Back-up roles for students

TRAINING: plan to help those without a contract

Legal education should adapt to offer students alternative legal career paths when they fail to get training contracts and jobs because there are too few to meet demand, delegates heard last week.Speaking at a session on legal education in the new millennium, Professor Lee Bridges, director of the Legal Research Institute at Warwick University, said law students should be offered tailored courses which would allow them to meet accreditation standards in areas like police station work.He said the growth of 'alternative lawyers' as part of the Community Legal Service was likely to lead to more accreditation schemes.Prof Bridges said he could envisage advanced modules in immigration, asylum, housing, employment and consumer law being offered to students in their final year.

This training, alongside placements at law firms or advice centres, would equip law students for a non-traditional legal career rather than be forced to leave the profession, he said.

With the backing of the Law Society, the Bar Council and, 'if necessary', the government, these alternative roles could also be seen as an additional route of entry to the profession, Prof Bridges said.

However, he warned that the schemes should not act as a means of confining some students, particularly those from less privileged backgrounds, to 'subordinate roles' in the legal profession.

Sue Allen