Nick Gillies reviews the state of the LPC Nation with Deans of leading law schools legal practice course
| "The studies preparing people to practice as solicitors in England & Wales are unsatisfactory. This is neither a radical-student nor an ivory-tower-academic viewpoint. It comes from deans of leading law schools and directors of legal practice courses." In this article, commissioned by CONSILIO, the LPC is considered from the law school perspective. We will be inviting comment from law firms, The Law Society and students in future articles. |
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The
problems begin before students apply to do a degree, but they come
to a head during the legal practice course (LPC). Too much time
is spent on remedial education, making up what the students didn’t
learn at university, or have already forgotten. The introduction
of fees into degree-level education has had a distorting effect
on the courses they want to take in the LPC. |
The consequence
of the need to prepare so many students for commercial law practice
means that the courses are both too narrow and too wide: they
don’t
prepare in depth for either a career in commercial law or in public sector
law, but offer a bit of both.
On top of all that there are staff shortages across the academic world, and
an uncertainty about the future.
| To
begin at the beginning, the introduction of fees for university
tuition, on top of the replacement of study grants by student loans,
has caused widespread fear. It’s wrong that an article on the views of the Deans and Directors of LPC courses should spend so much time talking about the effect of fees. Most of the readers of this have made the decision that they will pay fees, after all. Unfortunately, it’s only wrong morally. To ignore the effect of fees on the LPC is like ignoring the elephant in the sitting-room. |
"To begin at the beginning, the introduction of fees for university tuition, on top of the replacement of study grants by student loans, has caused widespread fear." |
| "The proportion of students from a working-class background has fallen. This is a paradox, because it was the Government’s aim to broaden the range of people going to university." | The
proportion of students from a working-class background has fallen.
This is a paradox, because it was the Government’s aim to
broaden the range of people going to university. But in the longer term it is having beneficial effects, in forcing the heads of legal training institutions to find creative solutions. Nottingham Law School is finalising a deal with a local college of further education to provide a two-year course that will admit people to the second year of its law degree. BPP, a commercial provider of professional courses, is running distance-learning courses with lectures one weekend a month. |
| So access can be widened. The problem is that law degrees are starved of funding. Vice-chancellors love law faculties because they don’t need a lot of capital. But the undergraduates are cheated by the universities, who divert their fees to other faculties, and then by the law departments themselves, which take money paid for teaching to fund research. The result is that there are not enough lecturers to keep students on their toes. | "So access can be widened. The problem is that law degrees are starved of funding." |
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There are two things you need throughout almost any law studies, a knowledge of how to use your tools (statutes and cases), and an understanding of contract law. These have to be taught at once. The problem is that, as Peter Jones, Dean of Nottingham Law School, says “Unless something is assessed students won’t take it seriously.” Nottingham Law School |
The effect of this is that, although research is taught in depth, the next courses students take are taught by hand-outs, and the skills atrophy. To give students the grounding they need there needs to be compulsory mooting and a major project involving understanding of statute law, throughout the degree. “Those are staff intensive”, Professor Jones admits, “they’ve had to go.”
| Complaints
by LPC staff about the inadequacies of law graduates have reached
such a pitch that the universities are taking action, and the product
(you are, rather brutally, called ‘product‘at each
stage) is expected to improve in the next two or three years. Conversely, the purity of academia has been shattered, and there is competition for students and the best students. The College of Law is currently looking at the feasibility of extended mooting and running a hypothetical deal. |
"Complaints by LPC staff about the inadequacies of law graduates have reached such a pitch that the universities are taking action...." |
"The
other area in which the LPC has to be remedial is in ‘commerciality’. |
The
other area in which the LPC has to be remedial is in ‘commerciality’.
This is compelled by the commercial law firms, who say trainees
are embarking on a life of commercial law with no idea what the
City of London does. That is partly the fault of the English system, which allows 17-year-olds to make career decisions that most other countries put off to the post-graduate phase. However, this is being diluted by the number of graduates of other disciplines who are coming onto the LPC after taking the CPE. Law firms love engineers, scientists and language graduates. |
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Nigel
Savage, Chief Executive of the College of Law, says “Students
are voting with their feet.” He dismissed the observation
that solicitors with the one-year CPE qualification were not
recognised as legally qualified in New York or Sydney. The College of Law |
But that brings up a longer-term problem: is your LPC necessary? Professor Bob Lee of Cardiff University (and an assessor for the Law Society) makes the point that education is global. “I’m looking at paying £30,000 for my son to study engineering at Nottingham. But if I’ve got to pay the fees wouldn’t it be better to send him to MIT or CalTech? And doesn’t the same apply to law? Isn’t a New York Bar qualification just as attractive to employers?" University
of Cardiff Law School |
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People have complained in the past about the distorting effect of
the City’s
voracious demand for trainees. Now they are complaining of the demand
of students for the course that will most advantage them with commercial
law
firms. “In a way we’ve become supply-led”, muses
Professor Lee. “Students put huge pressure on firms for a summer
placement, and on chambers for a mini-pupillage. Some of them must
be being
found places
out of altruism.”
