Time to rein in the law schools

As Head of the Bristol Institute of Legal Practice (BILP) at UWE, I read this article with much interest.

1. Fees. At BILP, we have been taking steps this year to make our LPC and CPE provision more affordable for our prospective students and our client firms alike. For example, we will be charging £7,860 for our full time Bristol LPC whereas the College of Law will be charging £10,200 in the same city. I believe strongly that all providers must do more to justify high fees in these recessionary times. However, it is important not to overlook why LPCs are so expensive relative to undergraduate courses. In order to ensure a certain standard in professional legal training, LPCs are required to adhere to strict validation conditions set down by the SRA. These conditions relate to such things as minimum notional study hours (which themselves need to be supported by practice-based teaching materials), the quality of the physical resources accommodating the course and the number of staff allocated to the provision. All of this makes for a very resource intensive course. Traditional (and relatively cheap) large group lecture formats do not by and large meet the demands of the course. Skills training and assessing often involves small groups of students. Online materials need to be written, developed and updated while student responses to online exercises need to be reviewed and dealt with in class. Online discussions monitored by tutors are exceptionally time-intensive activities.

2. I would argue that it is at undergraduate level that prospective students need to be given clear information about the cost of training and the state of the marketplace. When a student has obtained a qualifying law degree or a CPE qualification, it is perhaps a little too late to start deterring him or her from commencing study on the LPC and may well be contrary to the equal opportunities/widening participation agenda. Of course, it is for professional law schools to link up with academic law schools and get the relevant information out there. Undergraduate law schools (some never keen to foster links with the professions!) need to be more welcoming of this cause.

3. We and other leading LPC providers have called for a return of SRA assessment visits in order to inform customer choice. I agree that key performance indicators should be assessed and graded by a monitoring panel and that these grades should be made public. However, there are problems with your suggested "Employability" indicator. Is it really right that providers should be judged by the employability success rate of their ex-students? How do you keep track of ex-students? Should the employability factor really create pressure on a provider to keep admissions strict as you suggest? Would this in fact inhibit those without training contracts at an early stage from entering the profession thus flying in the face of the equal opportunities/widening participation agenda (i.e. is it not likely that it will be the relatively poor and not so well-connected students who will be put off from applying by such statistics)? As professional law schools it is not our responsibility to find jobs for students although I wholeheartedly agree that we should do everything we can to advise on marketplace conditions at undergraduate level (see above) and provide top notch careers advice to our students. You are right therefore to suggest that the level/quality of careers advice should be assessed.

4. I would suggest that it is perhaps best to refer to the LPC as the vocational part of training rather than the academic stage of training (for which, see Law degrees/CPEs!). However, we are happy to make it clear to students what place the LPC has in the overall scheme of things. In my view, this is part of the need to provide clear information to undergraduate students. In my experience, LPC entrants are very clear about the position of the course in the overall training scheme. Very full information on the LPC itself is supplied by providers to prospective students (sometimes via the SRA's web pages) in accordance with strict validation conditions.

Thank you for such a thought provoking article. In calling for the reinstatement of LPC assessment visits, I am in effect endorsing your view that there should be some sort of protection offered to students in the marketplace! We may disagree on the precise nature of the protection but that's about all! If you would like to discuss the Law School's perspective further, do contact me at UWE.

"Having the 'employment' criteria will mean that law schools will be under pressure to keep their admissions strict or risk their ratios being diluted." - Perhaps the simple solution is simply to only allow those applicants with a Training Contract already secured to start the LPC. If a 'league table' is adopted then this is likely to be the reaction of the commercial LPC providers to ensure a 100% ratio.

While I agree with the objectives to proposals 2 and 4, I do not believe the proposed solution is appropriate. Like a "smoking kills" sticker on a pack of cigarettes these proposals would give more information to the consumer and allow for a more informed choice but do nothing to address the risk and 'dangers' of the product.

