'Scrap training contract for unreserved work', thinktank urges

Thank god!!! If it does happen, please let it apply retrospectively!

If you have passed the LPC you are prepared for practice but may lack experience agreed.
However in every profession you have to start somewhere.
There is no reason why people with an LPC qualification shouldn't be able to carry out unreserved legal activities such as transactional work or employment advice / their elective areas in my view.

The individual would work within code of conduct rules / be regulated by the SRA as a solicitor.
Firms work in teams and would assist i'm sure if required.

If you have a LPC qualification from the College of law (for instance) you are qualified and capable(these are the exams the law society / colleges put together for heavens sake)

Everyone is continually learning - give us a chance and let the legal world move into the 21st Century...

I agree and think that it should be more like the ILEX system- work for 2 years as a fee earner and be qualified in that area. Training contracts appear to be as much about who you know and random luck as they are about the candidate.
The current system leaves a lot of intelligent graduates being exploited in under paid jobs as they try and gain experience for their CV's to get an elusive training contract. For example, I am gradaute of russell group uni and work as a paralegal earning less than the trainee salary, but I charge more per hour than a trainee- meaning I am a great asset for the firm's bank balance. To add further insult to injury the same firm told me I was not good enough to be a trainee there- but I am given more complex work than the trainees in the office- hmmm. exploitation? if only the market was better.............

And what do other 'professions' do?

Chartered Tax Advisers (CTA) do their exams (which are a lot harder than the exams to make the grade as a solicitor - I know, I've done both) whilst working. There is a requirement to have a couple of years work experience as well as actually passing the exams (and it's a low low pass rate) before they can call themselves CTA. ACA (accountant/audit) and ACCA have similar arrangements. Although there aren't prescribed 'seats'.

What is wrong with changing it so that the LPC is done whilst working instead of being an upfront cost? That way, you still get 2 years solid experience in law and an exam before being able to call yourself 'solicitor' (circumventing the argument that the exam by itself is insufficient, with which I agree, and shattering the barriers to cash-poor students of the high cost), and there could be an additional exam/ training on the job period structure for the 'Reserved' elements.

It took me an awfully long time to pay off the cost of my LSF, and I never bothered becoming a solicitor as I went into tax instead during the last recession (early 90s) and never quite made it back - the CPE/LSF helped hugely in that tax career so the cost wasn't entirely wasted; and I've found it much more interesting that I would have done if I'd gone into private client work on the legal side which is what I intended - I wouldn't have been able to abide all that drafting! But given my time again, I think I would have preferred not to have to pay for something I didn't use directly.

The current route to qualification as a Solicitor is elitist. There are so many LPC Graduates out there, who have worked so hard and spent so much money for the chance to qualify as a Solicitor. To get a foot on the ladder is hard work rejection is common place and it is expected that we will work for free into the bargain.

In my experience you have very little chance of qualifying if you do not have relatives and/ or friends who will give you a training contract. Having connections seems to be the more important than intelligence and actual legal skills.

It seems unfair that those who have passed the LPC cannot say I am a qualified Solicitor but a person who has passed the BVC can call themselves a Barrister.

However, it seems at long last there is some light at the end of the tunnel for me and I hope also for those of you out there who have dedicated themselves to the profession through all of the above.

A stroke of luck has meant that I have the opportunity to qualify as I am currently participating in the Pilot of the new route to qualification, which if successful will mean that people working as Legal Assistants who can provide evidence that they have met the skills standard will be able to qualify and as I understand it, the inherent flexibility will allow the training to be transferred to other firms,

Details about the Pilot are available on the Law Society web site.

Although I sympathise with the last couple of posters as I am in a similar position, I don't think LPC graduates should be recognised as solicitors. I think the problem lies in the over-subscription of law and unrealistic expectations.

No institution along the way gave me a realistic appraisal of how difficult it would be to gain a TC. The parts of my journey that were the smoothest were the parts where there was money to be made out of me. When it came to me being able to start a career it felt like wading through treacle with the entire Halsbury's laws of England on my back.

