Universities slammed on legal education

LAW DEGREES: 'Practical element missing from undergraduate stage of law training'

Universities are failing the legal profession by providing degrees lacking in the clinical practicalities of law, one of the country's leading legal academics told S2K delegates.

Nigel Savage, chief executive of the College of Law, said university vice chancellors treated legal education as a cash cow.

'Lawyers are seen as cheap and cheerful to educate.

Undergraduate legal education has historically been viewed as simply a matter of investing in a few books, and now maybe a couple of PCs.'

Professor Savage called on the Law Society and Bar Council to take a more active role in assessing the quality of degrees.

He complained that his college and other providers of graduate law studies were forced to rectify deficits in student knowledge that should not exist.

There is a clinical and practical element missing from the undergraduate stage of legal education,' he said.

'Law faculties need to be more practical in their teaching.

And the Law Society and the Bar could take a more prescriptive approach regarding the teaching of undergraduate law degrees.

In the US, there is a system of five-year inspections of law faculties.'

The head of the Law Society's education and training department, Roger Smith, responded by saying there were general problems in higher education.

'I'm not sure that the Law Society or the Bar can do much about them,' he said.

Jonathan Ames