Sarah Downey assesses the much-touted review of legal education
It promised so much and delivered so little. The Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) published its recommendations on 25 June, concluding what was dubbed as the most comprehensive assessment of legal education since the Ormrod report of 1971. Yet the 350-page report has proved an underwhelming end to a process that was supposed to address fundamental problems.
The review was launched to address a string of issues.Particularly notable was bitter criticism of law schools for churning out thousands of aspiring solicitors and barristers with little chance of a career in law. In addition were an assortment of gripes and concerns, including a lack of credible work-based routes to qualification, standards of education and questions over the commercial readiness of new lawyers.The review was also foregrounded by the shake up of university funding that allowed universities to nearly triple annual tuition fees to £9,000 and the looming implementation of the Legal Services Act (LSA).
Yet despite widespread claims at the time that the status quo could not continue, the report amounted to a series of modest strategic nods to various competing interest groups without amounting to much substantive change.
The report contains 26 key recommendations, including more co-ordination between the different strands of the profession, measures to create a more commercial and flexible approach to training, and development of apprenticeships and new forms of workplace training for non-graduates. It also recommends establishing a Legal Education Council to advise regulators on legal education and training.
Critically for education providers, the report finds that the legal practice course (LPC) should focus more on commercial awareness and better prepare lawyers for alternative and specialist practices.
The report also concluded that increased co-ordination between the professions is needed to ensure standardisation and greater clarity about ‘horizontal transfers’ between professional routes. Longer term, there should be national frameworks to simplify the transfer between the professions and to support progression from paralegal to authorised practitioner.
These measures fall far short of the radical steps initially mooted, such as merging the training of barristers and solicitors entirely, abandoning the training contract or totally overhauling the LPC.
The report also side-stepped calls to re-accredit lawyers, to the dismay of Elisabeth Davies, chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel, who argued the measure was key to consumer confidence.
The lack of boldness has stoked much grumbling. Professor, president and provost of The University of Law, Nigel Savage describes the report as ‘patronising in places’. ‘A glaring omission is the failure to do anything about underpinning the success of English law and our firms by making the English qualification more accessible as against the New York Bar in the emerging legal service hubs.’
Richard Moorhead, professor of law and professional ethics at UCL, is similarly blunt: ‘The three regulators raised expectations with a process they hadn’t thought about properly. They used research as a vehicle for not facing up to thinking clearly about issues they ought to take forward.’
In truth, it was apparent on launch that the complexity of the task, a sprawling and ill-defined brief and bad timing would severely hamper the review, which many feel struggled to accumulate the necessary research.
‘What I didn’t like is the way they justify the assertion or recommendation on the basis of a quote from somebody,’ says Savage. ‘That’s bloody journalism not research.’
The review would arguably have been better timed had it begun several years after the introduction of the LSA, when the impact of the UK’s legal ‘big bang’ would have been more apparent.
By the same token, controversies over poor prospects for aspiring lawyers hopelessly confused the brutally competitive tournament for pupillage, with the prospects for LPC graduates and training contracts, which are broadly in step.
It is also ironic that the review has largely concluded what most senior lawyers would have said before it started: legal education in England and Wales, while having its faults, generally produces lawyers of a good standard. Savage concludes: ‘It’s a good framework. They said the system is fit for purpose and broadly it is. Our system is better than most others around the world.’
More optimistically, BPP Law School chief executive Peter Crisp welcomed recommendations for work-based training, an area in which there is wide agreement that it could be better.
Still, positive or not, many have pointed out that momentum has been gathering to support apprenticeships independently of the LETR. The likelihood is that reform-minded bodies like the Solicitors Regulation Authority, which is set to release new education proposals this autumn, will keep reforming much as they would have without the review. Cynics will wonder what the point was.
LETR – the background
The Legal Education and Training Review was announced in November 2010 under the co-ordination of the Legal Services Board, to be carried out by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the Bar Standards Board and the Institute of Legal Executives Professional Standards. The far-ranging brief included education requirements, social mobility and work-based routes to qualification, standards and content in academic and vocational training, ethics, the role of vocational law schools and the impact of the Legal Services Act. The report, originally expected at the end of 2012, was compiled by an eight-member group led by University of Warwick professor Julian Webb.