Legal Education and Training in England and Wales: Back to the Future?

Author(s): Andrew Boon and Julian Webb

Source: Journal of Legal Education , March 2008, Vol. 58, No. 1 (March 2008), pp. 79-121
Published by: Association of American Law Schools

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 79

Legal Education and Training in

England and Wales:
Back to the Future?

Andrew Boon and Julian Webb

Introduction

John Henry Merryman observes:

The examination of legal education in a society provides a window on its legal

system. Here one sees the expression of basic attitudes about the law: what
law is, what lawyers do, how the system operates or how it should operate.
Through legal education the legal culture is transferred from generation to
generation. Legal education allows us to glimpse the future of the society.1

This article outlines prospective changes in English legal education that offer
a window on increasingly instrumental and consumerist expectations of profes-
sional credentialing processes.2 These pressures can be traced to the impact of
globalization on British political thinking, but they are producing different re-
sults from those the MacCrate Commission, a similarly ambitious review of struc-
ture for education and training, did in the United States. Our analysis confirms
that we are two nations divided by a common language, yet speaking a different
language of legal education. We contend that many of the changes and tensions
facing English legal education result from both an underlying epistemic uncer-
tainty about the nature of the English legal education project and a tendency to
respond ad hoc to national, regional, and globalizing pressures. Many of these
pressures, though they may emerge in different ways in different localities, are

Andrew Boon is a Professor of Law and the Dean of the School of Law at the University of
Westminster, UK.

Julian Webb is a Professor of Legal Education in the School of Law at the University of Warwick
and the Director of the UK Centre for Legal Education.

We are grateful to Avis Whyte for research assistance.

i. John Henry Merryman, Legal Education There and Here: A Comparison, 27 Stan. L. Rev. 859,
859 0975) •

2. We use English purely as a shorthand term for what we should properly call the legal system of
England and Wales. A distinctively Welsh dimension has become more significant in substan-
tive and cultural terms following the devolution of greater political and legislative power to
Wales in 1998.

Journal of Legal Education, Volume 58, Number 1 (March 2008)

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8o Journal of Legal Education

not unique to the United Kingdom. Viewed in this light, our analysis
more than purely domestic interest and concern.
In charting the story of English legal education and training we ta
starting point the system as it operates today. To North American
are likely to be some oddities, which first need to be identified.
Legal education in England and Wales involves rigid distinctions
academic, vocational, and continuing stages of training. Law in En
undergraduate rather than graduate education. Conventionally, ent
gin studying law after completing their secondary education at arou
of eighteen or nineteen. To practice law, students must first comple
year "qualifying" law degree or equivalents The contents of the law
curriculum are lightly prescribed, relative to many other Europea
tions. The profession requires a core of knowledge, the "seven foun
legal knowledge," and a range of "key skills." While some flexibility
in arranging this content, about two-thirds of an English LLB is c
of compulsory courses and about one-third may be taken from a w
of electives. The required courses, or Foundations, are: Contract, C
Law, Torts, Public Law, Equity and Trusts, Land Law, and European
Law.4 Evidence, Criminal and Civil Procedure, and Professional Res
ity are not required courses. Evidence, along with other more obv
tions on the themes of Tax, Family Law, Labor Law, Corporations, a
are commonly offered as electives by English law schools. Civil an
Procedure are rarely offered at the academic stage. Professional Res
is even scarcer. Live client clinics, lawyering skills courses, and clini
tions also are not standard offerings for LLBs, but are nonetheless
to an extent unheard of twenty-five years ago. Discrete Legal Writi
are also unusual, though widening participation policies have oblige
universities and law schools to deliver generic study skills, writing
learning how to learn in higher education as learning support provis
as part of the mainstream curriculum.

3. There are some four-year law degrees that include clinical or work-based ele
integrated part of the program and a few which include a year studying law in an
ally European) jurisdiction. There are also numerous part-time and some distan
programs that enable students to complete the equivalent to a three-year full-time
four to five years. The professional bodies also permit holders of non-law und
degrees to progress to the vocational stage of training by completing an intensi
conversion course covering the Foundations.

4. The Foundations are published in what has variously been called a "joint annou
"joint statement" by the branches of the profession following consultation, includin
academy via its main legal academic associations. For the current version, see The L
and the Bar Council, A Joint Statement issued by the Law Society and the Gene
of the Bar on the Completion of the Initial or Academic Stage of Training by O
Undergraduate Degree (August 1999), available at <http://www.sra.org.uk/docu
dents/academic-stage/academicjointstate.pdf> (last visited June 13, 2008). English la
have developed a variety of modular structures and do not all deliver the found
discrete modules in the way this suggests, though there are degree courses that do s

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales .81

After students complete the initial stage of training, they must pass a
vocational course and fulfill a period of employment training under the su-
pervision of a qualified practitioner. These elements are the vocational stage
of training. The first part involves functionally differentiated programs for as-
piring barristers and solicitors, called the Bar Vocational Course (BVC) and
Legal Practice Course (LPC) respectively. These are institutionally based as
opposed to workplace programs and are most commonly completed over a full
year of academic study (though a number of institutions also offer part-time
study options).
The curriculum at the vocational stage is more closely prescribed and
regulated by the relevant professional body. The main component parts of
the curriculum are as follows:

Substantive
Litigation Criminal litigation and
Conveyancing sentencing
Evidence

Skills Advocacy Advocacy

Client interviewing and Conferenc
advising Fact management
Practical legal research Legal research
Writing and drafting Opinion writing
Drafting
Negotiation
Conduct Professional conduct and Professional ethics
client care

As the above table shows, both courses involve a substantial a

substantive knowledge, and in this respect the English voca
are more knowledge-based than other Commonwealth professio
courses, notably those in British Columbia (Canada), New South
tralia), and New Zealand, which are much more skills-oriented an
duration. Second, the range of skills assessed and the relative w
tween skills and knowledge, insofar as these are separable, diff
LPC and BVC. The range of skills taught and assessed on the BV
This is reflected in a 60 percent minimum assessment weightin
skills on the BVC as compared to a 25 percent minimum for the
tive emphasis between the skills also differs. Thus, as one would
the Bar's role as a referral advocacy profession, the emphasis on
greater in both depth and breadth on the BVC. Professional eth
duct is taught as a topic in its own right, though the amount of
teaching is limited when compared with U.S. -style Professional

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82 Journal of Legal Education

courses. It is also assessed pervasively: students are warned that

can- and do- arise in any skills or knowledge-based assessment.
Both courses require students to take additional specialist elect
to combine substantive legal knowledge and relevant skills towar
the program of study.
The second phase of the vocational stage is an apprenticeship d
trainees undertake supervised practice. This reflects the professio
tween English lawyers. It is served by solicitors in a two year tra
and in one year of pupillage for barristers. Practicing solicitors
thereafter are also subject to compulsory post-qualification (con
fessional development (CPD). Solicitors may undertake further
advocate in higher courts and may join specialist panels for per
family, or other areas of work.
Many of these established structures and divisions are coming
into question and, in the process, raising underlying issues abou
and purpose of a legal education. To understand the background
of the modern system and the debates associated with it, we ne
legal education policy and practice in its historical contexts

The History and Structural Development of English Legal

Training/or Legal Practice: Circa izoo-igjo

English legal education and training emerged largely as a crea
legal profession and particularly the institutions of the Inn
statute of Henry III, in 1234, prohibited teaching of Civil Law
don "schools" (presumably the early Inns). Designed primaril
the nascent universities of Oxford and Cambridge from their u
this measure had the effect of separating the teaching of C
Common Law and probably helped slow the reception of Eng
law into the universities.6 The Inns, which exist today as the b
Bar, in medieval times trained barristers, solicitors, and attorne

5. It is worth remembering that, outside of Oxford and Cambridge, higher educ

in England is very much a modern phenomenon and, in fact, younger than
States. w[T]he U.S. organisational revolution took place. . .roughly between 1870
emergence of the British system is still underway." Martin Trow, Comparative
Higher Education Policy in the U.K. and U.S., 14 Oxford Rev. Educ. 81 (1988)

6. See J.L. Barton, The Study of Civil Law before 1380, in 1 The History of th
Oxford: The Early Oxford Schools 521 (T.H. Aston and J.I. Catto eds., Oxfor
notes that there is evidence of the Civil Law being taught at Oxford from the e
Canon Law and Civil Law were established in Cambridge by the early 1250s. See
Leader, 1 A History of the University of Cambridge: The University to 1546 192
1988). Brand argues that there is some evidence of English Law being taught at
1300S. Paul Brand, Courtroom and Schoolroom: The Education of Lawyers in En
1400, 60 Hist. Res. 147 (1987).

7. The English legal profession qua profession began to emerge in the second half o

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales 83

a relatively informal process of training. Students and practitioners lived

and dined in the Inns; students learned by observing proceedings in court
and taking notes, talking to practitioners and judges, practicing in moots
and, by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, attending readings and lec-
tures. However, following the English Civil War in the seventeenth century,
public lectures at the Inns died out, and professional training for the Bar
became largely a matter of, at best, solid apprenticeship or, at worst, serv-
ing time and attending dinners. As the Inns of Chancery declined in status
and effectiveness, training for attorneys and solicitors similarly came to rely
substantially on apprenticeship of varying quality. This position continued
until well into the nineteenth century.
Two highly critical government reports pointed to the parlous state of legal
education and training at this time, particularly for the Bar. In 1846, a Parlia-
mentary Select Committee reported that all who were interested in the state of
legal education recognized "the inefficiency of the present system, the injuri-
ous consequences which have resulted from its continuance, and the urgent
necessity of immediate alteration" and urged the Inns of Court to unite in cre-
ating a law university and to establish preliminary examinations and lecture-
ships.8 Again, in 1854, a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into the
state of education in the Inns of Court and of Chancery and reiterated many
of the recommendations of 1846, but to little lasting effects
More formalized training was gradually introduced on the back of professional
examination requirements.10 Preliminary and intermediate examinations
were introduced for solicitors and attorneys in i860. Initially under the direct
control of the judges, responsibility for the examinations was in 1877 handed

century. Many of its earliest stratifications did not survive into the modern period, though some
sub-divisions persisted into the nineteenth century- notably between seijeants-at-law and bar-
risters, who represented the profession of advocates and pleaders in the courts, and attorneys
and solicitors, who historically, much as now, undertook mostly non-contentious work and pre-
trial preparation. By the late nineteenth century such distinctions had disappeared, leaving the
professions of solicitor and barrister essentially in their modern form. For a concise summary of
the history of the divided profession, see Judith L. Maute, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:
Preliminary Reflections on the History of the Split English Legal Profession and the Fusion
Debate (1000-1900 A.D.), 71 Fordham L. Rev. 1357 (2003).

8. Select Committee on Legal Education, [no. 686] (London, 1846).

9. Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Arrangements in the Inns of Court
and Inns of Chancery for Promoting the Study of Law and Jurisprudence, no. 1988 (London,
1855). The idea of a law university limped on into the 1870s without ever garnering sufficient
support. See A.H. Manchester, A Modern Legal History of England and Wales 1750-1950, at
57-60 (London, 1980). The idea was finally killed off by the Haldane Commission on University
Education in London which robustly argued that any plans for a "great school of law" in the
metropolis should be advanced in the context of a proper university institution. Royal Commis-
sion on University Education in London, Final Report of the Commissioners, Cd. 671, 11 338
(London, 19 13).

10. The following summary is based largely on the historical survey provided by the Ormrod
Committee. See Report of the Committee on Legal Education, Cmnd. 4595, 1111 27-28 (London,
1971) (hereinafter Ormrod Report).

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84 Journal of Legal Education

over to the Law Society. Exams were introduced as an additio

apprenticeship requirements, and so study had to be undertaken
training period (called "articles"). As the examination requireme
more stringent, the Law Society organized courses of lectures i
other major provincial centers and then passed regulations allowi
take time to prepare without interrupting their articles.
This more than anything else opened the way to more formal train
which were provided initially by private colleges and "law cramm
Society created its own School of Law only in 1903. In 1922, the
quired all articled clerks who were not law graduates or managi
more than ten years experience to undertake a full year's study a
London or at a recognized institution. The latter included a sma
private colleges and a growing number of provincial universitie
ture remained in place until the early 1960s, when the Law Socie
an amalgamation of its school with the largest of the private tut
Gibson and Weldon, to form the Law Society's College of Law. A
time, the license of the provincial universities to teach for the
Examination was withdrawn, obliging all students to attend the
numbers grew to over 2,000 students, this system proved impr
in the early 1960s, the Law Society had to reinstate its externa
courses. These new courses were not provided by the established
however, but at the newer, more vocationally oriented colleges
in Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastl
tingham-institutions that later became part of the polytechnic s
in the 1970s to support a massive expansion of higher education.
The picture at the Bar was not that different.11 After a voluntary
was instituted in the early 1860s, a compulsory Bar Examinatio
duced in 1872. 12 Subject to various modifications, this remaine
training for the next hundred years. Attendance at a teaching in
not initially compulsory, and many students relied on private t
dependent study. The Council of Legal Education, which had
established by the Inns in 1852, offered some teaching: initially f
professors were appointed to each deliver three sets of lectures p
appointments were not full-time and tended to be held by distin
demic lawyers and practitioners. A full-time Director of Legal St
pointed in 1905, but teaching continued to be delivered by prac
visiting academics until 1967 when the Inns of Court School of
was established and a permanent teaching staff was appointed. Th
velopment was largely necessitated by the rapid expansion of stud
in the post-War period, particularly from newly independent Co

ii. The following paragraph draws chiefly on the Ormrod Report, supra note 10, and
the Council of Legal Education Archive produced for the AI M 25: Archives in L
M25 Area Project, available at <http://www.aim25.ac. uk/cgi-bin/search2?coll
id=4> (last visited Dec. 5, 2007).

