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@Edgar Wagner; Commented on: 11 January 2018 16:34 GMT

"....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. ...."

I think you mean 2018? But what stats are you talking about please?

".....What did the Law Society and the country as whole really gain by failing him and so many others at that time? .."

The LSF was a generic exam that enabled a Trainee / Articled Clerk to be able to think laterally across a problem given to them in what would be inevitably for most their first couple of years experience (though those who had clerking work usually did much better on the LSF we know - i.e for example having immediate first hand practical experience in the Employment/Consumer and Litigation (Criminal and Civil) heads).

"......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". ..."

In a Poly I knew, only 35% passed outright without referrals first time. When they got the right to administer the LPC unsupervised, their pass rate would I doubt not have been less than the (I understand) 90% pass rate. So students can get 2.5 or so more intelligent overnight it is true.

".....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. .."

Acknowledged.

".....Not what they were in the early 1980s, ...."

I dont understand you here. The LSF ran from 1980 to 1994.