Such a charter would be a 'plaster' on the underlying problem of Universities producing too many Law graduates (presumably due to the cost of supplying a law degree relative to other degrees). With the increasing pressures on University funding this situation is not likely to change in the near future. I would like to see more effort made to reform the Law degree as a route into practice - perhaps universities and local firms encouraged to work together to offer 6 year courses combining the degree, LPC and two years of relevant work experience. There would still be a place for the commercial LPC and GDL providers to non-law graduates.

More great work from Beth - thank you!

I have become a solicitor at enormous expense to both me personally and my parents. We are both going to be feeling the pinch for decades to come.

I certainly did not know of the ILEX route to qualifying when I decided to do the GDL and LPC -and let's face it, that is the route for people who have firms paying for them.

In hindsight, I expect many people stuck in paralegalling after the LPC would wish they had done the BVC and could take advantage of the opportunity for cross qualifying to solicitor after 2 years of legal work.

I was extremely lucky getting my training contract without any delay - but I think I stood out due to years of poorly paid / voluntary legal work previously.

After enduring 5 months of unemployment following completion of my training at that firm (although I naively did not expect this period of unemployment, I still believe it was better than staying where I was, but that is another story), I was lucky again in securing an (unadvertised) NQ role

I have made it through the process successfully, by the skin of my teeth, at huge expense, and thanks in great part to being in the right place at the right time.

I would not recommend to anyone to do what I have done. The only stage at which I had any control over my situation was initially, when I signed up to £20,000 of personal debt (not including the interest).

I think that the Law Society should take responsibility for the overall situation. It has shown a deplorable lack of responsibility towards people who are taking the first expensive investments to steps to join the profession. The GDL and LPC providers can not realistically be expected to fulfill this role, their position is a commercial one and their clients are often law firms rather than self funding individuals.

I would add a critical rating criteria - a percentage given on how a school is rated by past and present students. I disagree that '[Law Schools] can't be expected to represent students - it's not their job'. Like other businesses, UK Law Schools should learn to put their clients (students) first and deliver the best service possible. Such an attitude makes for better schools. The UK should follow the example of US Law Schools which give good value for money, have stronger branding and seem to develop stronger Alumni bodies - because they focus on their students! Let's also not forget that Law Schools have a moral duty to students and to the legal industry/ profession as a whole to prepare students technically (on the law) as well as on managing their careers and skills so as to add greater value to society. Having studied at highly rated law schools in the US and UK, I can honestly say the difference in experience was like day and night. In the former I was treated like a valued professional/ colleague whereas in the latter I felt the focus was on generating more money for the institution and cutting back on costs at students' expense.

Beth, this will not help to solve the problem.

Even if one gets a training contract, the SRA set minimum wage for trainee solicitor of 19k pa will not guarantee paying off the debt.

The GdL/LPC providers have a unique position in that the SRA requires students to have an LLB or other degree first. The unis are not recognised to run the GdL/LPC or are too snobbish to do so (not academic enough).

The SRA and legislator should create a universal LLB, the LLB+. The academic stage would include the LPC/BVC content and unis could do the work of the College of Law. Directly after leaving the uni with the LLB+ one can start on doing the pupillage or training contract. If one does not secure one, then no morries, you can try later and in the meanwhile go for another career.

In any case my LLB was useless for practice and the theory could have been compressed. I would have been better off to do the GdL in the first, the BVC in the second, the LPC in the third and theory pervasive or in an additional 4th year.

Thank you all for your comments, they are genuinely appreciated.

The only one I would take issue with is the Steve's idea that deterring entry to the LPC / GDL may "well be contrary to the equal opportunities / widening participation agenda".

One point I repeatedly make over and over again is that access to the LPC is not the same thing as access to the profession. Merely completing an LPC does not automatically lead to 'widening participation'; one need only see the swarms of LPC graduates without training contracts to see that.

Also, there are institutions already offering the LPC as part of a Qualifying Law Degree. Not sure if this is as deep reform as suggested but it is certainly a bridge between the two extremes. I don't know if the LPC will ever be scrapped. We'll have to wait until after a few years of work-based learning, I imagine.

