Work-based learning is an excellent concept that aims to raise standards but, asks Keith Gaines, are fee-earners prepared to pull their weight?


Now that the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has approved and announced plans for the new legal practice course (LPC) from September 2009, the SRA will focus on its plans for work-based learning (WBL), which is set to be piloted in 2008.



My strong view is that WBL should provide a robust industry norm which will ensure that our next generation of lawyers is, when taken together, better trained than those today, in the same way that those today are better trained on the whole than my generation. This is evolutionary and the profession must continue to improve.



The recent publication in the Times of its annual guide to the Top 100 Graduate Employers should provide the profession with food for thought in this regard. Law firms fared badly, particularly compared with other professional services firms.



I believe that WBL provides an excellent opportunity to make improvements to training. But crucially, along with those responsible for training, are busy fee-earners prepared to accept the responsibility and the burden of the proposed new regime?



I spent 28 years in private practice - 21 years as a partner in a major City law firm. Although anecdotal, from my discussion with members of the profession, it is apparent that few have focused to date on the SRA's proposal for WBL. This is a pity and despite the publication by the SRA of its proposals in February 2007 and the subsequent profession-wide consultation.



The proposals will create not only extensive additional burdens for organisations but also, and most importantly for many, for individuals who are at the front line of delivering services to clients in the current highly competitive market.



In essence, WBL envisages a system based on sets of periodic outcomes, in particular on 'day one qualification outcomes', with candidates gaining experience in all key areas; maintaining a portfolio recording their experience; and submitting themselves for assessment during and immediately prior to qualification. It may be possible to qualify also through work experience without a classic training contract.



Today, it is true that when 'best practice' is followed with attentive supervisors who genuinely care, training contracts are excellent. Given competitive and other pressures it is inevitable, however, that there can be shortcomings and in the legal profession there is considerable room for improvement. Some of my own observations are as follows.



First, the SRA aims to ensure that standards on qualification are more rigorous across the board and there is far greater diversity in recruitment into the profession. These are excellent aims, especially given the reported low opinion of lawyers among the public and indeed the number of complaints made against them.



Second, the focus of busy fee-earners who supervise is primarily on getting the best job done for their clients, invariably in a highly pressured environment. The needs of the trainee, particularly in being provided with a rounded learning experience, are generally not to the fore.



Third, some trainees occasionally have the attitude - or at least the appearance - that they are 'time serving', just getting through their training contract until they qualify.



Firms and individual fee-earners should be prepared to accept the additional burden that WBL entails. They should embrace the philosophy of the proposals and support them. There are benefits. Perhaps WBL will help law firms to rise up the table of graduate employers with all the advantages this would bring.



Keith Gaines is the Dean of Nottingham Law School