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The
problem is that the LPC is in a strait-jacket, forced on it by
the Law Society. It has to teach certain compulsory courses, and
teach others to a certain depth. “The required standards
and required competencies produces a skeletal lawyer, with no flesh
of understanding on the bones.” says Nick Johnson,
of the Oxford Institute of Legal Practice. “If I had the freedom
I’d reduce the syllabus to make way for the realities of
legal life. I’d like to give them a flavour of reality: authority,
ethics, even dealing with your secretary.” |
That was a middle-of -road-view. One side complained that the Law Society was being strangled by its own structure, and could not make the changes needed. The other side was represented by Professor Jones, who said “I would be uncomfortable if we lost the broadly-trained, lateral-thinking solicitor. But the programme must be more closely tied to practice.”
Of
course, there is already a specialised course, for students aiming
for commercial legal practice. Early feedback from the first year
is -anecdotally- good, says John Hermann, a director of
BPP Law School. “The initial feedback is that trainees this year
do show more commercial awareness.” he says. “Their
research skills are better, and they know more substantive law.” |
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Feedback
from trainees who have been through the course is that it was quite
demanding (“We make no pretence otherwise” says
Hermann) but there is a direct correlation between what they
learn on the course
and practice.
This is a difficult area to talk about, because the teaching
methods at each institution vary, and they change from year to
year. The
fashion in
educational
circles for continuous assessment is on the wane. Practice showed
that students were concentrating on the narrow detail of the
assessment, rather than the
broader view needed to sit the exam. There’s also an awareness
that written skills are at least as important as debating ones.
"Finally, there is a growing worry about staff to teach the courses." |
Finally,
there is a growing worry about staff to teach the courses. In the
past recruiting teachers has not been difficult. Many lawyers decide
after three or four years as solicitors that they have had enough
of late-night and weekend working. The City in general, not just law firms, has not been an equal opportunity employer for women or ethnic minorities. And there are many people who have an affinity for teaching. |
Lately,
though, things have been growing more difficult. “We’re
still making good appointments, but the short-lists aren’t so
good.” admits
Nick Johnson. Bob Lee says two rounds of advertising for five posts
have netted one appointment.
Haven’t these people heard there’s a recession? Every week the
trade press is full of stories of teams of lawyers being axed. That’s
true, but have they the right experience? BPP Law School is paying well,
and offering an attractive variety of work, says Hermann, but it’s
still difficult to find people to teach equity finance.
There are two reasons for this famine. The first is something the public
cannot believe: City lawyers are poorly paid. It’s relative, admittedly,
but they are attractive potential employees in the City and Wall Street,
where institutions can pay them a lot more, sometimes several times more.
Even in this recession City lawyers worry about retention rates.
The second reason is the re-structuring of law firms. Support lawyers
get a handsome salary and a family life. High-quality women, in particular,
are
not leaving the City law firms in the same numbers as in the past.
What
is saving the situation at the moment is the middle-aged. Many
recent appointments have been of lawyers in their forties who
are cashing in their chips, restructuring
their lives and looking for something useful and more enjoyable. |
"What
is saving the situation at the moment is the middle-aged."
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In the long
term the introduction of fees may be beneficial. It is forcing a shake-up
of education, with new courses to widen access,
and an insistence
by better-informed ‘consumers’ (both students and law
firms) on better-quality teaching.
Speaking to the deans and directors did not give me an impression
of doom and battle-weariness. Over all, my feeling was that these
were
practical
men who are realistic about the difficulties, but are laying the foundations.
Links to information on the Legal Practice Course
Compiled by The Editors, Consilio
| .Law Society Information | .Other useful links on the LPC | |||
To assist students we have provided direct links to the relevant pages. These are all Law Society information pages. LPC Provider Information The Law Society inspect Law Schools validated to provide LPC courses on a regular basis. The
Reports may be found on The Law Society website. The instituitons featured
in this article are rated as follows (as per information available
on The Law Society website on 28 February 2003. BPP
Law School - Very Good Please note that we have restricted our article to five law schools. BPP, Nottingham and Oxford provide the City LPC. We wished to hear the views of two of the law schools who do not provide the City LPC: College of Law and Cardiff. For a full list of LPC providers please click here and visit their websites.
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Information provided by The Legal Practice Course providers Group
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