Not counting the judge: ruminations on the absence of 'real' lawyers at a conference

Tom Halliwell, a practising solicitor and tutor for the Open University, gives his impressions of LILI 2002. Tom’s paper at the conference was entitled:
Where will all the lawyers go?

Not counting the judge – who was the keynote speaker and probably does not really count as a practitioner any longer – the delegate list indicated that I was the only practitioner in a sea of academics. Not only that, I had been rash enough to submit a paper, a paper which had been accepted, a paper critically questioning the need for the torrent of would-be lawyers pouring out of the university outfall. 9,600 law graduates last year, quite possibly ten times that amount in another practising lifetime – lawyers coming out of every academic orifice imaginable. I felt like Daniel in the lion’s den – or, at the very least, a voice crying in the wilderness.

The most disconcerting practice of the conference organisers was to require delegates to ‘sign in’ for the sessions they wished to attend. All the presenters of course were there long before anyone else, and in consequence their names headed up the A4 sheets for their respective sessions. Harmless enough? The IT sheet was overflowing, ‘unseen feedback’ was brimming, ‘personal development planning’ had a very respectable crew, ‘student retention’ might well need some additional rafts to accommodate all its punters – a surreptitious glance at my own sheet suggested I would be talking largely to myself. Had I any business participating in such a high power academic voyage? An anachronism from practice barely afloat in a pedagogic tempest? Does being an Associate Lecturer at the Open University count to gain admission?

Everybody of course knew everybody else except for me, but the one common denominator of the legal academic seems to me to be that of friendliness, and by dinner in the evening, if there was any distinction, it soon became blurred. By luncheon the following day – my paper long past – I was so relaxed I even agreed to write this article.

Practitioner involvement in legal education was the bald title. Is there any? I was far from sure. My experience of academic conferences thus far suggested there was very little. The question anyway raises a number of issues. Is such involvement desirable? If it is desirable, what form should it take, and how can this be achieved? How much involvement is there at present? Should, for example, the mega-firms have been able to dictate the construction of a corporate LPC? Can the voice of the ‘average’ high street practitioner ever be heard? Is his or her voice even worth hearing, or will market forces determine everything in the shaping of a legal education?

I cannot pretend in this article even to scratch at the answers to these questions, but perhaps I can promote some debate. After all the solicitors profession ultimately consumes about half of all law graduates.

Nearly a third go into the City, and nearly half in total to the London conurbation. Looked at nationally, 26% of all trainees went to those 23 mega firms of 81+ partners. Little wonder the City LPC had to be created. Second were 26-80 partner firms with 19.1%. The next largest absorber of trainees were the 2-4 partner firms, who accounted for 18.3% of the total (numerically 401). This is not surprising. Numerically this group still represents the largest sector in terms of partner employment – ahead of the 11-25s, who took 14.1%, and 5-10 partner firms who took 15.5% of trainees. Sole practitioners still managed to account for 6.9% (153 trainees) – although I wonder how they accommodate the training regulations.)

I am no promoter of academe as a production line of technocrats. The skills that lawyers acquire in their study of the law will be of value throughout life and are readily transferable, but law is essentially a discipline founded in the workings of a society. Students should meet and hear from practitioners on a day to day basis, and their tutors should be involved in active and regular discourse with their counterparts in the ‘real world’. Practitioners should know what is being done, essentially in their name, to mould the next legal generation. Law, least of any academic discipline, can afford to sequester itself in an academic ivory tower. Equally practitioners should not shed their previous links to academe the moment they are inscribed on the Roll. They should not cease to think upon the wider constructs of the discipline they practise. They need the challenge and the stimulus of academic debate, so often squeezed out by the pressures of practice. Both ‘sides’ of the legal profession can inform, stimulate and revivify the other.

All well and good, but why, even at a simple level, are there so few practitioners meeting and talking to you, the teachers and tutors of the next generation of lawyers? Why was I the only full time practising lawyer (apart from His Lordship) attending LILI 2002 (and the same can be said to a large extent of BILETA conferences)?

For a start the remarkably extensive range of academic conferences is almost unknown to practitioners. It was only by chance that my work for the Open University pointed me in the direction of BILETA, which led in due course to my attendance at LILI. A little more marketing of the established conferences – at least to the education officers of local law societies, and perhaps to the profession on a wider basis – might well produce the attendance of practitioners who would promote such enterprise. How many academic conference organisers even take an advert in the Gazette or get a lineage entry? The universities could promote CPD courses and weekends to practitioners. Input from practitioners could, should, form a core ingredient of all law degrees. Time to end the schism!

Oh and my paper? Well despite the lack of names on the sheet, I seemed to have my fair share of delegates, and I thank them all most warmly for attending.

Last Modified: 4 June 2010