Legal professional education in Wonderland

Susan Blake, Inns of Court School of Law

Legal education and training is being pulled in so many directions to meet so many agendas that one would somehow not be surprised to find a committee comprising the Caterpillar, the March Hare and the Duchess making proposals. Could we be doing even more than we are to try to keep the focus on effective and coherent training and not let the jam tarts that are the good in current training regimes be stolen? Should we smile knowingly like Cheshire cats and trust that things will be alright? Should we stay in the teapot with the Dormouse? Should we join the Mock Turtle and cry?

Susan’s session at VTF involved a presentation summarising the key professional and educational policies and pressures relevant to the future development of professional legal education, with a discussion of what educators and trainers might do to try to ensure that future courses are soundly based on educational theory and student and client needs, rather than on waiting to be told to paint the roses red.

It is difficult to find an analogy for the current position of legal professional education. It cannot be said to be at a crossroads, because that suggests defined options. It cannot be said to be lost in a desert, because a lot of people are busy with a lot of ideas.

Perhaps the legal professional educator can most easily identify with Alice, whether in Wonderland with the Duchess and the Mad Hatter, or Through the Looking Glass playing a mad form of chess. There is a lot of activity and many initiatives, but it is not easy to detect a coherent pattern, a clear purpose, or defined goals.

A bit of reeling and writhing

A great deal has been achieved in a relatively short time in developing legal professional education in England and Wales. As recently as the 1980s we still had the Bar Finals and Law Society Finals academic written examinations with limited skill content. In quick succession came the Bar Vocational Course (BVC) introduced in 1989, followed by the Legal Practice Course (LPC), the franchising of the BVC and the ‘City’ LPC, all by 2000.

But while these developments can appear structured, they have taken place within a context of almost constant review and almost annual changes in content and assessment directed by the Bar Council and the Law Society. This review and revision has generally been developmental and in line with good educational practice, but it has meant a lot of work for course providers.

We are currently reaching the final stages of wide ranging reviews. The Training Framework Review carried out by the Law Society has considered all options, including the possible abolition of the LPC. The Bell Working Party set up by the Bar Council has made it clear that it is considering wide ranging options.

Queens, duchesses and mome raths

This high level of development and review is only part of the story. There is also a variety of other bodies and initiatives that have, or will soon have, direct effects on legal professional training in England and Wales.
There has been significant national development of the higher educational context within which the BVC and the LPC operate. The Quality Assurance Agency has been overseeing the implementation of the Academic Infrastructure for higher education, raising issues about the delivery of professional training at Master’s level that are becoming increasingly important with the development of programme specifications and with commercial providers seeking degree awarding powers.

There is also a variety of government initiatives. Probably the Clementi Review of Legal Services has had the highest profile and will have the most immediate impact, with the separation of regulatory and representation functions within the Bar Council and the Law Society, but other initiatives relate to access to the professions (see the Department for Education and Skills’ report, Gateway to the Professions) and to diversity within the legal profession (see the Department for Constitutional Affairs report’, Diversity in the legal professions).

Beyond these factors there is also a growing European dimension. For those training students to enter the legal profession in England and Wales this can all seem remote the Bologna Process is moving slowly and is not planned to have direct impact until 2010, and we have a different legal system to most of the rest of the European Union. Having said this, part of the Bologna Process is to evolve a European Qualifications Framework that will cover training as well as traditional higher education. In time this will have more general importance than the case of Morganbesser v Consiglio Dell’Ordine Degli Avvocati di Genova (C313/01), which has caused a stir in the last couple of years by suggesting that a country must give appropriate credit for training already completed in another country.

Eat me, drink me

There are many key factors running through most reviews and debates on the development of legal professional training. However, many of these factors appear in different lights to the profession, to teachers, to students and to potential clients.

