All trainees take the professional skills course (PSC).

The PSC is also important to firms, which usually pay their trainees' fees, and to the providers, who invest time and resources in the course.

As a new venture, the PSC is under constant review and needs constant adjustment.WHAT SHOULD THE COURSE CONSIST OF?The PSC modules include: accounts, advocacy, personal work management, investment business and professional conduct.

Of these, only advocacy is a skills course; the others are compulsory.

WHO SHOULD IT BE TAUGHT TO?Solicitors training in local government and the Court Service do not need to know about accounts or investment business.

Nor do solicitors employed in commerce and industry or who work in-house.

If those solicitors move to private practice, it should be made compulsory for them to take a course in those subjects at that point.

Ideally, solicitors who are not in private practice should take courses that concentrate on the special aspects of their working environments.

The cost of such special courses may prove too high, but it seems a waste for them to be forced to take inappropriate courses.

The original intention was that all the PSC course subjects should be taught during the two-year training contract.

The original concept holds good.

The point of teaching such skills is to enhance those that are learned on the job.

Investment business and accounts can be dealt with early.

Conduct and ethics provide an important framework from which young lawyers learn to analyse problems.

Trainees also learn about the dangers of undertakings and the issues of conflict of interest and confidentiality.

The legal practice course (LPC) deals with conduct in some detail.

The conduct module of the PSC should be taught at the end of the whole course as opposed to being taught all over the place as now and should concentrate on the practical application of the principles.Students should not take the personal work management module until their work experience allows them to understand the importance of the subject.

The module is also too long.

Task prioritisation, time management, team work and team building, delegation and supervision skills are all taught, but the benefits will be lost to students who do not have sufficient experience of the working office.

However, particular attention is paid to information technology and its role in the office, and this is something for which all firms should be grateful.Advocacy is the flagship course of the best providers.

The advocacy module must be taught long after the trainee has worked through most of the training contract and been involved in litigation.

An understanding of negotiating skills, presentation and court room skills are vital.

The more experience the student has, the more benefit will be derived from this course.HOW LONG SHOULD THE COURSES LAST?The accounts course should become shorter once the syllabus has changed.

At present, it is too long.

Investment business is also too long, comprising four days of face-to-face tuition in addition to distance learning.

A total of three days should be sufficient.

Two days is longer than the personal work management module requires; three half-day sessions should easily be enough for the face-to-face tuition.

Professional conduct should not, however, be confined to one day.

This subject is important to everyone whatever area they work in.

Trainees usually find the discussion of case studies and scenarios in this module useful and rewarding.At present only investment business and accounts are subject to examination.

Advocacy is assessed over a five-da y course.

The other courses are devalued by this and should be assessed in some way -- for example, with mini-tests and appraisals.

Without this, trainees will continue to believe that conduct and ethics and professional work management are less important subjects than the others.The Law Society's training committee must continue to look at the timing and content of the PSC which is, at present, only partly successful.

Unfortunately, those firms which resent the absence of trainees from the office and the cost of the PSC are unclear about its advantages.

The Society must work with these firms and make them PSC enthusiasts.

This partnership must work for the sake of the profession and the next generation.