What do employers want?

Employer preferences and engagement in legal education

What do employers expect – and what do they want – when the take on a law graduate? Julian Webb, UKCLE Director, put together a review of the research evidence, summarised here, for the Higher Education Academy’s proposed research observatory service in summer 2008.
The move towards a more demand led system of higher education makes it imperative for higher education institutions to address employer preferences for the skills and knowledge of graduates and how these are attained at the discipline level. This review of the research evidence on employer preferences for and engagement in legal education in the UK sought to identify:

• any consensus on the skills and knowledge employers want from a law graduate
• examples of good practice in work-based learning and internship programmes demonstrating employer engagement in the student learning experience

The policy background

Following on from Lord Leitch’s 2007 Review of skills, higher education policy in the UK has started to focus not just on the employability of graduates but also on the nature and extent of engagement between higher education institutions and employers. This shift of emphasis reflects a number of principles underpinning the Leitch proposals:

• the economic case for increasing the proportion of the workforce with ‘higher level’ (ie level 4 and above) skills
• the perceived importance of ensuring that higher education better reflects employers’ current needs for workforce development
• a desire to move towards more demand led education and training, with the prospect of greater co-funding of higher education by employers

Policy in this area is developing and moving rapidly, with activity largely coordinated by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) – see the editorial from the Autumn 2007 issue of Directions, From education, education, education to skills, skills, skills!, for an overview of the launch of the government’s strategy.

The government’s response to the Leitch Review has been followed by two further policy documents proposing developments in England that could have wide implications:

• A new ‘university challenge’ – consultation launched in April 2008 proposing an increase in the number of higher education centres in areas lacking ready access to higher education (HEFCE launched its own consultation on the proposals in July 2008)
• Innovation nation , a white paper on science and innovation published in March 2008, stresses the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship skills to all major sectors of the economy

The National Skills Academy network is also being extended. These academies are employer led, with the remit of designing and delivering learning in their particular industry or sector, working in partnership with government, sector skills councils and training providers. At present their activities are focused primarily on sub-degree level work, but it is clear that their remit will include work at university equivalent levels in the future.

The Leitch agenda also has ramifications and effects within the nations – in September 2007 the Scottish Government published Skills for Scotland: a lifelong learning strategy.

HEFCE already supports a range of projects to develop employer engagement and plans to increase its work in this area substantially – see its strategy for employer engagement and workforce development programme for further details.

What do employers want? The evidence

A review of the literature found very little research on either employer preferences, or, perhaps less surprisingly, on employer engagement, in legal education, however the main findings are summarised below.

Knowledge and skills preferences

A number of studies have considered the range of skills and knowledge attributes of law graduates (including graduates in other disciplines who have completed a conversion course) desired by the legal profession, although most of this small body of work has focused on the solicitors profession rather than the Bar. No substantive work appears to have been undertaken in the UK on the employability attributes of law graduates in respect of careers outside the legal profession.

While there appeared to be strong support within the profession for the existing seven foundations of legal knowledge (specified in the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s Guidance for providers of recognised law programmes – PDF file), there was little evidence of consistent preferences outside this ‘core’ area. Academic programmes appeared to be most valued by the profession for developing intellectual and transferable skills – such as analysis and synthesis, communication and literacy, evaluation and problem solving – rather than more specifically employment related skills (although the evidence supporting even this conclusion is quite limited).

Legal research tended to be the skill rated most important by professional employers, and there was some evidence of practitioner opinions that such skills were not sufficiently emphasised or developed at the academic stage.

At the Legal Practice Course stage, solicitor employers appeared to be more critical. There is at least some evidence that practitioners want more emphasis on ‘hard skills’ such as document drafting and problem solving, and less on the ‘soft skills’ that could more readily be learned in the workplace.

Employer engagement

Law schools have a long history of relatively informal linkages with the profession, ranging from ad hoc participation in validation and review processes, individual arrangements such as part time teaching, and judging moots and debates, to shadowing opportunities for staff and sponsorship of events, resources and academic posts. In addition, a growing number of law schools are building forms of work experience into the formal curriculum, and while most of these activities will not have been designed for that purpose, pro bono and similar activities provide a potential mechanism for employer engagement.

There is very little evidence of whether, how or to what extent such activity actually enhances direct employer engagement with law schools, or of what other forms of employer engagement exist. There is little or no recent research evidence of the scale of direct inward investment by individual employers into law school activities, and there also appear to be few structural incentives or other mechanisms, either within the professions or within universities and colleges, to encourage practitioners to engage systematically with higher education institutions. In the light of these findings it seems that, in the field of law, there is an extremely large gap between the policy aspirations of government for greater employer engagement and existing practices.

Conclusions

There is still little detailed evidence of the range of higher level skills and knowledge areas that employers want from law graduates. This may restrict the capacity of institutions to introduce market orientated and evidence-based curriculum change.
Available research data on recruitment preferences and practices point to the extent that employers, first and foremost, are seeking good students from ‘the right’ universities. Consequently, while the package of knowledge and skills developed by students is an aspect of professional formation over which law schools have some control, it represents only one dimension of employability, and probably not the most important.
There is a need to undertake research, particularly sector-wide, to develop current understanding on the nature, extent and impact of work experience and work-based learning activity in law schools.
The apparent absence of discipline-based examples of systematic or institutionally supported employer engagement activity means there is currently little in the way of a culture of support for activities, and few precedents to draw on in developing such practices.

Main sources

• Bermingham V & Hodgson J (2001) ‘Desiderata: what lawyers want from their recruits’ The Law Teacher 35(1):1-32
• Boon A & Whyte A (2002) Legal education as vocational preparation? Perspectives of newly qualified solicitors
• Fancourt A (2004) Hitting the ground running? Does the Legal Practice Course prepare students adequately for the training contract? Coventry: UKCLE
• LawWorks (2006) LawWorks Student Project: Pro bono: the next generation (PDF file) London: LawWorks
• Rolfe H & Anderson T (2003) ‘A firm choice: law firms’ preferences in the recruitment of trainee solicitors’ International Journal of the Legal Profession 10(3):315-334
• Shiner M (2000) ‘Young, gifted and blocked! Entry to the solicitors’ profession’ in P Thomas (ed) Discriminating lawyers London: Routledge

General resources:

• the Higher Education Academy’s Employer engagement pages include resources on work-based learning and details of projects across the UK
• Quality assurance and the HEFCE priority for higher education learning linked to employer engagement and workforce development (Quality Assurance Agency)
• A strategic approach towards employer engagement for HE in London (London Higher)
• Payne J (2008) ‘Sector skills councils and employer engagement: delivering the ‘employer led’ skills agenda in England’ Journal of Education and Work 21(2):93-113
• Sastry T & Bekhradnia B (2007) Higher education, skills and employer engagement Oxford: Higher Education Policy Institute

Last Modified: 4 June 2010