Education review delivers verdict

The much-anticipated Legal Education Training Review (LETR) has proposed keeping traineeships and pupillages but giving more support to the development of less traditional routes such as non-graduate apprenticeships and licensed paralegal schemes.

The report—first commissioned in June 2011—calls for “incremental but collectively significant reforms” to the way legal professionals are educated and trained. It was produced by the UKCLE Research Consortium, led by Professor Julian Webb of the University of Warwick.

Its 26 recommendations include “continuing monitoring and evaluation of the apprenticeship pathway”, which could increase diversity. However, the quality of training must be maintained to avoid “risks to competence”. It calls for further work to explore the potential of licensed paralegal schemes where independent paralegals could deliver “well-priced quality services outside the currently regulated market”.

On advocacy training, it recommends preparing students to appear against self-represented litigants, and to place greater emphasis on the skills required for mediation and ADR in the Bar Professional Training Course.

The Legal Practice Course (LPC) should be re-structured to allow greater flexibility of delivery, to reduce the breadth of the knowledge required, and to focus more on commercial awareness, it says. The quality of training on both advocacy and wills “must be improved”, and one approach could be to take them out of the LPC altogether and make them part of the training contract or CPD requirements.

The report found a “strong desire” among students for greater transparency about the costs of training, job prospects and alternative options, and it notes “some distrust” of the impartiality of information from education and training providers.

Law Society chief executive Des Hudson warned that educators were “leaving quality assurance to the profession” with law firms complaining that graduates lacked the required skills when they started work.

Vanessa Davies, director of the Bar Standards Board, said she was “pleased” the report “recognises that the current system provides a good standard of education and training upon which to build”.