Poster Feb 14 - (the one who said I was up to great work. Thanks. Do I know you? It's rare and frankly unnerving for strangers to compliment me) - do you believe the responsibility lies more with the SRA or the Law Society?

Personally, I don’t think that any regulator ought to be meddling with course fees; that ought to be a job for the free market. Otherwise, it could become a race to the bottom in terms of quality. Though I certainly agree that law schools are making excessive levels of profit from what they’re doing.

By far the biggest problem with law schools, I believe, is that they give misleading information or at least half-truths about the career prospects after finishing law school. I’m not sure that it ought to be necessary to have a training contract before starting training, as that would greatly reduce access. Sorry, I’m stating the obvious. But the system by which barristers in particular are trained is unacceptable. People going to law school are taking on debts and a substantial risk that they will never recover that investment. The only people who can take this sort of risk are people with substantial funds (often family money) behind them. So the greater the risk of non-recovery of investment, the narrower the pool from which lawyers are drawn. Hence, 7% of the UK’s population go to private school, but 70% of successful barristers went to private school, according to a recent article in the Economist. That fact is an abomination in a democratic society and is an abrogation of responsibility to society at large of a profession.

Rant, rant, rant. If I were justice minister, I would force total overhaul of how lawyers, and barristers in particular, are trained. Every citizen is an important stakeholder in the legal profession and the legal profession thus has a duty to society to be representative of society as a whole (so far as possible, I’m not suggesting that Cheryl Cole ought to have a part-time job as a QC). But there isn’t equality of opportunity and so this reduces access to justice.

Go for it.

"Personally, I don’t think that any regulator ought to be meddling with course fees; that ought to be a job for the free market." I disagree. If the regulator has chosen to 'meddle' with minimum salaries for those training to join the profession then it should take more responsibility for those who take the first step into that profession by embarking on the academic stage of training. If the salary of a trainee was left to the free market then it would drop to meet the excess demand for the work. Firms paying 'paralegals' who have passed the LPC £15k to do work equivalent to a 'trainee' may be forced to convert that paralegal's contract of employment to a 'training contract' or risk losing that worker to another firm. This would improve access to the profession and maintain quality because firms will know the quality they can expect from that worker.

By artificially inflating the market wage for a 'trainee' the regulator has created an economic barrier to entry which should be removed before hypocritical initiatives to improve access are considered. The barrier successfully creates an enhanced status for the title of 'trainee solicitor' and thus 'solicitor' and artificially increases the perceived status gap between solicitors, paralegals (and legal execs!) when all are essentially 'legal workers' of which I am sure there are examples of good and bad quality in each. The LPC providers are happy that this perceived gap be maintained as it inflates the fees they can charge for their over subscribed courses - the current system is certainly NOT a free market and requires urgent intervention!

I admire the passion, and I think you have put your argument very well, but I don't think that the providers are running some kind of big conspiracy which the students need protecting against. The relevant information and the statistics regarding chances of success etc. are already out there. It's simply a case of the student needing to do proper research and due diligence beforehand, which will lead them to make an informed decision. League tables would make very interesting reading, but that's more about where to go, rather than whether or not to go at all.

I would agree that law schools seem to have taken the commercial route of existing to generate profit. I can speak for the situation at my law school in London where many students in my own class I would deem not suitable for the legal profession, not competent or not motivated. First, I was surprised at how many had never even bothered to apply for training contracts, but were merely doing the LPC as a means to extend their student lifestyle. I was shocked by the sheer lack of competence displayed by some of my peers, some of whom were truly far below par. I don't want to be mean, but some were just not smart enough for yesterday's market, let alone today's. Many didn't seem to have the personal qualities which firms consider essential, such as confident communication skills, eagerness to participate etc. As for attendance, for all the talk of "we're recording your unjustified absences", some people didn't seem to care one bit. I often detected more than a hint of exasperation in many of my tutors over many of their students. But to be fair I can't recall any tutors who were disinterested or disheartened and I myself (contrary to many others, I realise) thought the LPC was useful and even intellectually challenging.

