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Anonymous of 14:38 has a point even if I wonder if what is being said by him or her is entirely kosher.

A friend of mine who failed in the early 1980s said to me in 1988 that if he had been doing the Law Society Finals now, ie in 1988, he would probably pass. On the statistics that I saw he was probably right.

The friend in question said that he had been to some presentation or other by a solicitor and that he would very much have liked to have been one. I take his point. The question is: What did the Law Society and the country as whole really gain by failing him and so many others at that time?

By the 1990s I came across people bragging about having "passed first time" as if that was a major achievement. Well, it might have been for them, but with a pass rate approaching 80% I might have kept quiet about "passing first time".

So, yes, anonymous of 14:38 might have a point, even if I'm inclined to read what is written by him or her in the same way as I read my criminal clients' statements ...

Whatever might have been the pass rate when anonymous of 14:38 did those Law Society Finals Part II they were in the final analysis externally set, properly invigilated, externally and anonymously marked exams that everybody in the country had to pass to get to the next stage. Not what they were in the early 1980s, but still a lot better than the taught masters that is the Legal Practice Course with its internally set and internally marked assessments, and its phenomenally high pass rate. That also has its casualties: those who spend a lot of time and money to end up working, if they are lucky, as a paralegal for years and years earning little in the hope that eventually, whenever, they might actually become a solicitor at a firm that is doing well.