Do you remember your first day as a trainee (or in my case an articled clerk!)? As you walked through the door, you may have felt that excitement and relief that you had made it, twinged with nerves about the start of your legal career. You probably worried that you didn’t know enough; felt anxious about making a mistake; acutely aware that you wanted to make a great impression and fit in. A range of emotions that law school had not prepared you for. You get through the door and sit at your desk. You are walked through the firm’s case management system, shown an AI drafting tool, you notice an NQ that seems withdrawn and anxious, you attend your first client meeting, that client is experiencing an emotional crisis. You don’t feel prepared for life in practice.
LawCare’s Life in the Law 2025 research explored people’s experiences of legal vocational education. We found that the majority (55%) felt that this had prepared them ‘somewhat’ for life in practice, with 17% feeling it had not prepared them at all. We asked them about what they would like to see changed about their legal training. Several themes emerged: the importance of wellbeing and resilience; the need for leadership, management, communication and people skills; the need to be highly practical (including the use of legal technology); and the value on ongoing training throughout your career. One of the five key recommendations from our research was that legal education and training should equip people joining the sector with the skills and knowledge that they need for a sustainable legal career.
To take this recommendation forward, LawCare recently convened a legal education roundtable for the solicitors’ profession in England and Wales (we have plans to convene these in other jurisdictions and with other legal professions). We gathered insights from the Solicitors Regulation Authority, legal academics, junior lawyers, a large firm, a small firm, in house and law schools that provide undergraduate law degrees and those that provide SQE preparation courses. Ninety minutes just scratched the surface on exploring who is responsible for equipping lawyers with the skills for a sustainable legal career, how wellbeing could be embedded in legal education and training and how to bridge the gap between what legal education provides and what the workplace expects.
What struck me from the discussion was the consensus that legal education needs to be a continuum that starts with pre-qualification training and carries right through an individual’s career. Currently legal education tends to be front loaded at the prequalifying stage, followed by post qualification obligations to maintain competence and keep professional skills and knowledge up to date. The risk with this approach is that it can become more of a tick-boxing and compliance exercise rather than a genuine opportunity for development and maintaining competence.
A career-long learning culture needs to include both the development of legal technical skills, and those essential skills such as management, communication, emotional competence and the capacity for ethical reflection. It should be a pathway, with regular stops along the way to build and maintain a sustainable career. Stress, anxiety, burnout or poor ethical decision making are factors that undermine a sustainable career. All factors that can be mitigated through support, effective people management and education.
I want to illustrate the point about a career-long learning culture by reference to the recently launched SRA consultation, ‘proposals to strengthen continuing competence requirements’. These proposals include a mandatory requirement for solicitors to participate annually in ethical discussions.
The SRA’s statement of solicitor competence is the framework for how solicitors are assessed in the SQE and what is expected of them in practice. This statement sets out to join prequalifying and career long expectations of learning and development. Although ethics and professional conduct are evaluated throughout the SQE, they are assessed as knowledge rather than a skill. There is currently no standalone assessment, or a reflective practice component, or a way of carrying ethical understanding developed during the SQE into practice.
Looking into the detail of the consultation paper, it states ‘we can see the value in aspiring solicitors participating in mandatory ethics discussions. Participation would help socialise them to ethical dilemmas in practice, reinforce the importance of ethical decision making from an early stage of their career and help build confidence in their ethical decision making. We are not proposing at this stage that participation for aspiring solicitors is mandatory’.
When 52% of the reports to the SRA between 2019 and 2025 related to ethics, professionalism and judgement, and these reports were more likely to result in an investigation, it begs the question why mandatory participation in ethics discussions are not being proposed for aspiring solicitors. The proposals are a start to addressing the post qualification path but are silent on the transition into practice and explicitly decline to make ethics discussion mandatory for aspiring solicitors.
Surely this is a missed opportunity to start developing ethically reflective solicitors. That bridge into practice has a gap in it and exposes a weak bridge in the statement of competence between pre and post qualification career stages.
What is the way forward? I would urge the SRA, law schools and the Law Society to seize the opportunity to work collaboratively to rethink what professional development means. A modern professional framework should integrate legal knowledge, ethics, technical competence including the use of AI, reflective practice, wellbeing, leadership and people skills. This is the skills and knowledge toolkit solicitors need for a sustainable career.
Elizabeth Rimmer is chief executive of LawCare
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