The hard truth is many, many LPC graduates I know will never find training contracts. Many indeed will not even find work as paralegals. For these people, the LPC will have been useful as continuing postgraduate education but without the universal recognition of a degree. They might as well have done a Masters degree and slashed their tuition fees by half. As for paralegals, it is obvious to any observer of today's job market that few will now get hired without the LPC in the bag. I question whether paralegals really need the LPC but I do recognise that some use it as a route to a TC.The term "paralegal", in my opinion, is demeaning should be dropped entirely, in much the same way as secretary has mostly been replaced by PA. The bottom line is there are too many candidates chasing too few TCs. Law is still an attractive proposition, even though lawyers are now no longer among the top 5 paying professions in the UK.

In my opinion, a simple reform could address the huge surplus of redundant LPC graduates while at the same time introducing a strong dose of competition within the legal profession. In essence, access to the fundamental practice of law is over-regulated.

First, the LPC is a vocational course and so should be treated as such. It is meant to (and does so) test people's ability to become solicitors. The clue is simply in its title: legal practice. It is wholly equivalent to a bar exam (or for that matter to medical finals, which entitle graduates to be called doctors). People who graduate from it should be entitled to call themselves solicitors in much the same way as people who pass the BVC are entitled to call themselves barristers.

Second, non-qualified solicitors should be permitted to provide non-contentious legal advice only to persons who employ them, but only if these are legal persons or organisations, ie companies, charities, government etc. In other words, they would be in-house "counsel" or continental-style "jurists". These legal professionals would still be fully subject to the Solicitor's Code of Conduct. Business would benefit by drastically lowering its outsourced legal costs but would still need to rely on outside law firms to provide expertise in truly complex matters. Many LPC graduates, especially those with strong commercial awareness, would find this option truly rewarding and career enhancing. I suspect many top law firms would face stiff competition from business for some of the brightest candidates.

Third, qualified solicitors would retain the right to advise members of the public, the exclusive right to represent clients in any contentious proceedings and the right to appear before the courts. Furthermore, in order to protect the interests of existing law firms and solicitors, law firms would be barred from employing non-qualified solicitors, unless they were first put through a period of traineeship equivalent to a TC. Incidentally, this would mean that many non-qualified solicitors with years of experience in industry would suddenly be an attractive proposition for law firms, at a stroke sweeping aside any age discrimination concerns.

This simple reform would open up the legal profession to much increased competition with minimal regulatory reform, whilst ensuring that all legal professionals still achieve a minimum standard as set by the LPC. It would avoid the current rigmarole with ABS, specifically the issue of how to reconcile the ability of non-lawyers to own shares in law firms and yet make them subject to the rigours of professional ethics.

This proposal is not a revolution, by any means. This system works well in many countries, not least in Europe and in the US.

1. Fees must be proportionate to the amount of cost law schools accrue. If the majority of the course is online, that course must be substantially cheaper than one which is 'off-line'.

Not sure that perception bears out, as Mr Dinning explains - whilst one could "see" the cost of traditional chalk and talk by the very fact of having a salaried tutor in the room, it doesn't mean that the e-learning stuff is cheap or cheaper. If you value "teaching/learning/training" only by means of a live body in the room then, yes, there may be a point behind the assertion that online facility "must be substantially cheaper" but before this proposition holds you need to do some more investigation into the cost of developing, designing and supporting and resourcing the online facilities and what the training purpose of the LPC is - if you set it up as against universities which have considerably less regulation and course resource demands then, yes, it looks out of kilter. But are the law schools doing the same job as universities? The proposition is only merited if you believe them to be. One tutor lecturing 150 students may be much cheaper that e-learning and far more income and profit generated doing that. There are certain things that the LPC demands of law schools to provide and students to be able to do that mean that a traditional view of "teaching" cannot hold. And do bear in mind that there is in effect a set curriculum for much of the LPC so the law schools have to resource things in a particular way. If one approaches it as a "student" then, yes, it may be hard to see where the cost all goes.

