Education and Training up next......

The legal market is certainly not standing still at the moment.  The latest area to hit the headlines over the last few weeks has been legal education and training.  The consultation panel for the 'Review 2020' (as the overall education and training review being carried out by the SRA, Bar Standards Board and ILEX Professional Standards is now being referred to) was of course announced a few weeks ago, and will be led jointly by Sir Mark Potter (a former Court of Appeal judge) and Dame Janey Gaynor (former senior partner of Simmons & Simmons).  In addition to this, the SRA, with all that spare time on its hands, has launched its first review of solicitors' CPD obligations for more than 25 years, which will feed into the Review 2020. 

Meanwhile, various insitutions and firms are announcing new and innovative courses and schemes in the field.  Most newsworthy at the moment is the New College of the Humanities, the private for profit undergraduate college set up by Professor Grayling.  This development has been much discussed both in the mainstream press and the legal press and social media.  The law degree offered by NCH will however be a 'traditional' LLB, with graduates needing to take the usual further steps for full qualification.  Taking a different approach, Northumbria University has recently announced a five-year M Law Full Qualification Degree, a degree which leads to full qualification as a solicitor.  Then you have the College of Law unveiling its plans to launch a two-year law degree (costing £18,000 in total, which corresponds to one year of fees at NCH), and BPP University College last year becoming a private university.  Not quite as recent, but certainly high up in the innovation stakes, York Law School (the law department of York University) is now coming to the end of its third year in action. Its problem-based learning approach distinguishes it from other law degrees. I must declare an interest at this stage as I do some tutoring on the course, but there is no doubt that students coming out of this course have a very different skill set (and in my view superior one in terms of preparing them for practice) than students from more traditional courses.

Then you have the issue of aptitude tests for LPC students, again something that is being heavily debated in the legal press at the moment with recent reports being produced both for the Law Society and the Legal Services Board.

Then you have innovative approaches from law firms such as Leeds-based Gordons.  Gordons has launched an apprenticeship scheme for school leavers that will enable them to become legal practitioners without going to university at all.  The four-year programme, starting this September, is aimed at youngsters who would otherwise find it difficult to enter the profession, and apparently came about as a result of the Managing Partner watching the BBC programme Who Gets the Best Jobs?

There is so much commentary about what the legal market will look like in a few years time with the introduction of ABSs.  What there is no doubt about is the increase in diversity of those offering legal advice to the public, so it seems fitting that methods of entrance into the legal profession are becoming similarly diverse.