• Cost – it is a concern that training costs the profession and the students many millions a year. But would cheaper training really be better? Would less well trained lawyers simply deliver a less good service? Might we do better to try to focus spending rather than reduce it?
• Time – there are constant calls for shorter training. But such calls are often linked to cost rather than to quality and client needs. How would shorter training fit with professional standards, the Bologna Process and lifelong learning
• Quality – the quality of training is often debated, but often without defining quality. Some use quality arguments simply to propose more study of substantive law, or to try to limit entry to the profession.
• Numbers – as the number of law undergraduates continues to grow there is a decline in the number of pupillages and growing competition for training contracts. Arguments are often raised that professional training numbers should be related to the number of pupillages and training contracts available, but such arguments tend to have behind them a conservative desire to limit entry to the profession rather than to develop the profession to meet client needs.

The Mad Hatter’s tea party

This means that legal professional trainers are beset by many demands, often conflicting, and by some general issues that are not easy to resolve. On top of all this there are some quite fundamental issues in planning the future development of legal professional training. To give just some examples:

• Should we be training students for the legal profession as it has been or as it ought to be to provide best service to clients?
• Many potential clients have basic problems with access to justice and with funding. Should we be doing even more than is currently being achieved through pro bono initiatives to address this?
• We are in an era where commercially focused courses predominate. Are we allowing this model to predominate too much? Or still not enough?
• Can the ongoing divisions between practitioners and academic lawyers be more fully bridged in the interests of developing more coherent training?

The white rabbit and his watch

There are so many reviews and initiatives that it can be very difficult to keep abreast of changes and to integrate them into developing training. There is a great deal of time pressure, and this is not necessarily good for proper forward planning and development. Again just to highlight a few examples:

• How much effect will the division between regulatory and representational functions within the Bar Council and the Law Society have, and by when?
• Is legal professional training within England and Wales going to fit the Bologna model by 2010?
• Do we have a vision of what the role of lawyers in society will be in 2020, and how students should be trained to fulfil that role? This is not a distant date the BVC has now been offered for 16 years and 2020 is only 14 years away.

O frabjous days! Callooh! Callay!

With all the pressures of different initiatives to take into account and of time required to plan and effect development, legal professional educators face an ongoing onslaught of important dates, rather than time for reflection. Some dates may change, but we can broadly expect ongoing annual change for at least the next five years:

• 2008(?) – revised LPC
• 2008(?) – revised BVC
• 2008(??) – wider use made of degree awarding powers and M level qualifications
• 2008(?) – Deferral of Call, so the BVC does not lead immediately to professional qualification
• 2009 – students coming through with higher debts from paying fees
• 2010 – Bologna Process for creating the European Higher Education Area due to become effective
  h3. When is a raven like a writing desk?

All this leaves legal professional educators with some serious conumdrums. There is no lack of good ideas, altruism, and development of education theory and pedagogy – the fierce debate over the Training Framework Review demonstrated this if nothing else. We are prepared to work hard, and are seriously committed to the ongoing development of legal professional training.

However, there are some big questions to be answered, including:

• Is professional legal education for the profession, the students, clients or society?
• With the speed of legal change and the growth of IT, is substantive law more important than skills?
• What are the key principles for designing for the future?
• Should we design for the current profession, or for changes that better meet client needs?
• How can the demands of students, the profession, the government and Europe be integrated?

All this begs the question of how planning for the future can be coordinated so that development occurs in a coherent way over a sufficient period and towards clear goals. Many bodies are part of ensuring coordination, including the Lord Chancellor’s Standing Conference on Legal Education, UKCLE and the Vocational Teachers Forum, and organisations like the Association of Law Teachers. Such bodies take a very active part in ongoing development and broadly stay in step through overlapping membership. This has worked quite well for a number of years.

But still one can all too easily feel a bit like Alice…

And yet we incessantly stand on our heads
Do we think at our age this is right?

Biography of Susan Blake

Susan is currently Director of Studies and Associate Dean at the Inns of Court School of Law. Having been heavily involved in designing and developing the Bar Vocational Course and a Legal Practice Course, Susan is now developing courses that combine legal knowledge, skills and research at Master’s level. This has involved becoming familiar with the policies and workings of the Bar Council and the Law Society, and with the context of working within a university or an independent institution to develop and deliver effective legal professional training.

Last Modified: 30 June 2010