12. Manchester, A Modern Legal History of England and Wales, supra note 9, at

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales 85

countries that lacked the resources to provide legal training on a local basis.
As numbers grew, the structure and physical resources of the Council became
inadequate, and it was obliged to reorganize and relocate to new premises in
Gray's Inn (in 1964), where purpose-built teaching accommodation could be
provided. As successor to the Council, ICSL remained the sole provider of
training for the English Bar until 1997 when a number of universities were
finally validated to deliver the successor to the Finals course.^

The Emergence of Academic Legal Education in England : /750 -/97/

Although there is evidence of Roman and Canon Law being taught in the
ancient universities from the early medieval period,14 Common Law legal edu-
cation was, on the whole, a late starter and slow developer. The first university
chair in English (Common) Law- the Vinerian Chair at Oxford- was created in
1758. Despite having Blackstone as its first incumbent, this established neither
the Vinerian Chair nor Oxford as the powerhouse of English legal scholarship
that Blackstone desired.15 By the 1840s there were still only two law professors
at Oxford, one of whom offered no courses, and the Chair of Canon Law was
unfilled. Similarly, even following the founding of the Downing Professorship
in English Law (1800), law at Cambridge struggled to become established.
Chairs in Law nevertheless followed at the new University College in London
in the 1820s (under John Austin and Andrew Amos), and at King's College in
1831. The desire of the new university to increase student numbers, the energy
and inspiration of Amos, and University College's proximity to the geographi-
cal heart of the profession probably ensured it fared somewhat better than Ox-
bridge in the early years, though numbers of students remained small and the
audiences at lectures consisted largely of articled clerks and a few barristers.
The universities, however, did not give up. The numbers of university
teachers slowly increased and new courses were introduced: the BCL degree
was established at Oxford in 1852, followed by the Cambridge LLB in 1855,
and the Durham BCL in 1858. From the early 1870s law courses were devel-
oped in the new civic universities in the midlands and the north of England.
In London, the law schools at University and King's Colleges were followed
by the founding of a law school at the newly established London School of
Economics (in 1895).

13. In 2001 the ICSL formally became a part of the City University Law School, although until
2008 it continued to deliver vocational training under its original name.

14. The Regius Chairs of Civil Law were founded at Oxford and Cambridge by Henry VIII in the
sixteenth century, though Canon law teaching was, by contrast, suppressed for a period following
the English reformation.

15. The second Vinerian Professor (Sir) Robert Chambers held the Chair for eight years before
gaining a greater reputation as a colonial judge and ultimately Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court of Bengal. The third Chair, (Sir) Richard Wooddeson followed in Blackstone's footsteps
as a commentator on and systématiser of the Common Law, but is today little remembered in
his own jurisdiction, though he is sometimes still cited in the U.S. courts.

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8 6 Journal of Legal Education

By 1909 there were eight law faculties in England and Wales, a

demarcation between academic and professional education was bec
tablished. Student and staff numbers for the most part remained
took the Solicitors Act 1922 to increase the number and size of law
the wake of additional student numbers and professional support
not equate to a substantial increase in law graduates. Articled clerk
qualify largely by apprenticeship, and those who had completed th
"intermediate stage" of a degree were entitled to serve a year's less
articles, even if they never graduated. The numbers graduating ou
schools remained, by today's standards, quite small.17
At the same time, intellectually, the place of law in the universit
heavily contested. In the mid-nineteenth century the idea of a mod
sity was only just beginning to take shape. The liberal visions (for
of Cardinal John Henry Newman and Matthew Arnold in the 1850
played a role in advancing a model of the university as a place de
learning for its own sake, rejecting narrowly utilitarian and profe
das.18 Law struggled to find its place within this emergent liberal
Sir Frederick Pollock lamented at Cambridge in 1883: "the scientif
tematic study of law [is] a pursuit still followed in this land by few
deprecated by many."^ Insofar as legal scholarship existed, much o
outwards for its legitimacy to the courts and the profession, and, a
liberal agenda was sometimes used to advance the cause of university le
tion, law remained something of a Cinderella subject until well into th
century. Brian Simpson recalls that even in the early 1950s when he wa
law did not enjoy a high academic reputation, and most undergrad
university who planned to join the Bar did not read law.20
It was not until the 1960s that the number of full-time legal a
began to grow. In the provincial universities, much of the teachin
to be delivered by practitioners. Staff-student ratios were often hi

16. This needs to be understood in the context of the global numbers studying at univ
1871 there were only 1,840 students studying outside the universities of Oxford an
by 1900 this number had risen to 7,943 and to over 26,000 by 1935, by which tim
total of eleven universities in addition to Oxbridge and London. Leonard Schwarz,
Elites, and Universities in England, 1870-1970, 47 Hist. J. 941, 941 (2004).

17. At Leeds University, for example, an average of three law degrees per year were
early 1900s; by 1931-35 that figure had increased to eleven. See P.H.J.H. Gosden an
Studies in the History of a University 1874-1974: To Commemorate the Centenary o
sity of Leeds 266, 280 (Leeds, 1975).

18. See, e.g., Anthony Bradney, Conversations, Choices and Chances: The Liberal L
the Twenty-First Century (Oxford, 2003) discussing the influence of Newman par
also Arnold and Houseman on conceptions of a liberal legal education.

19. Neil D uxbury, Judges and Jurists 70 (Oxford, 2001).

20. A.W. Brian Simpson, Herbert Hart Elucidated, 104 Mich. L.Rev. 1437, 1438 (
Brian Abel-Smith and Robert Stevens, Lawyers and the Courts: A Sociological
English Legal System 1750-1965, 165-68 (London, 1967).

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales 87

student learning experience (an inappropriately modern concept in this

context) was very much dominated by the lecture. Even the academics seemed
painfully aware of their doubtful standing and uncertain role. In 1883, Albert
Venn Dicey, a notable successor to Blackstone's Chair, could, perhaps, be
excused for asking the question in his inaugural lecture, "Can English law be
taught at the universities?" That variations on that question were still being
asked in inaugural lectures and presidential addresses into the 1950s is a mark
of the historically low (collective) ambition of English legal academics.
Unsurprisingly, given its fledgling status and insecurity, academic law
struggled to establish its relationship with the profession. While the Bar in-
troduced a two-year exemption from the qualification period for entrants with
a university law degree in 1756- a path followed by the forerunner to the Law
Society in 1821- this was at least as much a ploy to attract high status en-
trants than to reflect any intrinsic value attached to university legal study.
Indeed, the Solicitors Act 1821 exempted not only law graduates, but holders
of any Bachelor of Arts degree as well. Overall, the regulatory response of
both professional bodies to the growing numbers of graduates was extremely
cautious. It took more than fifty years from the introduction of professional
examinations for exemptions to be extended to law graduates.21 It was not
until after the report of the Ormrod Committee in 1971 that the solicitors' pro-
fession became a graduate-entry profession and abandoned five year articles
of clerkship as an alternative path to qualification. It took until 1979 for the
Bar Council to make a similar rule change.22
If the acceptance of academic law was grudging, the legal profession showed
no desire for a more developmental relationship with the universities. Attempts
by the University of London between 1884 and 1904 to establish a school of
law in conjunction with the Inns of Court were repeatedly rebuffed, despite
the University's willingness to give considerable control over the curriculum to
the Inns.23 Within the solicitors' profession the concern was not just a desire to
maintain traditional privileges and autonomy, but a more fundamental doubt
as to the necessity or desirability of a university education for one destined "to
attend to the details and routine of business in an office."24 Even after the Law
Society handed over much of its training to the universities in 1921, it sought
to retain considerable control over the curriculum and resisted attempts by the

21. The Solicitors Act 1922 exempted law graduates from the Intermediate examination, and,
following the 1934 reorganization of the Bar examinations into discrete Part I and Part »II exami-
nations, graduates were finally exempted from the whole of Part I. Ormrod Report, supra note
10, at f 32.

22. Michael Burrage, From Practice to School-Based Professional Education: Patterns of Conflict
and Accommodation in England, France, and the United States, in Sheldon Rothblatt and Björn
Wittrock, The European and American University since 1800: Historical and Sociological Essays
147 (Cambridge, 1993).

23. See Abel-Smith and Stevens, Lawyers and the Courts, supra note 20, at 172-77.

24. Samuel Warren, The Moral, Social, and Professional Duties of Attornies and Solicitors 90
(Edinburgh, 1848).

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 88 Journal of Legal Education

universities in the inter- and early post-War periods to make the cu

more academic and intellectually demanding. Indeed, it was profes
cerns that the universities were not adequately preparing students f
that led to the Law Society's decision to withdraw its courses from t
sities and, in Burrage's words, go "down market" to the technical in
and private colleges that it felt it could more readily control.25 Even
I959' when the nascent University of East Anglia (UEA) consulte
Society about the prospects of teaching law, it was strongly discour
doing so.26
That the law became a graduate- and predominantly law graduate-
profession was not due to professional policy, but reflected the extent to which
entrants to the profession increasingly saw value in a university education as
the stepping stone to a legal career. Indeed, as Schwarz argues, the attitude of
the profession served as a significant block on the expansion, particularly of
the newer provincial universities until the 1950s.27 Only in the context of the
enormous changes in state higher education policy that followed World War
II could such aspirations be realized.
The underlying point of our historical tour is that the value of a university
education long remained questionable to those who regulated the profession.
The central position the academy has achieved in initial legal education and
training has been primarily the result of socio-political, rather than profes-
sion-inspired, change from the 1950s onwards. The construction of the British
welfare state heralded in a range of policies that led to a massive expansion
in higher education provision. The trickle of new post-War universities estab-
lished in the 1950s was followed by a seeming flood in the 1960s. A Commit-
tee on Higher Education, chaired by Lord Robbins, was established in 1961
and reported to government in 1963. 28 It argued that (economic) progress de-
pended on the development of a sufficiently highly skilled workforce and saw
the universities as central to such a policy. Its 178 recommendations left little
of British higher education untouched. In particular, it called for the rapid
expansion of the university sector. As a consequence a number of recently
created Colleges of Advanced Technology (such as Aston, Bath, Brunei, and
Loughborough) were immediately given university status and plans to create
the "campus" universities of the 1960s- including Essex, Sussex, Kent, Lan-
caster, Warwick, and York- began to take shape. Expansion was also aided
by Education Secretary Tony Crosland's 1965 announcement of a new "binary
policy" for higher education, which led to the creation of thirty "polytechnics"

25. Burrage, From Practice to School-Based Professional Education, supra note 22, at 147.

26. Schwarz, Professions, Elites, and Universities in England, supra note 16, at 962. As Schwarz
notes, the UEA Law School was finally established only in 1977.

27. Id. at 943.

28. Higher Education: Report of the Committee Appointed by the Prime Minister under the
Chairmanship of Lord Robbins 1961-1963, Cmnd 2154 (London, 1963) (hereinafter the Robbins
Report).

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales 89

out of existing colleges of technology and commerce.29 With undergraduate

course fees met by the state and a system of maintenance grants in place, the
number of full-time students in higher education grew rapidly. Full-time uni-
versity student numbers increased from 197,000 in 1967-68 to 1217,000 in 1973-
74, with almost continuous growth thereafter. By 1988, more than 800,000
students participated in English higher education^0
Not surprisingly, legal education was a direct beneficiary of this process.
Law schools were established in most of the newer universities, and new de-
partments were added to those that already existed in the polytechnics and
colleges.^1 By 1970 there were twenty-two university law schools with seven
polytechnics and colleges offering their "own" law degrees. The number of
undergraduate law students had topped 5,000.3a The popularity of law as a
first degree coincided with a significant expansion of legal practice, much of it
fuelled by the demand for legal services created by the expansion of the state
funded legal aid scheme. By 1966, the number of articled clerks in practice had
increased to 7,000, almost double the number of five years earlier. 33 This too,
however, was straining the profession's capacity to provide training.
Despite this picture of growth and development, there was a continuing
sense that all was not entirely well in the world of legal education. The sys-
tem remained largely uncoordinated and unplanned. Indeed, the relationship
between the professions and the academy seemed to be shaped by mutual in-
difference. The professional bodies had retained considerable autonomy over
their own spheres and had, to some degree, encountered different problems
and come up with different solutions. The academic study of law expanded
slowly but steadily- at least until the late 1960s- but with limited institutional
connection to the world of practice. Moreover, in the newer institutions law
was not an arriviste discipline, and in some it was beginning to develop an ethos
and sense of identity very different from that which had prevailed.

