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Sorry Bryan Scant, you are way, way behind the times. There has been a two tier profession for decades. The split is between those who work in firms that do Wills, Probate, Conveyancing, Crime, etc. ie your High Street firms, and those who work in firms that do not have ordinary people as clients, such as Clifford Chance et al.

At the same time, I think I understand what you are saying, or trying to say, and my view is that an externally set exam, that is externally and anonymously marked exam, if not pitched at either too high or too low a level, can be absolutely invaluable in making available training contracts to people who otherwise would not get them, ie those who aren't like their interviewers and / or aren't well connected.

As for anon of 9:14 when I was on the Law Society Council I voted against splitting the regulatory functions of the Law Society from its representative functions, but in my view it is all credit to the Solicitors Regulation Authority for making this effort on the qualifying as solicitors front.

If any body has failed the solicitors' profession as a whole I consider it to have been the Law Society. All the really major decisions that I have profoundly disagreed with over the years have come from the Law Society. In no particular order, that includes (i) the setting up of a consumer complaints body that was free at the point of delivery for complainants and with no thought as to how firms are supposed to fund their defence, (ii) the setting up of exams that were at first too difficult for just about everybody in 1980, then by 1990 or thereabouts too easy, and then replaced by in effect a taught masters, (iii) ignoring clear evidence that contributions to the solicitors indemnity fund were too low, resulting in its replacement with a system that arguably favours firms that are fabulously wealthy and / or can in effect self-insure, and hammers ordinary High Street firms that can't self-insure and are unlucky rather than genuinely incompetent, (iv) bureaucratic empire building eg the establishing of regional offices.