framework Review Group (TFRG), but also respond to widespread concerns that the TFRG’s more radical suggestions threatened to unpick what was widely regarded as an established and effective system of vocational training.

Rather than enabling a network of alternative training routes, the proposals now set out to deliver a new “framework” for the Legal Practice Course (LPC) which will “promote greater flexibility for LPC providers in the way they design and deliver their courses and corresponding choice to students who study upon such courses”. The framework will require:

• mapping of provision against revised written standards that will reflect the competences contained in the ‘day one outcomes’ of professional training
• application of a common assessment framework, which will continue to require “assessment under supervised conditions”
• external moderation of assessments and continuing monitoring of course providers

The similarities to the existing LPC framework are, of course, apparent, but the proposals also introduce some significant changes. We shall focus on the three main proposals here.

Firstly, the framework document states that the “key regulatory role for the LSRB is to achieve consistency of the learning outcomes and demonstration by candidates of the minimum standards, rather than to ensure that all LPC students have a consistent or equivalent experience”. This may prove to be somewhat double-edged.

On the one hand it is surely to be welcomed as a means of giving providers greater choice and flexibility in delivering the LPC, both in terms of substantive content and focus, and as regards learning approaches. As regards content, the proposal has been less liberalising than some would probably have hoped, and may not facilitate a truly radical market differentiation between corporate/high street/legal aid LPCs. As regards learning approaches, it could encourage greater innovation and experimentation by providers who might look to new and different ways of delivering courses and of integrating some of the LPC process more effectively with other aspects of paralegal or professional training. However, it is perhaps debatable how far providers will innovate without clear market or other incentives to do so. It is probably no coincidence that design innovation has been greatest in the corporate practice sphere, where there is both a demand for trainees and for more bespoke training.

At the same time, in its apparent rejection of the equivalency of learning experiences, the LSRB’s statement is likely to have at least some educationalists reaching for their guns. As UKCLE and others observed during the TFR consultation process, there are significant risks to quality in focusing on outcomes at the expense of learning process and experience. So, by focusing on outcomes, do the LSRB’s proposals risk a diminution of quality? Not necessarily, once we take the LSRB’s statement in the context of its substantive proposals – notably the retention of written standards, the specification of an assessment framework and, perhaps most importantly, the requirement that LPC providers will be required to provide the LSRB with “evidence and an evaluation of their proposed approach”.

Together these are likely to retain at least some emphasis on learning processes. The written standards are not pure outcome statements – they extensively prescribe substantive content, and involve some (implicit) indicators of process. If the current form of the standards is maintained, the process ‘baby’ may not be thrown out with the bathwater. The assessment framework, if it follows the written standards – as it should – is likely to reinforce that same effect. Moreover, it is extremely difficult to see how a provider could talk sensibly about their curriculum approach and use of learning resources without participating in discussion about the kinds of learning processes in which it will expect students to engage. So, at the least, there is no clear evidence at this stage that ‘LPC 2’ (as it is already being called) will be less sensitive to learning process issues than the current LPC. But equally, those critics who argue that the current LPC framework attaches insufficient weight to learning processes are unlikely to be satisfied by LPC 2.

Secondly, the LSRB paper proposes some substantial changes to LPC skills assessment, whereby writing and drafting, client relationship and research skills will need to be assessed in the context of each of the core areas of business law and practice, property and litigation. Whilst many would accept that there has been a continuing problem for LPCs in the delivery and assessment of skills, it is certainly questionable whether simply increasing the assessment loading in this way is a solution.

More assessment will not necessarily produce more or better learning. Achieving a balance between the skills and substantive knowledge areas has been a continuing concern on the LPC, not least because of the broad knowledge base of the course. There is certainly an argument that, relative to other professional training courses in the Commonwealth, skills-based learning on the LPC has become relatively limited and low intensity. There has also been a general tendency toward over-assessment on the LPC. In 1997 the Law Society reduced the number of skills assessments to accommodate concerns over the teaching of substantive law and practice; in 2002 it removed coursework requirements, partly as a response to providers’ concerns over the assessment loading. To again increase the assessment burden seems to fly in the face of this experience. It may be possible to square the circle and achieve greater integration of skills and substance – both teaching and assessment – through increasingly sophisticated transactional learning models, but the greater the breadth of content required, the harder it is likely to be to achieve the depth of learning desired. Much therefore will depend on the amount of prescription in the revised written standards.

Finally, the LSRB proposes allowing exemptions from parts of the LPC where a student has existing equivalent qualifications which meet the relevant ‘day one’ outcomes. This seems necessary in dealing with Morgenbesser applications from students who have commenced training elsewhere in the EU, but it could also provide important opportunities for innovation on law degree and Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) courses. The LSRB explicitly states that exempting degrees and other integrated programmes (for example a combined GDL/LPC) will continue to be permitted, but the possibility of students gaining specific exemptions on the basis of work completed whilst an undergraduate cannot be discounted, and, indeed, fits with the LSRB’s preference for providers setting most of LPC 2 at honours degree level.

Exemptions, it is suggested, will be assessed on an individual basis, but the overall extent of exemption is unclear from the draft framework – some commentators have assumed that they will be unlimited – and the criteria and procedures for exemptions have yet to be settled. While such flexibility may be important in principle, it remains to be seen what impact it will have in practice. If exemptions can be used as a way of reducing the costs of training, they may help enhance access to the profession, although perhaps less so than if the LSRB had bitten the bullet of accrediting prior experience for the LPC, not just prior formal learning. The impact of exemptions on specific courses also needs carefully to be considered. Such flexibility can bring with it a loss of course coherence and cohort identity or ‘ethos’, as teachers of modular programmes are aware. Students may have very different levels of engagement with the course and their peers. Some providers, it follows, are likely to be uncomfortable with the idea of exemptions. If this proposal is accepted, given that the LSRB stresses that providers will not be obliged accept students with exemptions, the whole issue of their acceptability among providers and recruiters, as well as their impact on the learning experience will need proper monitoring.

The LSRB’s proposals represent a rather mixed bag. In some respects they build effectively on the existing LPC experience, but, equally, important opportunities for more radical surgery have been missed, and some new risks have been created. At the very least the proposals are likely to create an environment in which the possible tensions between flexibility and quality are increased. It is the Board’s intention that providers will be authorised to offer LPC 2 from the start of the academic year 2008-09. It is an implementation process that will benefit from careful evaluation and management.

Last Modified: 4 June 2010