Embedding or Blurring the Boundaries? Legal Education : igji-2001

This context sets the scene for the next critical historical phase: the
Ormrod Committee on Legal Education. The Ormrod Committee framed

29. See generally John Pratt, The Polytechnic Experiment 1965-1992, at 3 (Buckingham, 1997). The
polytechnics collectively were granted university status by the Further and Higher Education
Act 1992.

30. Lorenzo Dubois Baber and Beverly Lindsay, Analytical Reflections on Access in English
Higher Education: Transnational Lessons across the Pond, 1 Res. Comp. Sc Inťl Educ. 146, 148
(2006).

31. A number of these institutions evolved from colleges teaching the Law Society Part I and Part II
courses, and several of them had also provided teaching for the University of London's External
LLB program for a number of years. See generally Patricia Leighton, New Wine in Old Bottles
or New Wine in New Bottles?, 25 J. L. & Soc'y 85 (1998).

32. Ormrod Report, supra note 10, at 11 35.

33. Id. at 11 36.

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go Journal of Legal Education

its perception of the problem facing legal education as one of i

and overlap. The emphasis on professional control, exercised
amination, meant that the law degree had not achieved any sign
tus as a professional qualification in its own right and that the
coherence across the work of the academic and professional
professional curriculum was becoming a constraining factor on
opment of law in the universities and colleges. The construction
fessional examinations too had come to dictate both the content and meth-
ods of professional preparation, leading to "coaching" and "cramming" for
the examination and too little emphasis on the actual skills required of an
intending practitioner.3*
Ormrod's solution to the perceived inefficiencies was to emphasize the need
for a planned training regime involving academic, vocational, and continuing
stages. The normal academic stage of training was to become the law degree
"or its equivalent," while the vocational stage was to involve both "institu-
tional training" and supervised practical experience. The critical point was
that the relationship between these two stages should become more planned.
Arrangements for training the profession had been shaped primarily for non-
graduate entry; this needed to change. Future arrangements for the vocation-
al stage "ought to be planned with the specific needs and the attainments of
the law graduate in view. "35 The amount of additional substantive law learn-
ing should be kept to a minimum at this stage. The purpose of vocational
training should be "to lay the foundations for the continuing development of
professional skills and techniques throughout [the lawyer s] career. "36
The Ormrod Committee's recommendations were largely welcomed, and,
although a number of them were never acted on, the Report created a frame-
work and discourse that was broadly endorsed by subsequent reports, in-
cluding the Benson Commission in 1979 and the Lord Chancellor's Advisory
Committee (ACLEC) in 1996.37

34. Id. at Ml 83-86, 100.

35. Id. at 11 124.

36. Id. at f 125.

37. The Royal Commission on Legal Services, Final Report, Cmnd. 7648 (HMSO, London, 1979).
Sir Henry Benson (chair of the Royal Commission) was asked to inquire into changes to "the
structure, organisation, training, regulation of and entry to the legal profession" that were de-
sirable in the public interest. Id. at 11 vi. As regards legal education, it essentially endorsed the
Ormrod approach and added relatively little of substance. The Lord Chancellor's Advisory
Committee on Legal Education and Conduct, First Report on Legal Education and Training
(London, 1996) (hereinafter First Report). The Advisory Committee was created under the
Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 inter alia "to keep under review the education and training
of those who offer to provide legal services." First Report, supra , at sched. 1, H 1. The Committee
was chaired by a senior member of the judiciary and comprised representatives of the practicing
and academic professions. Although its function was advisory rather than directly regulatory,
its advice was influential and the Committee was distinctive in introducing an element of lay
oversight of legal education matters. It was abolished by the Access to Justice Act 1999 following
a dispute with the government concerning the extension of rights of audience.

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales 91

Ormroďs impact is difficult to gauge. Its vision of undergraduate legal

education as an increasingly cross- or interdisciplinary venture, its commit-
ment to pluralism, and its recognition of the need to free law schools from
the constraints of the exemption approach to the curriculum have probably
helped ensure that English legal education is a more diverse and intellectually
challenging experience than it was thirty-something years ago. Moreover, the
subdivision of legal education certainly supported, though it has not been
sufficient of itself to explain, the greater integration of law schools into the uni-
versity mainstream.38 Concerns that the Ormrod Report might go too far and
"professionalize" academic legal education and make it more like the Ameri-
can model proved largely ungrounded. In retrospect, critics underestimated
the extent to which academic law teaching in England (and in North America)
would increasingly dance to a different tune. As Abel observes, "Law teach-
ers have... grown apart from practitioners. "39 The academic profession has in-
creasingly developed its own career path, with the PhD becoming the primary
qualification to teach and research in university legal education. Academics
have developed a growing confidence in their own perspectives on law, and
law schools have expanded into new graduate markets for LLM and other
academic programs that were not tied to the entry needs of the profession.
At the same time, and quite paradoxically, Ormrod has had two other related
consequences. First, while stressing the need for a continuum, it succeeded in
establishing an often tense dynamic around academic legal education. Second,
it marginalized academic legal education in professional formation.
The construction of a system of joint responsibility between the universities
and the profession has reinforced certain structural divisions between academic
and vocational stages. The post-Ormrod settlement hit a wall on the issue of ge-
neric recognition of all law degrees for the purpose of professional recognition.
The professional bodies refused to accept any degree that did not include the
then six core subjects required by the professions in their Part I examinations.
A mechanism for publishing and reviewing these requirements was negotiated
by the law schools and the professional bodies through the periodic Joint An-
nouncements/Statements on Qualifying Law Degrees. Until 1990, compliance
with model syllabi was required; assessment methods and minimum teaching
hours allocated to the core were also prescribed. Ormrod did not have the
desired effect on the vocational stage, which continued to include some sub-
jects required in degrees, together with some new procedural and substantive
material. Neither skills nor, surprisingly, ethics made it on to the agènda.
Throughout these changes, the idea of the "core" itself remained sacrosanct,
undisturbed because it was easier than disturbing the status quo. Yet this
prescribed academic core, in truth, acted as a millstone for both academics and

38. See, e.g., William Twining, Rethinking Law Schools, 21 L. & Soc. Inq. 1007, 1009 (1996).

39. Richard L. Abel, The Legal Profession in England and Wales 268 (Oxford 1988). Compare
Robert Stevens, American Legal Education: Reflections in the Light of Ormrod, 35 Mod. L.
Rev. 242, 243-44 (1972).

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g 2 Journal of Legal Education

vocational teachers. It constituted a relatively narrow knowledge ba

vocational training could build, and, as a consequence, vocational c
felt obliged to deliver a large amount of substantive law and proce
ing to concerns that the vocational curriculum was overloaded. Ma
ics saw it as a conservative influence on the development of acade
education. When the profession mooted adding more material to th
university law schools tended to be wary, treating this as an intrus
autonomy and raising by no means illegitimate concerns over its ef
breadth, depth, diversity, and coherence of student learning experienc
have also pointed to the growing proportion of students who do no
join the profession, maintaining the Robbins argument that law deg
provide a liberal education rather than vocational preparation.41 V
cial enquiries have nevertheless continued to support this partnersh
professional preparation, which maintains the autonomy of the int
for the stages and the sense of distinctiveness about their modes o
inquiry, instruction, and performance.
Ignoring the commotion over the academic core, the profession
attention to the vocational stage over which it had retained ultima
The vocational courses had, as we have shown, been crammers for
subjects considered indispensable for practice, such as evidence an
law. Teaching in the professional courses remained, at least until th
1980s, largely didactic and often unimaginative. Assessment was
by nationally set and externally assessed unseen examinations. As u
ings of the complexity and fluidity of legal work in the late twent
increased, so concerns grew that the vocational courses created "a
conducive to this kind of flexible attitude."42 Their style had becom
ed as university education swung towards education for capability
on student-centered, active, and lifelong learning.^ This change wa
in university law schools in a small but influential clinical movem
had taken root in the 1970s, and an emerging skills movement, pa

40. See, e.g., Peter Birks, Compulsory Subjects: Will the Seven Foundations Ever Cr
J. Current Legal Issues (1995), available at <http://webjcli.ncl.ac.uk/articlesi/birks
visited Feb. 29, 2008).

41. The proportion not entering the profession is near to 50 percent or may even
figure. See Andrew Holroyd, Setting the Standards, The Law Society's Gaze
2001, at 3. While there has been significant growth in the number of student
LPC over the last five years (8,262 students enrolled in the LPC in 2005-06),
of available training contracts has consistently lagged behind. In 2000-01 ther
places, and in 2005-06 there were 5,751. Bill Cole, Trends in the Solicitors Profess
Statistical Report 2006, 39, 41 (London, 2006).

42. ACLEC Review of Legal Education, Consultation Paper: The Vocational Stage an
Professional Development f 1.4 (London, 1995).

43. See Andrew Boon, Enterprise in Higher Education: A New Agenda for Institut
24 L. Teacher 14 (1990).

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales 53

the newer universities.44 The clinical and skills movements, combined with
examples from the United States and British Columbia, and the aspiration for
the competent, reflective practitioner created the climate for more practically
orientated vocational courses.45

In the late 1980s the Bar proposed refashioning the Bar Vocational Course
to include the practical dimensions of drafting, research, advocacy, conference
skills, and negotiation. This move was endorsed by a committee established
by both branches under the leadership of Lady Marre, the main purpose of
which was to consider extending the rights of audience to solicitors.46 In May
1990 the Law Society announced that it would steer its vocational course for
intending solicitors away from its emphasis on factual knowledge and towards
the analytical and practical skills and competencies needed to be an effective
member of the profession. In 1993 the Law Society followed the Bar, launch-
ing its Legal Practice Course and focusing on similar skills to those in the
Bar Vocational Course.47 Both courses retained the substantive legal mate-
rial considered appropriate to that branch. The Bar Course, not surprisingly,
had a heavier accent on litigation and evidence, whereas the LPC focused on
conveyancing (land transfer) and probate (a reserved area of business for so-
licitors), business law, and litigation. Both courses had pervasive subjects like
professional ethics. Many students welcomed the practical focus of the new
courses: advocacy, basic ethical issues, and dealing with clients and other pro-
fessionals were sources of anxiety. But there were also critics. Some students
found the skills training rudimentary and thought, with hindsight, that the
examples used were too context specific.48 Academics who welcomed the new
direction of the vocational courses thought that black letter law still dominat-
ed while practitioners criticized the emphasis on practical skills at the expense
of black letter law.49

During this time the academic law schools had been largely quiescent,
despite dire warnings from the more far sighted of the potentially radical

44. See, e.g., Neil Gold, Karl J. Mackie, and William L. Twining, Learning Lawyers' Skills
(London, 1989).
45. Donald A. Schön, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (New York,
r983)-

46. The Committee on the Future of the Legal Profession, A Time for Change H 12. 1 (London, 1988)
(hereinafter Marre Committee Report).

47. It was hoped that the LPC and mandatory CPD would be informed by two research reports,
Avrom Sherr, Solicitors and their Skills (London, 1991) and Kim Economides and Jeff Small-
combe, Preparatory Skills Training for Trainee Solicitors (London, 199 1), but neither was
reflected in the scheme. Alan A. Paterson, Professionalism and the Legal Services Market, 3
Int'lJ. Legal Prof. 137, 149 (1996).

48. Andrew Boon and Avis Whyte Looking Back: Analysing Experiences of Legal Education
and Training 41 Law Teacher 169 (2007).

49. See Hugh Brayne, LPC Skills Assessments- A Year's Experience, 28 L. Teacher 227 (1994) and
Tamara Goriely and Tom Williams, The Impact of the New Training Scheme: Report of a
Qualitative Study (London, 1996).

