Some 18 months ago a wide-ranging review of the training contract was instigated.

The review group was drawn from all sections of the profession and it was prepared to be radical and to think the unthinkable.

However, it became apparent that both employers and trainees were broadly supportive of a two-year period of on-the-job training prior to qualification as a solicitor.But, while the training contract has been well received by the profession, it has not been trouble free.

After considering the 2000 responses to the consultation paper, we have suggested changes which are designed to smooth the rough edges of the contract and encourage good training practice.While our overall aim is to decrease the burden of regulation, we are unanimously in favour of retaining and even increasing the minimum salary.

This will not be popular with some sections of the profession.

Nonetheless, the evidence we heard was of spiralling student debt, a situation made worse by the introduction of undergraduate tuition fees.

We could not support measures which would decrease the level of funding provided by the profession at this difficult time.One of our biggest problems was how to deal with the 'time to count' waivers.

The Law Society receives 1,800 waiver applications a year and these apply to nearly one third of trainees.

Our proposal is to restrict time to count to a maximum of six months and only if at least 12 months have been undertaken in a legal office environment.

It will be for the training principal taking on a trainee -- not the Law Society -- to decide whether the requisite experience ought to be accepted.The Trainee Solicitors Group helpline shows clear evidence of poor training and even of abuse suffered by a minority of trainees.

The review group maintains that the current monitoring system is uneven and ineffective.

The view of the group is that the Law Society should monitor training establishments with visits to firms by a panel of professional training monitors.

These visits will be mainly targeted at firms where problems have been identified, although there will be a number of random visits too.

To pay for this, we recommend an increase in the authorisation fee for training establishments -- which currently stands at £75 -- for three years, to a level of approximately £250 for the same period.

We need to ensure that those who will not or do not know how to train are encouraged either to change or to cease taking trainees altogether.We recommend that training should continue to be provided in three distinct areas of law, but we are no longer going to prescribe a list.

We also maintain that there should be experience of dispute resolution in the context of courts, tribunals, or alternative dispute resolution at some time during the training contract.

We will also be sympathetic to a trainee who, to obtain the requisite range of experience, has arranged a modular training contract with, for example, several niche firms.Proper appraisal of a trainee during the contract is essential and we suggest at least three appraisals during the two-year period.

Model appraisal documentation will be provided to ensure that the requisite issues are covered.We have also discussed recruitment practices as they have led to discrimination in the past.

Policies such as never recruiting from new universities are undoubtedly indirectly discriminatory.

The new authorisation guide will point to good practice and try and encourage it.We are introducing a 'life-long learning log' which, as well as keeping training contract records, can then be used as a record of continuing professional development throughout a solicitor's career.

We are also suggesting a comp lete re-write of the authorisation guide to make it much easier to understand so that it will be routinely used by all training principals.It is clear that if the profession is to thrive, it will have to continue to recruit and train its solicitors in a professional manner.

We believe that our proposals will help us all to do that.