Law is an extremely popular subject these days. Even discounting the fact that not everyone studying it will wish to become lawyers, there are just too many candidates who will be disappointed. Ability to do the job is insignificant when there are only so many positions that can be filled.

I have found the above out at my expense now that I am in over £10k debt and have never been able to make a significant dent in this amount because the only jobs I've been able to acquire pay under the student loan £15k threshold. I've been strung along as a paralegal with promises of a TC that never materialised only to be 'not required anymore' 6 months later. When trying to apply for any job let alone a legal one the euphemism 'over-qualified' is never far away. So just what are LPC graduates supposed to do if no one is willing to employ us without specific experience of a specific duration?

Nigel Savage has been suggesting this since the days when I was Chair of the Trainee Solicitors' Group (and before no doubt) so its no surprise to see this old chesnut raised again when the market for training contracts has contracted alarmingly.

This is about LPC providers coffers not the public interest. Whilst it would be in the interest of my institution (Cardiff Law School) and the students who do not get training contracts would naturally like to be able to call themselves solicitors, the key issues here are: a) impact on the public and b) the longer-sighted need to protect the legitimacy of the profession. Anyone can practice in unreserved areas without any legal qualification already, but does the profession want to associate itself with half-qualified advisers who can then call themselves solicitors without the (in my view) any of the necessary practical training? I doubt it. It will provoke a race to the bottom.

The profession needs to bolster the competence of its members not dilute it.

For years course providers have encouraged far more people to undertake the LPC than there are Training Places. This is naked commercial self-interest.Like it or not the number of Training Places reflects the demand for qualified solicitors.Graduates who have spent vast amounts of money on getting through the LPC to find they cannot gain a Training Contract are doubtless telling their friends and family that it was very poor value for money.The Colleges fear that the next generation will take note of what has happened and vote with their feet. The answer, it seems, is to create another qualification that by-passes the bottle neck caused by the limited number of training places.In reality this is an attempt to bolster demand for places on the LPC in the face of growing student antipathy.Regrettably, the end result will be the same for those hapless students who are, in reality, surplus to requirements.

I think the training contract should be scraped. The question about competence may be solved by introducing a taugh exam similar to newyork bar exam. If you pass the exam you should be enrolled. On the other hand if you are not competent enough then its you who may suffer not the profession. There are so many incompetent lawyers who completed their training contracts and there are so many competent paralegals who even havnt done a law degree. I think training contract formalities are designed just to make things hard.

I have a great deal of sympathy with those who have not found training contracts. However, theirs is not the only view which should be borne in mind. I became a solicitor having qualified at the Bar. In order to sit the Qualified Lawyers' Transfer Test, I was required to complete two years' of legal work experience, which could be made up from both time in Chambers (e.g. Pupillage) and from time working as essentially a trainee or paralegal in a law firm. Like LPC graduates, I had to have work experience in both contentious and non-contentious areas. I was lucky in that I was well-supervised in my work-experience, which was a training contract by another name. But, in reality, as many former trainees would support, the formality of a training contract is redundant. Provided that LPC graduates can get the requisite work experience (two contentious, one non-contentious), there is no reason that they should not be enrolled as solicitors. There is also no reason that the work experience/training period should not be shortened to 12 - 18 months.

The present proposal will confuse the legal market. With ABSs just around the corner, the Profession cannot lose sight of one of its most marketable qualities: the name "solicitor." The English and Welsh legal market is already fragmented, with titles diverse as barristers, solicitor-advocates, solicitors, Legal Executives, and licensed conveyencer. Adding a second category of "solicitor" would:
- Flood the market;
- Decrease the clarity of the title "solicitor."
Neither of these outcomes is good for the profession in the long run. LPC graduates, in my submission, are best served by making the route to full qualification easier, not by handing them the title without the gravitas.