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94 Journal of Legal Education

effects of rising agendas of access, skills, new teaching methods,

European integration, demand for public sector lawyers, and the
increasingly powerful private education sector.50 In truth, acade
was focused inwards. Law schools were expanding rapidly, both i
scale. They had grown from forty-eight in 1975 to eighty-six by 199
ularity of law as an undergraduate discipline also meant that th
absorbed a significant increase in students as the United Kingdom
system moved, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, from an elite to a m
of higher education, at the same time as th e per capita unit of resou
ing tumbled.52 Universities were reviewing and restructuring deg
virtually wholesale. Modularization and semes terization were in
mid to late 1980s, generating an enormous volume of program a
views. The first national Research Assessment Exercise, the basis
government money for university research, took place in 1986, and g
plans for a new national Teaching Quality Assessment were annou
with law as one of the first disciplines to be reviewed.^
Work had been going on behind the scenes to review the Joint Ann
and a revised version was published in 1990.54 This looked like
victory for the university law schools. The detailed syllabi wer
broader subject statements, and the prescriptions of teaching h
sessment were relaxed. The 1990 statement warned, perhaps rath
cally in retrospect, that the core would continue to require per
In 1990, in the same report that signalled the desire for a new
the Law Society's Training committee expressed its wish to "en
schools to improve their students'" oral and written powers of c
and their skills of initiative, leadership, and teamwork, particular
can be done in a legal context,55 develop their students' understa
practical application of law, and "ensure that their students pro

50. Patrick McAuslan, The Coming Crisis in Legal Education, 16 J. L. 8c Soc'y 31

51. Phil Harris and Martin Jones, A Survey of Law Schools in the United Kingd
38 0996)-

52. Between 1989 and 1994 total university enrolments across all subjects rose by over 5 percent and
expenditure per student fell by 30 percent. Gareth Williams, The Market Route to Mass High-
er Education: British Experience 1979-1996, 10 Higher Educ. Pol'y 275, 283 (1997). Between
1979 and 1997 average staff student ratios (across all disciplines) fell from 1:9 to 1:17. Robert
Bocking Stevens, University to Uni: The Politics of Higher Education in England sirice 1944
76 (London, 2004).

53. The proposals for the Teaching Quality Assessment (TQA) were put forward in the same
government White Paper, Higher Education: A New Framework (London, 1991), that an-
nounced the abolition of the binary divide. Legislation followed in 1992, and the first TQAs
took place early in 1993.

54. Except where indicated otherwise, the following summary draws on events as reported in
ACLEC, Consultation Paper, Review of Legal Education: The Initial Stage (London, 1994)
Irti 1.12-1.15.

55. The Law Society, Training Tomorrow's Solicitors (London, 1990) 11 4.1.

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales 95

Final Course with an adequate knowledge of... the skills of legal research and
problem solving."56
This report had no significant regulatory effect at the time. It was followed
in 1992 by a consultation paper from the Law Society indicating that it con-
sidered the emphasis on undergraduate core subjects to be untenable in the
new modular environment and that it wished to move to the prescription of a
set of fundamental principles that did not need to be contained in a specified
subject structure. Building on the 1990 report, the consultation paper identi-
fied a range of skills that should be assessed as part of the new academic stage.
During 1992-94 negotiations continued between the law schools and the pro-
fessions. While there was widespread agreement about the need to move away
from core subjects, the academic responses on the whole were not sympathet-
ic. Some expressed concerns about the definition of these principles and their
weighting within the degree scheme. A complicating feature was the possible
government intervention in the debate. Under the Courts and Legal Services
Act 1990, the Lord Chancellor, informed by the views of the Lord Chancellors
Advisory Committee on Education and Conduct (AC LEC), was to approve
regulatory changes.57 After the ACLEC Review of Legal Education was an-
nounced in November 1992, the academic associations sought to delay the
Joint Announcement amendment until the review was complete. The profes-
sions, ultimately, were not convinced, and ACLEC was persuaded to recom-
mend a new Joint Announcement to the Lord Chancellor. The finalized ver-
sion was published in January 1995, encompassing a somewhat more flexible
definition of the "Foundations of Legal Knowledge," as they were now to be
called, and adding European Community Law to the foundations.58 A limited
set of legal research skills were introduced into the statement.
This experience undoubtedly informed the first report of the Lord
Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Legal Education and Conduct, which
marked a departure from the conservatism of earlier reports on legal educa-
tion and training. 59 It was a warning shot that the Lord Chancellor's powers
under the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 might be used for something
more than confirming the professional and academic consensus on legal
education.

The ACLEC Review took place in the wake of a barrage of alarms, both
great and small. The mid to late 1980s had seen the professions struggle with
a recruitment crisis as the housing market went into overdrive and corpo-
rate work expanded rapidly in the wake of the City of London's Big Bang.
The boom then rapidly collapsed; 1992 became the worst year for graduate

56. Id. 11 5.1.

57. See Courts and Legal Services Act, 1990, c. 41, § 29(4), sched. 4.

58. See Birks, Compulsory Subjects, supra note 40. Further revisions of the 1995 Joint Announcement
were agreed to in 1998/99 and came into effect on Sept. 1, 2001.

59. See ACLEC, First Report, supra note 37, at Ml 2.3-2.8.

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g 6 Journal of Legal Education

recruitment since the 1930s.60 From dearth the profession found i

excess. As the number of law graduates continued to grow, in 19
recruited 1,100 students onto the BVC, while, between 1992 and 1
Law Society validated record numbers for the new LPC.61 Con
that entry controls at the vocational stage could be deemed anti-
and that it was now access to training contracts and pupillages th
real bottleneck created significant regulatory and public relation
for the professional bodies in the early to mid-1990s, problems th
to be satisfactorily resolved. With increasing student numbers
ing competitiveness in the job market, problems around access an
tions of class and ethnic barriers in recruitment became more ap
practice environment itself was changing rapidly. Law firms and
risters' chambers were becoming increasingly differentiated in ter
ents served. Large firms were relatively huge, wealthy, and com
whereas areas of high street lawyers were under extreme pressure
remunerated, indeed becoming deprofessionalized. Educationa
to these changes were seen to be largely "unplanned and uncoord
Added to this, political and professional concerns were growin
(perceived) declining reputation and ethical standards of the prof
The ACLEC Report addressed some of the emerging problems. I
that legal education should develop students' capacities in five ke
tellectual integrity and independence of mind, core knowledge, c
knowledge, legal values, and professional skills. 6s It proposed grea
tion of the academic and vocational stages, arguing that lawyers
preciate "the essential link between law and legal practice and the
tion of fundamental democratic values."64 It urged that degrees
responsibility for developing legal values, like commitment to the
to justice and fairness, and professional values, such as high ethica
and awareness of codes of professional conduct.65 Citing Twining
tion that English legal education represents an uncomfortable com
between the profession and academy, ACLEC adroitly avoided spe
curriculum.66 This was partly because it recognized the potential f

60. Richard L. Abel, English Lawyers between Market and State: The Politics of P
105 (Oxford, 2003).

61. Id. at 100, 107.

62. ACLEC, First Report, supra note 37, at 11 1.10

63. u.
64. Id. at f 1.5.

65. Id. 0¿11 1.10 and 1.21.

66. See William L. Twining, Blackstone's Tower: The English Law School 47, 53, 162-66 (London,
1994) and ACLEC, First Report, supra note 37, at 11 2.5.

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales 97

with university law schools, but also because of its advocacy of a policy of
freeing them from the shackles of the profession's compulsory core.67
The Report was, for the most part, welcomed by commentators on academic
legal education- albeit not without qualification; the same could not be said
for its suggestions for the vocational stage.68 ACLEC envisaged deconstruct-
ing the vocational stage into a common professional legal studies course (to be
called a "licentiate in professional legal studies") of fifteen to eighteen weeks
that would provide a foundation for the integrated learning of professional le-
gal skills and values.69 For those who wished to proceed to qualification as a so-
licitor or barrister specifically, a further fifteen- to eighteen-week period would
need to be undertaken on a more specialized LPC or BVC.7° Courses could
be studied back-to-back or separated by an elective in-service training period
of up to six months. After completing an LPC/BVC, trainees would complete
another period of in-service training.71 The proposals sought to broaden the
initial base of vocational education and create greater flexibility, both through
constructing multiple entry and exit points and developing the Licentiate as a
paralegal qualification. These recommendations found little favor with either
the profession or professional educators, however. Concerns were raised that
the fragmentation of training, and particularly the provision of common train-
ing, might dilute the overall quality of the profession. The viability and stand-
ing of the Licentiate as a qualification in its own right was questioned. The
proposed reduction of time served under the training contract for solicitors
and the possibility of combining studying and training in a kind of sandwich
model also failed to find widespread support.
Although the ACLEC report had little apparent effect, it did shape
subsequent events. The profession could not ignore the possibility of further
weakening its control over education and training, together with the looming
presence of government. In 1998 the professional bodies adopted ACLEC's
position that the law degree should stand as an independent liberal education
not tied to any specific vocation.72 Also following ACLEC, a list of general

67. ACLEC, First Report, supra note 37, at Recommendation 4.2 and 4.4.4.

68. See, e.g., Harry W. Arthurs, Half a League Onward: The Report of the Lord Chancellor's
Advisory Committee on Legal Education and Conduct, 31 L. Teacher 1 (1997); Patricia
Leigh ton, The First ACLEC Report: What Might it Mean for Law Teachers?, 30 L. Teacher
201 (1996); Julian Webb, Ethics for Lawyers or Ethics for Citizens? New Directions for Legal
Education, 25 J. L. & Soc y 134 (1998). A number of critics registered concerns that ACLEC
had failed to take the idea of a continuum of academic and vocational education sufficiently
seriously. See, e.g., Andrew Boon, Ethics in Legal Education and Training: Four Reports,
Three Jurisdictions and a Prospectus, 5 Legal Ethics 34, 39 (2002); Stephen Nathanson, The
Real Problem with the Legal Practice Course, New L. May 24, 2002, at 785.
69. ACLEC, First Report, supra note 37, at Ml 5.11 -5.18.

70. Id. at Ml 6.2-6.14.

71. Id. at Ml 6.15-6.27.

72. The Law Society and the General Council of the Bar, A Consultation Paper on the Revision of
the Joint Announcement on Qualifying Law Degrees (Sept. 1998), on file with authors.

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g 8 Journal of Legal Education

transferable skills was added to the joint announcement, and a

was made that legal education and training should aim to achi
tual knowledge that "involves an appreciation of the law's social,
political, philosophical, moral and cultural contexts."^ There
mention of these contexts in the introductory remarks on the 199
nouncement, but they found entry merely as "an appreciation of
and other pressures that shape the development of the law in En
Wales."74 This movement towards a more overtly academic agenda
a while at least, to herald a new period of cooperative coexistence b
academic and practicing professions.
The ACLEC proposals for the vocational stage, by contrast,
disappear largely without trace. The professions turned to tending
patch, but controversy continued with many students critical of
the vocational year and the cost of the Bar Vocational Course in p
Though similar in cost to the LPC and despite the fact that it was
as an improvement on what went before, the BVC suffered from
sniping by pupils and recently qualified barristers, particularly in i
perimental years.75 For the Bar these concerns justified some proc
nical consolidation and refinement. However, a greater spur to ch
two much bigger defensive problems for the Bar that came home
the late 1990s.
First, despite opposition from the judiciary and the independent Bar, the
government via the Access to Justice Act 1999, had finally pushed through
extensions to rights of audience before the higher courts for solicitors and the
employed Bar.76 The Act removed one of the last major intra-professional re-
strictive practices and, as the Bar's own Collyear Committee acknowledged,
"remove [d] some of the functional differences between the professions that

73. ACLEC, First Report, supra note 37, at 138 (London, 1996).

74. Law Society and Council of Legal Education, Notice to Law Schools regarding Full-time
Qualifying Law Degrees, f iii (January 1995). The full text of this version of the Joint An-
nouncement is appended to Birks, Compulsory Subjects, supra note 40. The 1995 Joint
Announcement was superseded by the 1999 Joint Statement, supra note 4, which is applicable
to degrees commenced after September 1, 2001.

75. There is no specific limit on the number of students who can enrol on the Bar Vocational
Course and currently approximately 2,000 take the course each year, the Neuberger »Report
(2007) Entry to the Bar Working Party: Final Report, 52 (2007), available at <http://cms.
barcouncil.rroom.net/assets/documents/FinalReportNeuberger.pdf> (last visited June 24,
2008), whereas 9,850 enrolled on the LPC in 2007. The number of pupillages available fell
from 695 to 556 between 2000-2001 to 2004-2005, The Bar Council Statistics, available at
<http://www.barcouncil.org.uk/trainingandeducation/careers/statistics/> (last visted June
24, 2008). In the year ending July 31, 2007 there were 6,012 new traineeships registered with
the Society, representing an increase (4 percent) on the previous year's registrations of 5,751.
Law Society, Trends in the Solicitors' Profession: Annual Statistical Report 11 8.6 (London,
2008). The average fees for the LPC are £10,500 and for the Bar up to £13,000.