2. Law schools should be incredibly, incredibly, incredibly clear to prospective students about the marketplace. They should encourage frank self-evaluation BEFORE the course starts. It is too much to expect every student to be interviewed, but admission to law schools needs to be looked at in great detail.

True, but there is also some responsibility on the part of the participant, surely? And, for that matter, schools and (particularly) universities. Because law degrees are big cash spinners for universities - see how many places come available on clearing each year as opposed to say advanced cooking - the universities are not going to risk this income and potential subsidy for failing courses by proclaiming loudly that the market is difficult. Whilst there is a responsibility on the law schools, of course, there is also responsibility on the entrant and their prior experiences and what happened before they go to BPP or COL or any other acronym.

3. There should be a league table of legal education providers. The SRA should allow the Law Society to rate each law school along five criteria, with each criteria having between 1 and 5 stars. Those criteria: 1. Teaching 2. Facilities 3. Careers advice 4. Administration 5. Employment (as in percentage of grads with jobs). These should be published on the Law Society's website annually.

They did used to do this - and I understand it is still part of the validation process. The point here Beth is for you and your team to get hold of the validation criteria and take those apart. Are those appropriate criteria? That's where the debate surely lies. Not sure how you would measure "employability" and, in any event, whether you can really state in any definitive sense whether a candidate's employability is the sole responsibility of the law school. Mess up your A-levels at 18? Don't fret, at 23 you can blame that on BPP. There would have to be some many givens and additional factors in why someone who may still not be able to spell cannot get a job that this may become a meaningless criterion.

Has the league table idea led to better universities?

Having the 'employment' criteria will mean that law schools will be under pressure to keep their admissions strict or risk their ratios being diluted. We must also have clear statistics of how many graduates are employed as paralegals and as solicitors after one year.

Presumably no-one would be employed as a solicitor one year after completing the LPC, but the point is a sound one.

4. The SRA must have a blurb in each law school prospectus or its advertising media, saying something like this "the LPC is the purely academic stage of legal qualification. It is no guarantee of admission to the roll and does not carry any rights of practice."

As Mr Dinning has noted, it isn't intended as an academic course nor should it be. Those who approach it as an academic course are still thinking of themselves as students and therefore the comparisons to university inevitably arise.

This is an extremely valuable debate but before asking whether the law schools and the LPC are fit for purpose, I think some more investigation into what that purpose actually is and the obligations on the law schools imposed by the regulator and whether the regulator's criteria are correct would make for a sounder discussion.

Firstly, I believe the questions asked on your survey will lead to conclusions being made that law schools are profiteering from students in what is a very competitive marketplace, which is perhaps not entirely fair. In short the questions asked facilitate a skewed conclusion.

Question 2 asks ‘Do you feel that law schools provide accurate information in relation to careers and job prospects before students sign up for courses?’.

I suspect that the majority of responses to this question, which includes mine, will be negative. When later discussing the results this will lend itself to a damning account that people believe that students are ruthlessly exploited by mean law schools that let people complete the course and who then can’t get jobs.

However, the natural follow up question is surely ‘Do you think it is the responsibility of law schools to provide accurate information in relation to careers and job prospects before students sign up for courses?’.

If asked this question, I would firmly suggest that it is probably not their responsibility. Anyone who is considering paying a vast £10,000 to complete a course would be well advised to investigate for themselves what their job prospects at the end of this are likely to be. Surely this is base commercial awareness?

Anyone who does not have the wherewithal to realise this is a prudent question, make pertinent enquiries off their own back and reach a considered opinion should probably not be working as a solicitor in the first place.

