Multiplicity and mutability in professional legal education in England and Wales

Ching, J. ORCID: 0000-0002-9815-8804, 2018. Multiplicity and mutability in professional legal education in England and Wales. In: Jahrbuch der Rechtsdidaktik 2017. Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, pp. 279-324. ISBN 9783830538400

Preview

Text PubSub9715_Ching.pdf - Post-print Download (762kB) | Preview

Abstract

The picture of legal services provision in England and Wales is highly complex, with multiple legal professions obliged, under the Legal Services Act 2007, to compete with each other. Each profession has its own qualification route or routes. Some are similar to the German dual vocational system. Others ostensibly rely on an undergraduate law degree that is not normally designed to align with practice (although some employers may prefer graduates of a one year conversion course) as the initial stage of a sequential approach involving a vocational course followed by a period of supervised practice. Government has, further, mandated new apprenticeship routes which speak closely to the culture of the professions that real learning to be a lawyer occurs in the workplace. Nevertheless, there are serious concerns about the diversity of some of the professions and the fact that in the higher-status, sequential models, young people can invest in two thirds of a qualification without being able to achieve the mandated work experience to complete it.

This article examines the current environment of regulation of legal professional education and proposed and actual changes made after the wide ranging Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) of 2013, concluding that although current developments emphasise choice they do not necessarily promote diversity in legal professionals.

Item Type:	Chapter in book
Creators:	Ching, J.
Publisher:	Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag
Place of Publication:	Berlin
Date:	2018
ISBN:	9783830538400
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham Law School
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	04 May 2018 09:52
Last Modified:	31 May 2018 13:47
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/33432

Actions (login required)

Edit View

Views

Downloads