76. See Abel, English Lawyers, supra note 60, at 174-84.

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales 99

were hitherto the justification for distinct vocational courses."77 This did not
encourage the Bar to embrace ACLEC's (or any other) vision of common
vocational training. In fact, the Collyear Committee rejected the case for any
change to the Bar's established policy on common vocational training and
reinforced the view that "the future of the Bar is as a profession of specialist
advocates."78 The Bar Council established a working party chaired by Sir
Patrick Elias, a High Court judge with a background in academia as well as
practice, to review the course specification and guidance for the BVC, the
template of standards that had to be followed by course providers. While the
working party made a number of detailed and technical changes, its main
thrust was to strengthen and enhance the amount and quality of advocacy
training on the BVC in line with the Collyear vision. It thereby sought to
increase rather than reduce the distinctiveness of the BVC as a model of
vocational training.
Second, research into educating and training both branches notes high
rates of attrition of ethnic minorities. Explanations included the high cost of
courses.79 This forced the profession to justify the utility, duration, and ex-
pense of its education and training requirements. The Bar was particularly
troubled because newly qualified barristers found it difficult to build a client
following, often suffering the lack of a solid income for years. The cost and
uncertainty of ever building a viable practice, combined with a heavy burden
of student debt, particularly deterred students from poorer backgrounds, but
also made the Bar generally less popular with prospective lawyers than the
solicitors' branch. Concerns were expressed that the Bar was losing signifi-
cant talent to the solicitors' profession. The Bar Council therefore imposed a
very unpopular requirement that barristers' chambers fund their pupils and
increase the scope for its trainees to count a greater variety of work experience
towards the formal pupillage requirements.
For the LPC, the mid to late 1990s was a period of substantial and continuing
upheaval. Under pressure from the large law firms, the amount of Business Law
and Practice was doubled, while Negotiation was effectively dropped from the
skills areas taught, and Probate, despite its status as a reserved area of practice,
was increasingly marginalized. Vocational teachers aired reservations about the
changes and their concerns at the overall quality and volume of assessment on
the course.80 In 1999, eight City of London law firms added fuel to the flames
by agreeing on a tailored LPC with three course providers. The eight criticized
the existing LPC for a lack of rigor, for failing sufficiently to develop reseàrch

77. Sir John Collyear, Education and Training for the Bar: Blueprint for the Future 11 5.2.1 (May
2000), on file with the authors.

78. Id. at ! 5.2.2.

79. Michael Shiner, Young, Gifted and Blocked! Entry to the Solicitors' Profession, in Discriminating
Lawyers 87 (Philip Thomas ed., London, 2000).

80. See, e.g., LPC's End-of-Term Assessment, The Lawyer, Jan. 21, 1997, at 9; Hugh Brayne, LPC
Skills, supra note 49.

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ioo Journal of Legal Education

and drafting skills, and for an insufficient emphasis on commerci

While the curriculum approved for the City LPC was accommod
the structures of the existing LPC, the move by the eight was wid
significant challenge to the Law Society's continuing commitment
as a common platform for practice. In an atmosphere already cha
growing sense of professional segmentation, the possibility of a f
and increasingly specialized vocational training raised questions ab
Society's capacity to represent solicitors as members of a unitary p
Concern was not limited to vocational courses. Despite ACLEC's
some vocational trainers aired doubts about the qualitative outco
degrees.82 Recognition of the emergence of an increasingly glob
legal education generated new fears about the quality and compe
English training in comparative terms. London, in particular, as a
center had become a magnet for young lawyers from Commonw
increasingly, European jurisdictions.83 This provided the immediat
the most recent stage in our story: the profession's ongoing traini

The Profession's Reviews of Education and Training: 2001 to

The Law Society set the ball rolling, announcing a Training
Review (TFR) and issuing a consultation paper proposing th
ments of legal education and training- knowledge, skills and eth
pervade from cradle to grave.84 The precise motive for the review
made explicit, though criticisms of the law degree and the L
doubtedly relevant factors. Since knowledge and skills did arg
vade" the existing stages, the only significant change signall
introduction of ethics. This had been championed by ACLEC,
sibility of the idea had been brought closer by the publication o
texts on the subject and the launch of a new English legal ethics

81. Anne Mizzi, Top City Law Firms Unveil Plans to Introduce "Enhanced" Trainin
Gazette, Feb. 17, 2000, at LSG 97.07(5), Jon Robins, Tom Blass, Jeremy Flemin
Smerin, City of the Future, Law Society's Gazette, Mar. 9, 2000, at LSG 97.10(20)

82. Alison Clarke, Student Angst, Law Society's Gazette, July 20, 2000, at LSG 9
corporate law firms' concerns at the "inadequate standards of legal education tha
seeing now, coming out of the academic stage"). Clarke similarly quotes Melis
Bernard George, two City law firm training directors, who express fears that t
danger of becoming a 'remedial course.'"

83. For example, in 2006, 1,075 admissions to the Roll of solicitors were by way of t
other jurisdictions- over 12 percent of the total admissions for that year. Twenty-ni
these were from Australia and New Zealand alone. See Cole, Trends in the Solicito
supra note 41, at 51.

84. Law Society, Training Framework Review: Consultation Paper 11 1 (October 20

authors.

85. Ross Cranston, Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility (Oxford, 199
and Legal Practice: Contemporary Issues (Steven Parker and Charles Sampford
1995); Andrew Boon and Jennifer Levin, The Ethics and Conduct of Lawyers i
Wales (Oxford, 1999); Donald Nicolson and Julian Webb, Professional Legal E

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales ioi

The specific items consulted on, however, were largely unremarkable, and
a meeting between the Law Society and various interest groups, including
academics, welcomed the initiative. Having launched the consultation, the
then Head of Education and Training left the Law Society and indepen-
dent consultants were briefed to analyze responses to the consultation and
advise on the direction of the review.86 Following receipt of their report the
Law Society established a Training Framework Review Group (TFRG) to
progress the review.
The General Council of the Bar announced a review of its Bar Vocational
Course in 2004. The Bell Working Party, charged with producing recommen-
dations and a consultation paper, surveyed pupils and first year tenants at the
Bar. Surprisingly, given reported antipathy among practitioners, the need for
a vocational course was endorsed. Also surprising was the fact that, despite
distinctly average ratings for areas like negotiation and conference skills, most
areas of the course were positively rated, particularly the advocacy training.
The Working Group was therefore free to consider whether any adjustments
might reduce the length and, therefore, the cost of the course. The working
party decided that this could not be achieved without acceding to the argu-
ment that the course be offered with an orientation to either criminal or civil
work. Since, it decided, a common platform was an important dimension of
the training of barristers, this idea was rejected. The consultation paper that
finally appeared contained some similar ideas to the Law Society's proposals,
but no radical change to either the requirement for, or content of, the BVC
was indicated.

Although Bell was not precluded from considering other aspects of the
training process, no recommendations were made. These were however,
more likely to have referred to pupillage than the degree, given the nature
of Bell's remit. A further working party has been constituted to consider the
future of the BVC, but only modest changes are anticipated when it reports
in Summer 2008. 87 The difference in approach taken by the TFR could be
explained by the different circumstances of barristers. The package of the
Bar Vocational Course and pupillage are more mutually supportive than the
Legal Practice Course and traineeship. Overall, barristers undergo shorter
training than solicitors. As barristers are de jure sole practitioners, imposing
training obligations and ensuring that they are met is more difficult than in
solicitors' firms. The result for training at the Bar has, so far at least, been

Interrogations (Oxford, 1999); Richard O'Dair, Legal Ethics: Text and Materials (London,
2001). The journal, Legal Ethics, was launched in 1998 by Hart Publishing.

86. Andrew Boon and Julian Webb, Report to the Law Society of England and Wales on the
Consultation and Interim Report on the Training Framework Review (Feb. 2002) (on file with
authors).

87. The Wood Committee reported as this paper was in proof stage (July 2008). As anticipated,
the BVC course survived relatively intact, although the recommendations included renaming it
the Bar Professional Training Course, and introducing an entry test, centralised examinations
and teaching ethics as a discrete, examinable subject rather than as a pervasive.

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I02 Journal of Legal Education

fairly unremarkable. The same cannot be said- at least potentiall

Law Society review. Consequently, the remainder of this section
the TFRG's proposals.

The Law Sodety's TFR: Context , Process , and Outcomes

Since 2001 the TFR rumbled on through a multiplicity of consu

consultants' reports.88 Following the first consultation, there hav
further public consultations on the TFRG's proposals, in 2003, 200
Further consultations, on proposals for work-based learning, are
in progress. As the review group began work, other agendas emer
growing concerns about minority access to the profession, the diff
tracting recruits to legal aid practice under the heavy burden of d
and effort of monitoring standards of vocational course delivery, and
latory implications of European integration and recognition of q
from other jurisdictions. There was also a broader national polit
to consider. Much of the TFRG's work was contemporaneous wit
Clementi's review of the market for legal services.89
The Clementi Review represented a significant development
over professional regulation and supervision. It was the first inde
view of the legal services market since the Benson Commission i
the first ever, to our knowledge, to focus specifically on the issue of
Moreover, it is significant that Clementi's remit was not to review
tion of the legal profession as such. It was a significantly wider brief:
the regulation of the legal services market as a whole. This is an absolu
mental distinction as it opened up the question of whether one c
should- move to a market system as opposed to provider-based r
Whatever direction Clementi moved, the future of self-regulation
profession, and perhaps even of the profession itself, appeared at
Clementi's early statements and subsequent consultation paper
considerable doubts about the case for self-regulation. Clementi th
the representative and regulatory functions of the professional b
be separated, but he also sought views on whether the profession
regulatory power or exercise it only under the supervision of a super-
This must have impressed on the professional bodies the import
dressing a number of key themes urged on them by government.
on the government's agenda was the issue of entry into the profes

88. Consultation papers, consultants' reports, analyses of consultation papers,

miscellaneous documentation on the TFRG can be found on the Law Socie
<http://www.lawsociety.org.uk> (last visited Dec. 6, 2007). A fuller summary
up to September 2004 can also be found in Julian Webb and Amanda Fanco
Society's Training Framework Review: On the Straight and Narrow or the Long
Road?, 38 L. Teacher 293, 307-09 (2004).

89. Sir David Clementi, Review of the Regulatory Framework for Legal Services
Wales: Final Report (December 2004) (hereinafter the Clementi Review)) avail
legal-services-review.org.uk/content/pubs.htm> (last visited Mar. 14, 2008).

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales 103

underpinned by its desire to create a competitive legal services market and the
suspicion that education and training requirements were still being used to
artificially limit numbers of lawyers. Undoubtedly the TFRG was also aware
of the need to, so far as possible, ensure that its proposals would ultimately
satisfy the standards of regulatory probity and public interest that were likely
to underpin any reforms proposed by Clementi.
Turning to the product of the review process, the 2003 consultation proposed
focusing on the outcomes of education and training, represented in the skills,
knowledge, and ethics of the newly qualified solicitor. These were to be
framed as the "day one" outcomes for solicitors' training, representing what
a prospective solicitor should know and be able to do on the first day of a
training contract. Anticipating further European educational harmonization,
as proposed by the Bologna Declaration, a first degree was accepted as the
cornerstone of professional entry. Similarly, tradition, considerable grass roots
support, and the balance of educational argument suggested retention of a
prescribed period of work-based learning. The TFRG nevertheless proposed
that existing requirements to serve under a training contract in a solicitors'
firm should be relaxed to enable training in a wider range of potential orga-
nizations to count towards final qualification. This would both facilitate ac-
cess to the legal profession to those rejected by conventional employers and
counter the decline in training provided by conventional high street and legal
aid practices by allowing the option of qualifying by providing evidence of a
portfolio of experience with several organizations.
The day one outcomes (see Appendix), which received Law Society Council
approval in July 2005, underwent several revisions, evolving from four groups
to six.9° Group A now comprises the core knowledge and understanding of
the law applied in England and Wales, including the knowledge requirements
associated with the initial or degree stage. Additionally, however, it requires
knowledge of the jurisdiction, authority, and procedures of legal instituions
and professions administering the law, as well as their rules of professional
conduct. Group B comprises generic intellectual, analytical, and problem-
solving skills, which presumably pervade all levels of legal education. Group
C focuses on transactional and dispute resolution skills, such as establishing
business structures and drafting legal documentation while Group D comple-
ments this, dealing with legal, professional, and client relationship knowledge
and skills, such as client relationship management and advocacy. Groups C
and D contain the material associated with vocational legal education and cur-
rently contained in the LPC. Group E covers personal development and work
management skills, and outcomes such as recognizing professional strengths
and weaknesses and working effectively as a team member. The Group F out-
comes are concerned with professional values, behaviors, attitudes, and ethics,
and the outcomes include behaving professionally and with integrity. The

90. For the latest version (2), see Solicitors Regulation Authority website "Day one outcomes for
qualification as a solicitor," dated April 2007, available at <http:/www.sra.org.uk.securedownload/
file/229> 0ast visited Mar. 14, 2008), attached as Appendix 1.

