Breaking the mould

As the College of Law opens in Birmingham this week, chief executive Nigel Savage assesses the future for legal education in the modern world

There is widespread recognition that the legal practice course (LPC) is over regulated and over assessed and that legal education needs to move to a system based on defined outcomes and competencies.At the College of Law, we tackled diversification of the profession head-on, and acknowledged our commitment to the profession as a whole by being the first provider to deliver a City LPC without prejudice to our heritage.

However, the problem is that other strategic issues are stacking up and the framework is beginning to creak.In addition to the growing diversity between the different areas of practice, there are many key strategic issues: the need to acknowledge specialisation; the role and regulation of paralegals; problems of social and ethnic access; and reviving the notion that solicitors should be seen as 'men and woman of affairs'.

Addressing the latter means including some business awareness in their education and the problems surrounding globalisation.The structure with which we have to work is not best suited to dealing with strategic problems.

It was founded on three stages: an academic stage which has emerged over the past 40 years and which has been virtually unregulated (with the exception of the graduate conversion course); a vocational stage based on the LPC that has reached the limits of its development within the strait-jacket of written standards and which was conceived at a time when 'general practice' still existed; and a training contract with its origins in Victorian times.It is time to revise the structure and point of entry to the profession to address strategic issues.

The Bar, for all its conservatism, provides a good starting point.

It traditionally acknowledges the value of the vocational course.

Students may be admitted as barristers, then opt for pupillage.

Non-practising barristers thus shave a professional legitimacy and pervade commerce and the public sector.The problem for the larger branch of the profession is that the system of legal education is preparing young people for a model of practice that is increasingly fictional.

Some cling to the notion of a training contract as an entry to the profession - a notion which is in part a throwback to the days when articles were the primary symbol of professional status.Such symbols are now no longer necessary.

The profession has, through no fault of its own, lost control of its work.

This is a result of the processes of the marketplace and structural change in the provision of legal services through franchising and block contracting.

Legal education and training may well have contributed to that process by breaking down knowledge and expertise into skills and competencies, thus enabling external agencies to select only those that they need and de-mystifying the role of the lawyer.The issue for the Law Society is to redraw and redefine the boundaries of professional status.

There is much to be gained both on the domestic agenda and globally.

Solicitor status could become the entry point to a business qualification for the public sector, the burgeoning financial services sector and for the advice service as well as a symbol of enhanced recognition as a specialist in a chosen area.

It would mean that the Society could address the issue of creating a global foundation qualification and so underpin the global aspirations of English firms.

The existing training contract provisions could then be replaced by more flexible outcome/ competency statements which acknowledge the overtly different routes to full practising rights and foundation specialisms.Given the recent research on the failure of the accountancy firms to attract sophisticated legal work from major corporate clients, such a move could embed the solicitor qualification as the foundation for entering the service sector.

It would also provide a more robust vehicle for creating professional coherence within the profession.Nigel Savage is chief executive of the College of Law of England and Wales.