This, in my view, applies tenfold to the notion that schools must explain to students that doing the LPC does not immediately qualify them to practice (Point 2). These are not people walking in off the street! Surely this would be explained by a university careers department or they could have ascertained this for themselves in a basic look at what becoming a solicitor requires?

There appears to be this urgency to protect students from themselves because ‘obviously the poor little darlings don’t know what they are doing’ as if they are little lambs walking blindly to the slaughter. This is surely short sighted.

In regard to Point 3, as you say ‘Having the 'employment' criteria will mean that law schools will be under pressure to keep their admissions strict or risk their ratios being diluted’ which you believe will protect the young people you view as fools easily parted from their cash. This will in turn mean that these commercial businesses will wish to maintain their rating to ensure market positioning and will therefore turn away candidates which are in their view less likely to succeed long-term and would degrade their ranking.

Now, certainly there will be people that aren’t likely to achieve a fruitful career in the law and this can probably be recognised by a law school prior to allowing them on a course.

However, there will also be people that perhaps on paper do not appear to have the necessary academics etc to succeed but with concerted effort and self application can make the best of themselves and achieve.

To say to these people, ‘you may have the money to pay for the course and the school may be willing to teach it to you and you accept there is a risk but we’ve told them that you probably aren’t good enough to be admitted so it’s best you go home’ is exceedingly limiting and frankly immensely patronising.

Additionally, the most glaring error here is that providing an incentive for law schools to only take the cream of the applicants and turn away candidates the SRA/Law Society deem unsuitable will lead to a reduction of social mobility and diversity within the profession. This would be a disaster.

In short, I respectfully believe the ‘principles’ espoused here to be short-sighted, patronising, potentially damaging and will restrict the options open to students in the belief that they are idiots and can’t gauge what is best for themselves. I would very much like to hear your thoughts on this.

"Fees must be proportionate to the amount of cost law schools accrue."

Why are law schools denied the market opportunities on which succesful solicitors firms thrive? I read week after week in The Lawyer about profits per equity partner running into hundreds of thousands of pounds. A succesful business model, keep overheads as low as possible, charge fees as high as the market allows. Even professors (typical age 45+) in university law schools earn about the same or less than 2 or 3 year pqe solicitors (typical age mid 20s) in city and large regional firms. Law schools have to run on business lines and law students are not (or shouldn't be) stupid uninformed consumers. There are already numerous league tables (including the National Student Survey, which focuses down to subject level). The information is already there, prospective students just need sufficient sense to look for it.

To Feb 25, 19:24 – I don’t think there is a big conspiracy either, I hope I haven’t given that impression. For the most part I don’t think students are helpless drunken lambs either. My argument is that there appears to be a gap where the information should be.

To Feb 26, 2:38 – You mention that those who graduate from the LPC should be entitled to call themselves solicitors. This proposal has already been put forward by the College of Law’s Legal Services Policy Institute. There are solid arguments in favour of it but I am not convinced at this stage whether it would rectify the problems we’re discussing. The jurist point is interesting, thanks.

To Feb 25, 8:04 - I hope the debate here and the responses to the survey will provide a useful addition to a debate which I think should be had out in the open.

To Feb 26, 11:28 - Thanks for your comments.

Broadly, everything in the law school apparatus is geared towards it being presented as a natural part of the continuum after university graduation. We have law ‘schools’ which can award degrees, we have ‘students’ (although perhaps they are more accurately customers), we have ‘graduates’ and we have a ‘qualification’ at the end of it.

The reality, as you rightly point out, is that we are dealing with a commercial context where an amount of ‘due diligence’ ought to apply.

The level or type of ‘due diligence’ an applicant carries out before entering a university and the level or type of ‘due diligence’ an applicant would carry out before entering a private commercial institution for a vocational course with debatable transferability are likely to be different. We have ended up with a mismatch between the perception of the commercial institution and the reality which should be addressed prior to entry. I don’t see this as being mutually exclusive with putting the onus on applicants to evaluate their best options.