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 I04 Journal of Legal Education

original intention of the TFRG, however, was that the kinds

covered in Groups E and F would bridge the vocational cour
period of work-based learning, but that they could only be fully
workplace.
The revisions of the day one outcomes appeared to somewhat reestablish
the old boundaries, but they were still more fluid than that. Knowledge
and skills are implicit in all of the outcome groups. The knowledge require-
ments start with a reformulation and expansion of the seven foundations
of legal knowledge. The day one outcomes do not specify the time that
must be spent on each element, creating the possibility that some of these
knowledge outcomes would be deliverable in less time than is taken over the
current subjects. Since there is no formal division within the knowledge re-
quirements between the initial and vocational stages, a range of possibilities
can occur. For example, it might be expected that the part of the curriculum
that constitutes transmission of proprietary interests in land, currently dealt
with as conveyancing, will continue to be reserved to the vocational stage.
But the possibility of seeing greater pluralism and differentiation between
LLB providers cannot be ruled out. Some degree providers could aim to
cover more, or even all, of the professional knowledge requirements. Two
things, however, may militate against that: the continuing delivery of rela-
tively standardized vocational courses (so that there is little or no market
advantage to LLB providers in undertaking radical curriculum reform), and
concerns that such developments could only take place at the expense of
other, non-vocational degree subjects.
The promise to make ethics central throughout the whole regime was
partially delivered by introducing the Group A knowledge requirement that
students cover "the jurisdiction, authority and procedures of the legal institu-
tions and the professions that initiate, develop and interpret the law...," "the
rules of professional conduct," and the "values and principles on which profes-
sional rules are constructed,"91 but also by the Group F emphasis on profes-
sional values, behaviors, attitudes, and ethics. The inclusion of the substantive
and behaviorial element of the ethics curriculum responded to calls that legal
education attend to the ethical dimension of legal work and to reinforcing
the common identity of lawyers, but the separation of these elements in the
framework may not be significant. The outcome statement does not make ex-
plicit the stage at which these ethical outcomes must be met. By implication
therefore it opens up the possibility that some could be satisfied at the academ-
ic stage of training. This would be a radical departure for most English law
schools. The only other Group to contain ethical elements, albeit integrated in
the other outcomes, is D. So, for example, different outcomes require that on
day one of qualification, solicitors must be able to recognize clients' financial,
commercial, and personal priorities and constraints and act appropriately if a
client is dissatisfied with advice or services provided.

91. Id. at i.

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales 105

The implications of the TFRG's approach and the refusal to allocate

outcomes to stages mean that a multiplicity of routes to qualification can be
envisaged. These could include combined degree and conversion courses
incorporating the Group C transactional outcomes, and degree courses
incorporating some, or vocational courses incorporating all, of the group
D outcomes, by introducing work-based learning and clinical experience
into the curriculum. Some universities could provide integrated degrees
incorporating the vocational and training phases and incorporating the
outcomes in groups B to F over a five or six year period. Conversely, firms,
individually or in groups, could incorporate the Group C and D vocational
outcomes in the period of work-based learning. While this would increase
flexibility, such a plethora of routes could increase the need for regulatory
oversight in, for example, tracking progress and ensuring commonality of
outcome for individual students.

The greatest risk of the TFRG as proposed was reduced confidence in

student standards. This was already an issue, since both vocational courses
had abandoned centralized examinations in favor of locally set and marked
assessment. The situation was managed by a small and rotating group of ex-
ternal examiners approved by the Law Society, but there was concern that
standards across the sector were variable. The TFRG's solution was to cen-
tralize assessment of most of the transactions and skills work associated with
the vocational stage, except those like advocacy and interviewing that would
be more conveniently assessed locally. The favored method of centralizing as-
sessment was through work completed at test centers. This would have been a
dramatic departure from conventional assessment methods, though both the
LPC and BVC have made extensive use of multiple choice and short answer
formats in their assessment regimes. Additionally, the TFRG proposed a test
that was intended to be a final check on readiness for practice. The TFRG
recommended that a pilot of the online assessment of probate and the admin-
istration of estates and of the final, pre-qualification test be conducted as a
prelude to more extensive adoption.
The work-based learning regime that would replace the existing training
contract was to have a revised assessment framework, comprising more rigor-
ous supervision, including periodic appraisal, completion of a portfolio or
learning log, a more demanding role for supervisors, and Law Society moni-
toring and reporting processes. The TFRG also recommended that the LPC
elective subjects, which normally take up a little less than a third of the teach-
ing time, be disengaged from the LPC, so students could take them when a
little clearer about their career paths.

Progress since the Reviews

The government committed to implementing Clementi's 2004 proposal that

the regulatory and representative aspects of the profession's activity be separated

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io6 Journal of Legal Education

and that the branches exercise their regulatory function under th

of a statutory Legal Services Board.92 In anticipation of these ch
branches have redesigned their committee structures to separate
and representative functions. Consequently, education became the
regulation, under the control of the new Bar Standards Board and
Regulation Board (renamed the Solicitors' Regulation Authority (S
uary 2007). These were not simply cosmetic changes. They involved
changes of personnel and new divisions of responsibility. For ed
have signalled a possible prioritization of the regulatory functio
minimum standards of education and training in the public intere
more developmental activities. Finalization of the membership o
new Bar Education and Training Committee and the SRA reveale
academic representation among the new lay memberships. The L
Board to be established under the Legal Services Act 2007 must i
membership a person or persons with knowledge and understand
education and training, 93 but there is nothing to say that this has to
demic. Taken together with the likelihood that the Standing Con
Legal Education will also be abolished, it remains to be seen how
academy will be in the new regime.
The Law Society's TFRG was disbanded during the post
restructuring, and the Bell Working Group delivered its final co
into the Bar's fledgling new committee structure. The Law Societ
evoked enormous uncertainty and ambivalence. In the final stages
the TFRG recommended the gradual introduction of the propose
beginning with ending the requirement that LPC options be studi
the course and the piloting of centralized assessment and further
monitoring and assessment of work-based learning. The Law Soc
tion committees and Council had consistently supported the TFR
als throughout the three years of the TFRG, although the Counci
a third consultation before endorsing the final proposals. The La
chief executive had defended the proposals as facilitating access
ing cheaper routes into practice,94 receiving in the process some s
the Trainees Solicitors' Group, but the recommendations also
fierce opposition from, among others, providers of the LPC95 a

92. See now Part 2 and schedule 1 of the Legal Services Act 2007 c.29 which rece
Assent on October 30, 2007. The Legal Services Board is expected to be fully o
Spring 2010.

93. See Legal Services Act, supra note 92, at Schedule 1, f (3)(b).

94. Claire Sanders, A Motivator Who has Shaken Up "Crusty Old Dinners'" and M
Higher Educ. Supplement, Feb. 4, 2005, at 4. For comment on Paraskeva's TFR vi
Paraskeva, A Good Outcome, Law Society's Gazette, Dec. 16, 2005, at 9.

95. See Rachel Rothwell, Training Reform Furore, Law Society's Gazette, Jan. 20
3; Claire Sanders, Bending Over Backwards to Become More Flexible, The Tim
May 24, 2005, at 7; Brendan Malkin, Market Slams Law Soc Plans to Abolish Voca
ing, Lawyer 2B, Feb. 10, 2005, Nick Johnson, The Training Framework Review-

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales 107

Education and Training Group, which represented training directors in 150 of

the larger law firms.96 Much of this opposition stemmed from the uncertainty
caused by the TFRG's refusal to allocate stages or time to the outcomes and
its refusal (by a majority) to require the Legal Practice Course.
The chief executive's departure and the creation of a new committee
structure was an opportunity to reappraise the direction suggested by the
TFRG. There was no public announcement of any departure from the tem-
plate, but the Law Society's Regulation Board seemed ambivalent. In May
2006 it agreed to pilot a common assessment in professional responsibilities
to assess outcomes relating to business skills, client care, and professional
standards, but it appeared to backpedal on the idea that students would not
have to attend an LPC provider institution. It suggested instead a number
of relatively modest revisions, largely built around mapping course provision
against revised written standards, which would not only reflect the compe-
tencies of the new day one outcomes, but also allow partial exemptions from
the LPC for domestic students with equivalent prior experience. This could
have been a first step along the route indicated by the TFRG or the liberal-
ization of the existing vocational regime favored by a minority TFRG report
from two members drawn from LPC providers, but some of the Board's pro-
posals had no basis within the TFRG's work. Thus the LSRB proposed sub-
stantial changes to LPC skills assessment, whereby writing and drafting, cli-
ent relationship, and research skills would need to be assessed in the context
of the core areas of business law and practice, property, and litigation. This
significant increase in the volume of assessment took many by surprise,97 not
least because one of the original concerns amongst LPC providers at the start
of the TFR had been the perceived over-assessment of the course.
There was no clue whether this tinkering with the TFRG blueprint indicated
a general cooling towards the TFRG's proposed structure, a deliberate step
in the sequence of rolling out the reforms, or an effort to delay the more radi-
cal moves until the new regulatory body is in place. The signs of a rethink
became initially more compelling in August 2006, when the LSRB issued a
paper proposing further consultation on the TFRG's plans for portfolio-based
workplace training with legal employers.98 However, if this looked like another

Fuss About?, New L. J., Mar. 11, 2005, at 357.

96. Rachel Rothwell, Flexible Training Plans Slammed, Law Society's Gazette, Feb. 24, 2005, at
News 3.

97. The idea was roundly attacked by the Association of LPC Providers (ALP)- a new interest
group established in 2006 and chaired by Melissa Hardee, until recently LPC Course Director
at the Inns of Court School of Law. Hardee was also co-author, with Professor Phil Knott, of the
TFRG minority report. ALP asserted that, without more, the increase in assessments would not
address the problems of poor research and writing skills, but would risk lowering the standard
of teaching and potentially increase the cost of the LPC by as much as £1000 per student. Jon
Parker, Law Society to Finalise Qualification Overhaul, Lawyer 2B, Nov. 7, 2006.

98. The Law Society, Education and Training Unit, A New Framework for Work Based Learning:
Consultation Paper (Aug. 11, 2006), available at <http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/documents/

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io8 Journal of Legal Education

case of second thoughts, it is perhaps significant that, even befor

had been analyzed, the chair of the Education and Training Com
already asserted a strong commitment to piloting the proposals.
with that commitment, consultants have since been appointed to
portfolio model, and, as indicated already, a further consultation
2007. The consultation received few responses, mostly from larger
tended to express continuing doubts, both about the appropriate
portfolio approach, and the prescriptiveness of the new assessme
The S RA clearly paused for thought. It announced that while it
go ahead with a pilot project for the work-based learning phase o
2008, it did not now intend to develop a standard portfolio or asse
and would instead focus on developing outcomes, leaving the
means of assessment up to individual firms and accredited learnin
ment organizations.100 As a consequence of these developments, it
uncertain when the new system of work-based learning will be ro
all trainees.

When the S RA' s LPC consultation paper was published in February 2007,
the first tranche of proposals suggested that the TFRG's vision was back on
track. The S RA expressed determination to depart from the "linear approach"
to training and to develop a system that "is flexible but rigorous," confirming
its desire that LPC providers have more freedom in delivery.101 In addition to
endorsing the day one outcomes, it sought views on disengaging the electives
from the LPC, exempting students from some or all of the LPC, and a more
permissive approach to LPC content. Requirements for resourcing would be
relaxed so that the regulatory focus switched to consistency of outcomes. Al-
though minimum learning hours would be attached to each outcome, contact
hours would not be specified. These proposals survived as the concrete re-
quirements adopted by the profession,102 mirroring the approach of the TFRG
far more closely than earlier indications suggested possible. The SRA sug-
gested that vocational electives might be studied at the academic stage before
the LPC had been passed, a move more radical than the TFRG had proposed.
This leaves open the possibility that some of the innovations signalled by the
TFR, like three-year degrees including vocational elements, will eventually

downloads/becomingtfrconsultationwbl.pdf> (last cisited June 24, 2008). Law Society press

release, New Training Pathway for Solicitors, Aug. 11, 2006.

99. Jonathan Spencer, Consultation- A New Framework for Work Based Learning: Statemenťfrom
the Chair of the Education and Training Committee (Oct. 2006), available at <http://www.law-
society.org.uk-becomingtfrconsultationwblstatement.pdf>.

100. Solicitors' Regulation Authority, Moving Forward with a New Framework for Work Based
Learning (Oct. 25, 2007) available at <www.sra.org.uk/securedownload/file/332> (last visited
March 14, 2008).

101. Melissa Askew and Jim Danieli, The Law Society, Consultation on the Future Structure of the
Legal Practice Course (Jan. 23, 2007), at ! 1.1.

102. The Law Society, Legal Practice Courses: Framework for Authorisation, Delivery and Assessment
(Version 1) (London: The Law Society, 2006).

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales 109

come about. The SRA plans to begin authorizing the new model LPC in 2008,
ready for full-scale introduction by September 2010 at the latest. I03 And this,
for now, is as far as the story goes.

Analysis: What Does the TFR Tell Us about Recent Developments in

English Legal Education?

