Graduate standards in law: the way forward

(Transcript of a section of the Graduate standards in law report, 1997)

We believe that any expert panel set up for law should seek to produce a range of acceptable frameworks within which a particular institution can benchmark its offerings. The purpose is clarity of information about courses, rather than constraining institutions into a homogeneous framework. It is important that the setting of graduate standards in law is brought into line with the joint announcement on qualifying law d egrees. There should not be two distinct standards to which law departments have to work.

Stage 1

The panel should produce a framework around which consultation would take place:

• a list of domains of graduateness in which a student should demonstrate achievement
• a typology of purposes of different programmes

Stage 2

A set of consultations made up of regional workshops and invitations to comment. We think both are necessary to perform an educative, as well as a fact finding function. There should be genuine involvement of a wide range of teachers, who would be asked to produce their specification of threshold standards at levels 1, 3 and M in terms of outcomes expected for each. The issue of whether there should be a single level of competence in law could there be debated.

Some similar consultations among professionals might also be appropriate.

Stage 3

The expert panel would produce its statements having analysed responses and consult with representative organisations on the final formulation.

We think that stage 1 does not involve a lot of work, but stage 2 would require significant time, as would the collation of results in stage 3.

Subject associations have already provided much of the basis for stage 1. They would be able to organise regional workshops, but would need to be involved in planning. There would need to be at least a person month in collating responses and producing an appropriate range of syntheses for agreement by the expert panel.

Last Modified: 30 June 2010