Looking at the latest review proposals for the solicitor training framework, Janet Paraskeva voices her support for A more flexible model


The Law Society has been consulting on a new training framework for solicitors for some three years now, as we seek to ensure that the route to qualification is relevant to modern practice, and to modern students and trainees.


The Law Society is seeking to unpack the one-size-fits-all model for qualification. Times have changed and the current approach has in many ways become outmoded, expensive and possibly discriminatory.


Paraskeva: responsive to needs

Requiring all students to study in the same way and over the same period is not defensible in a world in which students and trainees seeking to qualify have very different experiences on which to draw, and financial and other commitments to manage. Nor is it necessarily delivering for the profession trainees equipped with the highest standard of knowledge and skills and the ability to serve the widest range of clients.

Following earlier consultations in 2001 and 2003, debate about the best way forward continues. A third consultation paper is expected in the spring.


The review puts the highest standards of entry to the profession at the heart of its objectives. It proposes to raise the standard of academic qualification to honours degree level (currently an ordinary degree will suffice) and it calls for more rigorous assessment of the practical skills and application of knowledge necessary for practice.


The other principal change proposed is to remove the stipulation that students must complete one particular course to develop their professional knowledge and skills. The legal practice course has provided an excellent learning environment for many students. Since its introduction a committed community of high quality professional skills teachers has developed. The review offers them an opportunity to be creative in their approach to teaching and to be more responsive to the needs of their students and of practice. The review proposes that providers could offer more flexible and stand-alone modules that students could choose to follow as they prepare for entry.


These are not new ideas. Last May the Law Society Council published a paper that said clearly that ‘the Society might not in the future be prescriptive about the courses to be followed for those seeking to qualify’. The Law Society is not suggesting that there should be any lowering of standards for entry to the profession – far from it. What it is saying is that there may be more than one way to develop the knowledge and skills that have to be assessed and demonstrated before qualification.


It is highly likely that the current approach to qualification – an academic stage, a vocational skills course and two years’ working under the supervision of a solicitor – will continue to be the preferred route to qualification for many. But there have been major changes in higher education, in the diversity of new entrants to the profession and indeed in legal practice itself. The solicitors’ profession must keep up. Innovative routes to qualification must be allowed to develop, and standards must be the touchstone.


The need to secure standards is also at the heart of aspects of the review that deal with learning in practice – regarded as a key feature of both the present and a future qualification scheme. The current scheme enables those who can get a training contract to qualify. Those who can’t get a training contract can’t qualify. Should this be the key test?


The review proposes that there should be a sharper focus on what trainees know and can do at the end of their training period, and less focus on where, how and over what period that they have been working. Good supervision of trainees by solicitors is crucial. Supervising solicitors’ views on the abilities of trainees would remain the major source of evidence to confirm whether or not a trainee should be admitted. However, an external assessment of that evidence is also proposed.


This will not lead to poorer quality trainees – quite the opposite. The outcome-related assessments that have been proposed mean assessing whether students can apply what has been learned, rather than dictating how they must have learned. Being a good solicitor does not depend on the capacity to complete a particular course; it depends on ability and aptitude, irrespective of how it is developed.


Detailed arrangements for assessing students and trainees have to be finalised, and views on this will be sought during the next consultation phase. We will also want to hear views on how the quality of training should be maintained in a more open market.


The Law Society is seeking to ensure that it has in place a rigorous qualification process that allows only those sufficiently able to qualify as solicitors. Mature students with previous professional experience and qualifications, people with family responsibilities and students who have to fund their own way through their studies do not fit comfortably within the straitjacket created by the current scheme – but they should not be left out. It is foolish to exclude them. More importantly, it is also wrong.


There is much with which the profession will want to engage as the review goes forward, not least new arrangements for trainees’ work-based learning and their supervision. There will be plenty of time to engage in that process throughout March and April of this year.


Janet Paraskeva is the Law Society chief executive