Educational Trends

The proposed solicitor training framework has the potential to depart from
the tradition of approved courses.104 It offers a solution to the problem that
one size, increasingly, doesn't fit either all students or all employers. In this
section we analyze some of the issues the proposed framework addresses and
the influences it reflects

The proposal to focus on outcomes rather than processes has been a central
plank in the training framework. In this regard, the TFR has followed a
strongly scented path in English legal education and training. Competen-
cies and outcome-based learning and assessment have become increasingly
in vogue since the 1980s, and elements of outcome-based approaches have
been apparent in the move to undergraduate subject Benchmarks as well as in
the written standards for both LPC and BVC.105 None of these, however, has
moved legal education into adopting a pure competency approach, based on
detailed performance specification.
The TFR day one outcomes continue that trend, albeit at a relatively
abstract level of specification. The new LPC Written Standards provide a
heavy gloss on the outcomes, making them more restricting than were antici-
pated, though perhaps less cumbersome than the previous Standards. The
question of degree matters. The closer to a pure outcomes approach the less
specification of, and control over, educational processes can be exercised by

103. Solicitors' Regulation Authority, Information for Providers of Legal Practice Courses (Jan. 30,
2008) available at <www.sra.org.uk/documents/students/lpc/info-pack.pdf> (last visited Mar.
14, 2008). Providers have the option of introducing the changes a year ahead of the deadline,
that is, in time for the academic year commencing September 2009.

104. This potential has not been fully realised. As this article went to proof stage the Law Society
issued the accreditation and validation arrangements for the new LPC. As anticipated, it did
split the LPC into two stages (the core course comprising Stage 1 and the elective subjects
Stage 2), requiring providers to bid if they wished to offer both stages. It also specifically
provided for bids for exempting degrees, courses merging the academic and vocational
stages, and invited new providers into the market. However, the allocation of minimum 'no-
tional hours' to LPC elements, and an onerous bidding regime, contradicted the rationale
of the outcomes approach and somewhat limited the possibilities for flexibile arrangements.
Nevertheless, future loosening of these constraints is a distinct possibility.

105. Benchmarks were introduced in 1999 as a way of defining a set of standards or outcomes that
would be indicative of "graduateness" in a discipline. They specify both knowledge- and skills-
based outcomes. See John Bell, Benchmarking: A Pedagogically Valuable Process?, Web J.
Current Legal Issues (1999), available at <http://webjcli.ncl.ac.uk/1999/issue2/bell2.html> (last
visited June 24, 2008).

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no Journal of Legal Education

the regulatory bodies. Provided courses deliver the outcomes, th

how are, in theory, irrelevant. This can be a good way of deliverin
both at the academic and vocational stages, but whether such
can be adopted without taking additional risks with the quality
learning experiences- particularly at the vocational stage- rem
point.
Focusing on outcomes rather than courses would unravel the extensive
quality assurance mechanisms established to police the LPC. The require-
ment that providers have a member of staff for every twelve students, a de-
mand that has supported the development of a high quality offering but that
has also kept delivery costs relatively high, has, effectively, been abandoned.
The level of prescription and the susceptibility of the course specification to
tinkering, however, has led to lack of coherence, stultification, and inhibition,
but relatively uniform, high standards of delivery.

Speàalization
The need for an increasing degree of specialization in practice has been
recognized since at least the early 1980s when the Law Society began es-
tablishing panels for areas with consumer or competitive need to identify
specialist practitioners.106 The pressure of specialization magnified by the
increasing differentiation of the content, location, and rewards of different
kinds of legal practice, the poles being represented by the large commercial
and corporate law firms and the so-called high street firms, which deal with
local populations. This has arguably rendered a large common platform of
legal knowledge redundant. It is difficult to defend the breadth of subject
coverage on the LPC, where half the students may be headed for welfare
practice and yet half the core curriculum is Business Law and Practice. The
growing desire for consortia of large firms, and even individual firms, to
design their own LPCs is a significant result of this drive toward specializa-
tion. One reason advanced for this was the need to induct trainees into the
work and culture of the firm, thus calling into question the proposition that
a common vocational platform is essential.107
The LSRB/SRA's stance on specialization tries to have it both ways:
preserve the idea of an LPC as a common platform while allowing more
specialization. The present direction may help, in the longer term, to man-
age the tensions between breadth and specialization by allowing more flex-
ibility in the construction of training packages. This may encourage more
training routes geared to particular kinds of practice. This, however, as-
sumes that the flexibility of the outcomes approach is retained and that
the SRA remains determined not to allocate outcomes to stages or time
to outcomes. The adoption of a relatively standardized LPC is unlikely

106. Lynda Young, Specialisation: The Way Forward- Law Society Consultation Paper, Law
Society's Gazette, May 2, 1990, at 36.

107. Webb and Fancourt, The Law Society's Framework Training Review, supra note 88, at 299.

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales hi

to facilitate a truly radical market differentiation between the training for

corporate, high street, and legal aid practitioners. The proposals for work-
based learning will also have an impact in this regard. Allowing a shorter
period to qualify could create space to introduce a post-qualification educa-
tion regime more responsive to specialization. This would almost certainly
involve further education and training and might also include specialist
licensing. There is little evidence of this in current thinking, and, indeed,
the idea of specialist training was originally resisted because of an expected
backlash from potentially excluded general practitioners.108
The stakes in this game, however, may be higher than just education
and training. Sectoral differentiation in training could prove to be the thin
end of a wedge that threatens both the ideal of a unified profession and the
Law Society's own legitimacy as the voice of that profession. Whether the
fundamental tensions in its position will finally force the Society to give
way, and with what consequences, remains to be seen. In this context the
contrast with the Bar seems stark. Why has the Bar not sought the flexibil-
ity offered by the outcomes approach? And why is it proposing to retain a
compulsory and generalist vocational course? One reason is that the Bar's
core work is less subject to the pressure of specialization. All barristers
need to be familiar with litigation procedures, and particularly evidentiary
requirements, to draft advice and to provide oral advocacy, the core of
the Bar Vocational Course. Specialization was raised in the Bell Working
Party in relation to the need for barristers to understand both civil and
criminal litigation when they choose one of these paths. It was successfully
argued, however, that barristers benefited from the common platform and
that introducing twin routes would have only a marginal impact on the
course duration or fees.

It could be argued that specialization has implications for the organization

of the degree curriculum. Academics, of course, have long argued over the
need for or nature of a specified curriculum. The classical justification of the
degree foundation subjects has never simply been that they are vocationally
useful, but that they introduce students to areas of law with distinctive ap-
proaches, areas that are in some way foundational within the Western legal
tradition. Others question the extent to which the subject matter itself makes
the difference; what matters are the underlying cognitive skills and/or the un-
derstanding of legal reasoning and legal values that develop through the pro-
cess of a liberal legal education.10^ This, it is said, could be achieved as readily
by the study of law and literature, or world trade law, as it could by contract
or tort.

Specialization adds some new pressures to that debate. Large parts of th

traditional law degree have been rendered defacto redundant. Many of the m
academic subjects- such as legal history, jurisprudence, sociology of law- ha

108. Young, Specialisation, supra note 106.

109. See, e.g., Bradney, Conversations, supm note 18, at 86-87.

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112 Journal of Legal Education

declined in availability and popularity. Demand for professionally

skills courses has grown and, even within substantive fields of law, seve
ten most popular undergraduate options "concern the study of ar
linked far more explicitly to professional legal practice than to th
study of law in its own right."110
Even if the basic idea of a core curriculum remains valid, the tr
organization of degree schemes is not well geared to modern voca
quirements. This is illustrated by the example of contract law, wh
ally taught as a first-year degree subject. This means that it may be
before commercial lawyers apply it again in practice, even as trai
unsurprisingly, a frequent complaint of commercial law firms that
not remember basic contract law well enough. This might have ma
when relatively little was expected of trainees and their performan
critical but, now that large firms pay their trainees' training expe
as significant salaries and post-qualification retention has bec
competitive, it is arguably more important that commercial lawy
good grasp of concepts that first-year undergraduates may strugg
alone forget later. In the world of the enterprise university, whe
ployability agenda is writ increasingly large, these are arguments
count. In this context, even the traditional core may be threatene
by accretion, as the profession finds ways to expand the foundat
calls for substitution, reconfiguration, and further specialization

Access

The impact of the TFRG's proposals on access to the profession is unknown

and difficult to predict. The aim of opening up multiple routes into the profes-
sion creates numerous possibilities. Undergraduates might clear (some) voca-
tional outcomes in their degree; LLB or LPC courses might be able to offer a
period of supervised clinical education that could count towards a trainee's
period of work-based learning; alternative vocational qualifications may be de-
veloped that could be treated as equivalent to an academic degree. In all these
scenarios it is possible that barriers to entry, including the duration and cost of
training, could be reduced and access enhanced. On the other hand, flexibility
can also increase complexity- both in terms of regulation (discussed below)
and in the nature of information and advice that needs to be given to potential
applicants. If the system becomes too complex, this in itself might act as a
deterrent to potential non-traditional entrants to the profession. But again, so
long as the LLB-LPC route remains a norm, critics of the proposals suggest, so-
licitors' firms may be less likely to hire solicitors qualifying by unconventional
routes, which may be deemed inferior.
Similar controversy surrounds the proposal to replace the training contract
by work experience. Finding a firm of solicitors for the final stage of training

no. Harris and Jones, A Survey of Law Schools, supra note 51, at 52.

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales 113

has undoubtedly caused a bottleneck for LPC graduates,111 and students from
working class backgrounds, including ethnic minorities, probably suffer
disproportionately in this process.112 Creating more newly qualified solici-
tors may exacerbate the problem. Solicitors' firms' willingness to employ
those who have not worked in a conventional firm will be the test of wheth-
er access has improved. This assumes that the outlet for qualified solicitors
is employment in firms. If, on the other hand, the government's aim is to
create lawyers to operate as market competition for the private sector, firms'
employment intentions will probably matter less.

Standards

Critics of the TFRG's proposals argue that the retreat from monitoring
the process or delivery of courses, as currently happens with the LPC, would
lead to falling standards. One reason for this would be that opening the vo-
cational education market to unregulated and unscrupulous providers is the
logical consequence of the outcomes approach. Ceasing to prescribe staff-to-
student ratios, as the LPC validation regime currently does, would create an
examination-centered culture. Existing providers, particularly of the LPC,
see this spectre and its potential as a fresh source of criticism of professional
regulation very clearly.n3 Whether their predictions prove well-founded de-
pends on the success of the centralized assessment process for the vocational
stage outcomes in commanding confidence and maintaining standards. If it
proves possible to create sufficiently rigorous and reliable means of assessing
a range of intellectual and practical skills online, there may be significant
advantages over the current system. This, however, is one of the issues on
which the S RA has maintained silence. If cost or difficulty has caused this
TFRG recommendation to stall, the ability of course providers, even with
the help of external examiners, to ensure commonality of standards is doubt-
ful. Were central assessment to be introduced, critics of the outcomes ap-
proach suggest that turning the focus of quality assurance from courses will
force providers to teach for the examination, with deleterious affects on the
process of education.114

in. I. Rowley, New Training Pathway for Solicitors, Law Society Gazette, Aug. 11, 2006. Though
this has not always been consistently the case. See Abel, English Lawyers, supra note 60, at 96-119
(discussing the profession's responses to the variable pressures on the recruitment market in the
period 1989-99).

112. Andrew Boon, Liz Duff, and Michael Shiner, Career Paths and Choices in a Highly Differentiated
Profession: The Position of Newly Qualified Solicitors, 64 Mod. L. Rev. 563 (2001).

113. The Law Society, Education and Training Unit, Training Framework Review: Qualifying as
a Solicitor- A Framework for the Future: Summary of Responses from Individual Solicitors,
Students and Teachers 9 (version 1 Oct. 2005) (Mar. 2005), available at <http:www.lawsociety.
0rg.uk-bec0mingtfr3respindiv.pdf>.

