Student angst

LPC providers have come under fire from critics and now universities are being hit by accusations that their degrees ignore basic aspects of legal education.

By Alison Clarke

There are so many law students in the UK that not even the professional regulators are sure of the numbers.

The best guess at number is somewhere in the region of 16,000 (including graduates doing the one-year common professional examination), compared with about 1,500 in 1945.

Likewise, the numbers going through the vocational stage have increased dramatically over the years.

But there has not been a corresponding increase in the number of firms offering employment.

Little wonder then that up to 50% of students completing a law degree do not end up entering the profession - a statistic that seems to have helped to spark a vitriolic argument between the players in the supposedly genteel world of legal education.

In one corner are the practitioners; in the other, the beleaguered world of academia.

Although a lot of publicity has been given recently to the decision by a group of eight top City law firms to devise their own legal practice course (LPC), that controversy is symptomatic of a deeper problem.

In fact, the core of the disagreement between the parties centres on the academic stage of training - in other words, the law degree.

Although practitioners have (so far) concentrated their fire on the LPC providers, that is not to say that they are reluctant to take a pop at the universities.

Enter Melissa Hardee, training partner at City giant CMS Cameron McKenna and chair of the Legal Education and Training Group (LETG), a think-tank of about 120 UK law firms.

She says: 'The r eal issues are not about tailored LPCs...

[but] about the inadequate standards of legal education that all firms are seeing now, coming out of the academic stage.'The LETG thinks law graduates often do not know enough about their subject.

Ms Hardee says this is partly because of the way it is taught with 'the so-called compartmentalisation of subjects - for instance, contract law taught in the first year and then not looked at again'.It is also, she says, partly because there is no lateral approach to the teaching.

'As lawyers, we don't get a set of instructions and say "that is a contract issue.

I don't have to think of anything else".

So why do we teach law that way?'This view is clearly held by the top law firms, which successive surveys have shown to prefer graduates from another discipline who have taken the more respected common professional examination as their way into law.

Those with scientific or language degrees are particularly in demand because of the possible application of these skills to specialist legal work.In the opposite corner of the debate over the law degree sits Professor Alan Patterson, chairman of the Committee of Heads of University Law Schools in the UK, who accuses the practitioners of not appreciating the realities of legal education.'As the law becomes more specialised and complex, the notion that schools can train students to know all of it and retain it as they step forward into the LPC is unrealistic,' he maintains.'It stems from a coverage mentality which says that if only law schools and legal education would cover every new area of law so that students can step forth into the LPC and then on to practice, fully armed like some kind of encyclopaedic robots, then all would be well.

This is hopelessly unrealistic.'Instead, he thinks students have been learning too much law, not too little, and supports recent moves towards more in-depth learning (rather than cramming of facts which students do not retain), so that they can apply existing knowledge to new areas of law.

He says practitioners, particularly the large City firms, expect their trainees to know everything because of the amount they now have to pay them.

'As they pay people more, they expect more and more from them.'In any event, he says that as only 50% or so of graduates go on to practice, the point of the degree is to provide a rounded, liberal education, not a cramming school for would-be practitioners.The trouble with that argument, says Ms Hardee, is that the needs of the 50% who do want to enter the profession are not being fully met by the current set-up.

The LETG suggests the introduction of a vocational degree for those who want to go on and practice law, running alongside the more academic, liberal option.

Either that or the introduction of law as a post-graduate degree subject, although she recognises the funding implications of such a move.

But it is not just the practitioners who are critical of the universities.

Other legal providers have also weighed in - for instance, Nigel Savage, the chief executive of the College of Law.

He says the current law degree is totally inadequate and points the finger at the Law Society for failing to regulate it.

'This is mostly the Law Society's fault for washing its hands of the law degree,' he says.

'It did not want to put resources in or take on the university law schools and we are paying the price for that now.'For its part, the Law Society says it no longer has the authority to intervene, the role of standards in universities being the preserve of the Quality Assurance Agency.

However, Roger Smith, the Society's director of legal education and training, admits there are problems with students graduating with a law degree, but little in-depth knowledge of some core concepts.

He argues that the message to the academics is simple.

'The practitioners are saying that some of the depth [of the old degree] has been sacrificed to give more breadth.

In that case, they should look at how they teach the core concepts and the use that students can put their knowledge to.'The end result of this debate so far has been a long, hard and critical look at the LPC.

Cyril Glasser, the Law Society council member for education and training, says this is because practitioners have little or no influence over the universities, unlike the LPC providers.

Ms Hardee agrees: 'If the academic stage won't do anything and obviously we cannot do anything about the primary and secondary stages of education, then what else can we do?'Practitioners have therefore had to be satisfied with making changes to the vocational stage of the training course.

Hence the proposals of the 'City eight' to create a course that is more suited to their commercial needs, a move that has been widely welcomed by other firms as a way of focusing attention on the current problems.

Bernard George, director of training and development at Dechert (formerly Titmuss Sainer Dechert), agrees that City firms 'have all sorts of concerns about the degree, but cannot influence it very much.

For instance, I am concerned that people are coming out with degrees who are not sufficiently familiar with the basic rules of grammar, or basic areas of law such as contract and tort'.But practitioners also complain that there has been a knock-on effect on the LPC.

They say standards have dropped because of the deficiencies at the academic stage.

Mr George says the commercial pressure on the LPC providers to 'put bums on seats and maximise their income' has meant that students are being accepted on courses, irrespective of their ability.

Both Mr George and Ms Hardee argue that the LPC is in danger of becoming a 'remedial course'.

The LETG is so concerned that it is advocating a qualifying examination for graduates before the LPC to test their legal knowledge and literacy.

Mr George argues that it is unfair for able students (who sometimes complain that they are not stretched by the LPC) to have to work at the same speed as people who are not ready for the course.

An entrance test would, therefore, separate the wheat from the chaff.

But Richard de Friend, director of the College of Law in London, rejects that idea out of hand.

He argues 'that there are sometimes complex educational judgments to be made as to whether you should hold someone up because they can't spell, although they are intellectually capable of doing the course'.He accepts that there are problems associated with the degree - such as a basic lack of literacy and an inadequate grasp of the fundamentals of law - but says that these concerns are being addressed by the universities with new benchmark standards, which should kick-in in two to three years time.

There are the additional problems of potential indirect race and sex discrimination complaints posed by the test.

For instance, critics say that ethnic minority students whose first language is not English may fall foul of a literacy test.

For her part, Ms Hardee maintains that 'literacy is essential for the profession.

We are supposed to be wordsmiths - writing and drafting are supposed to be our forte'.

She argues that it seems to have become politically incorrect to tell students that they are not up to scratch.

'If people aren't ready for the LPC, I can't see why we can't acknowledge that.

It certainly doesn't do any favours to students to spend all these years studying, on top of the financial investment they have to make, if they cannot get a job at the end of it all.

'Everyone should be encouraged to fulfil their true potential, but this does not mean that everyone has to become a lawyer in order to do so.'

Alison Clarke is a freelance journalist