In response to your point about access to the profession: the full-time LPC is often the default position for those on the university treadmill when ILEX or a part-time LPC may be more appropriate. Again, I don’t see a more accurate provision of information as being mutually exclusive with access to the profession.

Anyone with a bit of nous doesn't need the paternalism of such an approach. Anyone one without that nous, the profession doesn't need. Why part with ten thousand pounds in ignorance? If they cannot act in their own best interests, how can they act in the best interests of a client? At 21, one would expect much more. No-one is obliged to buy the law schools' product; no-one is obliged to be a solicitor.

Agreed with the post above that suggested a little more understanding of the system one criticises before one seeks to change it. Law Schools are not universities and these are not students. Treat the concepts as one and the same in each case and, inevitably, the proposition is naively skewed.

Several commentators (or maybe they are the same person) make the point that a critical self-evaluation and assessment of the market will save many from the disappointment of not being able to qualify within 2/3 years of completing the LPC. I would suggest that this may not have such a great effect. In a "perfect world," where all of the relevant information is easily accessible and disclaimers are prominent, many are still being asked to bet on their future. Some people will have applied for training contracts during university without success and some will, for whatever reason, not yet have started the application process. Some may even have a training contract secured which is ultimately postponed or withdrawn. One may have all the necessary information available but the ultimate decision is still likely to be a risk vs reward 'gamble' rather than a logical decision. When one is forced to consider the alternatives to the LPC which may be short/long term unemployment or another expensive course to enter another profession, then that 'gamble' may seem even more attractive. Limiting entry to the LPC to only those with a training contract secured will stop all from 'gambling' with their futures and force them to do that self-evaluation.

Limiting entry to the LPC to only those with a training contract will not force people to do that self evaluation; it will prevent people from taking any calculated risk at all. All they will be able to do is sit at home and think 'I wish I could have tried as I might have succeeded'.

People should be responsible for educating themselves as to the difficulties of finding a training contract before parting with £10k. The law schools should be entitled to take all those that they have capacity for and wish to teach.

My fundamental point is that people should be entitled to take that gamble if they so wish. If they have £10k to spend then why tell that person and the law school that they cannot take the course. Preventing people from taking the course serves only to restrict what people may enter the profession even earlier and robs people of the opportunity and attempt based on some woolly notion of looking after poor little students (actually grown adults).

These adults should conduct their 'due diligence' before parting with their money but be entitled to make any decision they wish. If they want to gamble with their money then who is anybody to say otherwise and to what benefit?

Limiting entry to the LPC to those with a training contract is a terrible idea. I know a lot of law firms recruit a long way in advance but for legal aid and small high street firms, it simply isn't like that. There's more to the profession than big commercial firms. I was the lucky beneficiary of an LSC sponsored training contract, and was able to secure the training contract in October of the LPC year, about 7 weeks after having started the course.

I have no doubt people will respond that legal aid firms will start recruiting further in advance if there are no people with the LPC and no training contract to pick from, but doubt this for two reasons.

1) Recruitment is really patchy in the sector at the moment anyway, hene the need for the LSC training contract scheme. It simply isn't feasible for some small legal aid firms to recruit a year in advance, particularly as a lot of them like paralegal experience anyway.

2) Let's say the rule about not being allowed on the LPC without a training contract started as of this September. There'd still be a large pool of people who did the LPC before the rule and didn't have training contracts. They'd potentially be a more attractive proposition to a recruiter who needs someone asap than a person who won't be available for at least a year. Eventually this pool would presumably entry, but that could take a long, long time. Meanwhile it would be nigh on impossible for people to do the LPC with a view to a legal aid/high street training contract for several years.

I say this whilst fully agreeing that a number of my fellow students on the LPC were clearly not solicitor material.

Regarding the paralegal discussion, paralegalling before the training contract shouldn't necessarily be seen as a bad thing in itself. I had no practical legal work experience before starting mine, and found it a massive culture shock. A few months paralegalling would have left me much better prepared.