114. Id.

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114 Journal of Legal Education

Regulation

The TFRG's proposals present a mixed bag for regulation. At th

stage, the TFR begs significant questions about the future status o
Announcement and the negotiated nature of the academic curricu
TFR was initially welcomed by academics as a further liberation fro
curriculum. This is now looking increasingly like a mixed blessing
day one outcomes negate the need for the Joint Announcement wi
There is undoubtedly substantial overlap of the day one outcomes
current statement, and adoption of the day one outcomes might we
preted by the Law Society as a de facto substitute. This makes it difficu
Bar and Law Society to make a joint announcement. The Law Socie
ing towards knowledge requirements geared more specifically to
practice and may be unwilling to make a sharp delineation betwee
and vocational outcomes. The Bar has made no move from the seven
tions and retains a distinct identity for its vocational standards. T
between Law Society and Bar, engendered by their very different r
necessitate separate negotiations with each professional body, raising th
of law degrees seeking to comply with two sets of professional objectiv
than the present one. The legal position is likely to be more comple
because of the Clementi reforms and the still to-be-determined fun
the oversight regulator.
For the profession too, the TFR may yet prove to be a very mi
One of the advantages is that an outcomes approach makes it easi
ply with the European Court decision in Morgenbesser , which conf
European professions must consider the equivalence of the qualifi
experience of trainees from other European jurisdictions, rather t
that they take the courses prescribed under national qualification
The advantages are that an outcomes framework makes it easier to
Morgenbesser applications by providing a framework of exemption
evidence of specific educational and work experience rather than c
ifications. Under the most recent Law Society proposals, the oppo
make claims based on equivalent experience will be extended to do
plicants. The Bar, however, will continue to treat Morgenbesser app
case-by-case basis, retaining course-based components as a likely w
ing any qualifications shortfall. Either way, an increased regulator
one of the consequences of handling Morgenbesser- type applicatio
Moreover, the prospect of an increased regulatory burden is no
Morgenbesser problem. Creating more flexible pathways and movin
greater assessment of the training con trac t/work-based learning
inevitably impact onregulatory costs. Pathways may be combined
seen ways. The more complex the system, the greater the potent
of both advising individual entrants and checking that appl

115. Case C-313/01, Morgenbesser v. Consiglio dell'Odine degli avvocati di Geno

13467; Case C-340/89, Vlassopoulou v. Ministerium fur Justiz, 1991 ECR I-2357.

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales 115

qualification have met the outcomes. The question of who will bear those
costs and the potential impact of any such increases on access has been a
matter of considerable concern to consultées and commentators thus far.

Competition

Even by 2000, the politics of legal education and training provision

had become complex. This, in part, reflected the diversity of the sector,
where some providers were vying to be full service, offering the full suite of
available courses, whereas others specialized in niche areas."6 Universities
offered the theoretical component in degree courses and one-year gradu-
ate diplomas for holders of non-law degrees. Some offered the vocational
courses, the LPC, and BVC. The professional schools were offering gradu-
ate diplomas and vocational courses and, having obtained degree-awarding
powers, were awarding law degrees to those completing their own graduate
diploma and vocational courses.117 Competition within and between these
markets was intense and many providers were concerned about the impact
of change on existing markets. Although the Law Society repeatedly em-
phasised that the LPC or a similar course would be available to those who
wished to take it, providers mobilized student opposition to the changes.
In their new accreditation and validation arrangements for the LPC, the
Law Society has invited new providers into the market, but imposed heavy
threshold burdens. They must demonstrate the experience, competence
and resources to offer the course.118

Politics

The TFRG's silence on the amount of time it expects to be allocated to

its academic knowledge outcomes has maximized opposition to the propos-
als from the academic lobby. Many academics have a career investment in a
core subject and would not like its status downgraded. While others would
generally welcome reduction of the core, they will bitterly resist proposals that
add areas without reducing compulsory elements. In any event, many aca-
demics would resist the idea of a new professionally relevant core being sub-
stituted for an old one. The higher education milieu has become increasingly
theoretical, multi-disciplinary, and research-based. The conception of a law
degree as providing a liberal education is consistent with this direction. One
particular consequence of the older profession-centric vision of legal educa-
tion was that the Ormrod Report failed entirely to discuss the (potential)
significance of research and scholarship to the development of not just the

116. Only Cardiff, Manchester Metropolitan, Nottingham Trent, Northumbria, and West of
England universities managed this.

117. Press Release, The College of Law of England and Wales, The College is the First Private
Institution to Get Degree Awarding Powers (May 2, 2006) <http://www.college-of-law.co.uk/
news/article-i566.html> (last visited June 10, 2008).

118. See supra note 104.

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ii6 Journal of Legal Education

academic discipline of law, but to the objectives of legal libe

generally. This contrasts markedly with the approach of the Ar
in Canada a decade later. The latter saw research and scholarship
to the development of a healthy academic legal education, an
that academic law actually needed to maintain a critical distance
professional project if it was to contribute to law as a liberal, h
fession."9 Even ACLEC, informed as it was by the Arthurs' repo
connect this explicitly to the future health of legal research and
Much of the direction of the TFR in this regard might be seen a
to make degrees more vocational or practically orientated would
to the broad acceptance of Llewellyn's proposition that the stud
liberal art builds "vision, range, depth, balance and rich humanity
The TFRG's attempt to infiltrate ethics into the knowledge ou
an example of the difficulty with the approach. If ethics are to
from the cradle to the grave, they must be present in the initi
subject takes the form of general system ethics at the initial sta
outcomes will be potentially split between the initial and vocati
with unclear lines of responsibility. If ethics makes its entry to
the form advocated in the knowledge outcomes, including rules
there will be criticism of adding to an already overcrowded
ate curriculum. Many in the academic lobby may fall back on fa
gans, including the proposition that a liberal legal education
seek to "indoctrinate" students.121 Although the profession cou
to withdraw recognition from degrees that do not match its pr
it is doubtful that it will want a war with the academics with the Clementi
super-regulator on the horizon.

Conclusions

What exactly does our glimpse through a window on the transformations

within English legal education tell us about the state of English legal education
and perhaps about English (legal) culture more generally?
English academic legal education has been distinguishable from its
U.S. counterpart because of two key, but related features. First, the law
degree, as in most Continental European legal systems, has been seen
as a program of general liberal education rather than a matter of pro-
fessional formation. The conventional law degree exists as a part of the
general system of undergraduate education in England and Wales- again

119. See Julian Webb, The "Ambitious Modesty" of Harry Arthurs' Humane Professionalism, 44
Osgoode Hall L.J. 119, 125-28 (2006) (commenting on Social Sciences and Humanities Re-
search Council of Canada, Law and Learning: Report of the Consultative Group on Research
and Education in Law 137-38, 40 (Ottawa, 1983)).

120. Karl Llewellyn, The Study of Law as a Liberal Art, in Jurisprudence: Realism in Theory and
Practice 736 (Chicago, 1962).

121. William Twining, Law in Context: Enlarging a Discipline 159 n. 54 (Oxford, 1997) (citing Sir Thomas
Erskine Holland's The Elements of Jurisprudence as the first textbook on jurisprudence).

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales 117

like most of Europe, South America, and Australia. It has come to be

defined at least as much- probably more- by its relationship to the rest of
the academy than by its relationship to the profession. Vocational prepa-
ration has evolved in a relatively distinctive manner, with the evolution of
increasingly sophisticated and, by comparison with many jurisdictions,
lengthy specialist training. The curiosity of this system, however, lies in
the extent to which each has evolved in a climate often characterized by
mutual inattention (at best) or suspicion (at worst) and, until recently, a
culture of more or less benign neglect.
One of the vague promises of the TFR is to bring the English system closer
to the continuum envisaged by Ormrod and others since, including, in the
United States, the MacCrate Commission. This might not be a bad thing.
The current division lacks epistemological coherence and creates an artificial-
ly sharp divide between theory and practice that, arguably, benefits neither
the academy nor the profession. The structures currently in place still strongly
reflect their origins in the politics of a pragmatic alliance between an expand-
ing but, in design terms at least, still elite higher education system and a
profession that has faced significant and repeated struggles to modernize and
maintain its status. In an increasingly fast-moving post-professional world,
the relative inflexibility of the system, its failure to take sufficiently seriously at
any stage the ethical formation of students, and the barriers to access it creates
raise some genuine questions about legal education's fitness of purpose. On
the other hand, the TFR' s focus on more vocationally driven courses as the
solution raises equally significant questions about the role of legal education
in civil society and the archetypal distinction between the lawyer statesman
ideal and the lawyer as mere technician. The TFR may also risk aggravat-
ing some of the problems it has identified. For example, by creating multiple
pathways, it risks creating new distinctions between first- and second-class
training modes and hence new access problems; by fragmenting the learning
experience even more it could also further reduce the educational coherence
of education and training as a whole. In short, if the TFR achieves its desired
ends it has the potential to transform many of the processes by which legal
culture is constructed and transmitted for the future, and by no means all of
these for the good.
The second fundamental distinction between the U. S. and English systems
lies, almost paradoxically, in the imbrication of the profession within the whole
of education and training- an opportunity more present in the English context
than in the U.S. context because of the smaller scale of operations and the sin-
gle jurisdiction. The continuing domination of legal education and training by
the profession may depend on how well it manages its regulatory powers in the
near future. The TFR fits conceptually with much current policy stressing the
need for learning systems that effectively commodity knowledge and deliver it
to meet the needs of a market of flexible, lifelong learners.
If it succeeds in rolling out the TFR proposals, the Law Society could
establish a system of expert accreditation that can absorb new groups of

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ii8 Journal of Legal Education

aspiring professionals, thus becoming a meta-regulator of d

European professions in the U.K. marketplace.122 If it is seen to
ernment may seize the chance to credential lawyers on its own
ating new routes and sub-professions. It seems unlikely that
hegemony will simply end, but procrastination and uncertai
neither profession nor academy in a good light and could l
direct regulation by government nominees or intermediate regu
stitutions. In this we see the potential for a reversal of profess
whereby the state answers the problem of controlling exper
by producing the experts- or more accurately perhaps, given
regulatory environment, by creating new, preferred mechanism
production of experts itself. This may be a glimpse of future so
Merryman believes legal education can offer us. In it, we see
offering occupational control of education- professionalism-
superseded by another: state control on behalf of the consumers o
services.

122. Andrew Boon, John Flood, and Julian Webb, Postmodern Professions? The Fragmentation of
Legal Education and the Legal Profession, 32 J. L. Se Soc y 473 (2005).

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales 119

Solicitors
Regulation
Authority

Solicitors Regulation Authority

Day one outcomes for qualification as a solicitor
Version 2, April 2007

At the point of admission, a solicitor should be able to demonstrate:

A Core knowledge and understanding1 of the law applied in England and

Wales

Knowledge of:

• the jurisdiction, authority and procedures of the legal institutions and

professions that initiate, develop, interpret and apply the law of England and
Wales and the European Union;

• applicable constitutional law and judicial review processes;

• the rules of professional conduct, including the Solicitors' Accounts Rules;

and

• the regulatory and fiscal frameworks within which business, legal and
financial services transactions are conducted.

Understanding of:

• Contract law;

• Torts;

• Criminal law;

• Property law;

• Equitable rights and obligations;

• Human rights; and

• The laws applicable to business structures and the concept of legal

personality.

Knowledge should be demonstrated by the ability to explain, in relation to a particular area: key principles, facts,
rules, methods and procedures. Understanding requires demonstration of higher level skills: working with,
manipulating and applying knowledge in familiar and unfamiliar situations.

Version 2, April 2007 Page 1 of 3 www.sra.org.uk

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I20 Journal of Legal Education

B Intellectual, analytical and problem-solving skills

The ability to:

• review, consolidate, extend and apply knowledge and understanding;

• frame appropriate questions to identify clients' problems and objectives, and

to obtain relevant information;

• evaluate information, arguments, assumptions and concepts;

• identify a range of solutions;

• evaluate the merits and risks of solutions;

• communicate information, ideas, problems and solutions to clients,

colleagues and other professionals; and

• initiate and progress projects.

C Transactional and dispute resolution skills

The ability to:

• establish business structures and transfer businesses;

• seek resolution of civil and criminal matters;

• establish and transfer proprietary rights and interests;

• obtain a grant of probate and administer an estate;

• draft legal documentation to facilitate the above transactions and matters; and

• plan and progress transactions and matters expeditiously and with propriety.

D Legal, professional and client relationship knowledge and skills

Knowledge of:

• the legal services market; and

• commercial factors affecting legal practice.

The ability to:

• undertake factual and legal research using paper and electronic media;

• use technology to store, retrieve and analyse information;

Version 2, April 2007 Page 2 of 3 www.sra.org.uk

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 Legal Education and Training in England and Wales 121

• communicate effectively, orally and in writing, with clients, colleagues and

other professionals;

• advocate a case on behalf of a client;

• exercise solicitors' rights of audience;

• recognise clients' financial, commercial and personal priorities and

constraints;

• exercise effective client relationship management skills; and

• act appropriately if a client is dissatisfied with advice or services provided.

E Personal development and work management skills

The ability to:

• recognise personal and professional strengths and weaknesses;

• identify the limits of personal knowledge and skills;

• develop strategies to enhance professional performance;

• manage personal workload;

• employ risk management skills;

• manage efficiently, effectively and concurrently a number of client matters;

and

• work effectively as a team-member.

F Professional values, behaviours, attitudes and ethics

Knowledge of the values and principles upon which the rules of professional conduct
have been developed.

The ability to:

• behave professionally and with integrity;

• identify issues of culture, disability and diversity;

• respond appropriately and effectively to the above issues in dealings with

clients, colleagues and others from a range of social, economic and ethnic
backgrounds; and

• recognise and resolve ethical dilemmas.

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