Legal Cheek's Future of Legal Education and Training Conference

[Jonty]

Hey guys,

I was lucky enough to get taken along to this all day conference yesterday which featured both a cracking guest list and free breakfast & lunch, an all-round win really.

I thought you may find it helpful to hear a little bit about some of the things that were mentioned, as it'll directly affect you all in the near future. You have to bear with me though, I lost some of my notes from the day so there will be parts mostly from memory.


Session 1

The morning session was all short talks (around 10 minutes) about innovation in the industry & what kind of future it may hold.

We heard from David Halliwell (Director of Knowledge & Innovation Delivery at Pinsent Masons) who spoke at length about how the roles within law are changing. He pointed some of the roles now available include legal technologists, legaltech project managers and legal engineers (although Scottish firm Cloch Solicitors are trying to trademark the term apparently, so be careful how you use it!). He went on to talk about how this reflects the move in the industry from the traditional route and how it may well open up to a point where we have far, far more roles on offer within law firms.

Next up was Isabel Parker (Chief Legal Innovation Officer at Freshfields) who spoke on the topic of diversity, namely cognitive diversity. The idea of pushing creativity within firms, rather than mechanical operatives. She mentioned the need to look for out of the box candidates, rather than hiring within their own image. So, on that note, I think we can expect more and more paths to pop up as the magic circle and others look for a different kind of thinker.
Parker also spoke about the need for law firms to encourage more people to get involved with technology but also to allow solicitors in firms the freedom to play (and fail) with technology. On that note, David Halliwell spoke about how Pinsent Masons have set up a programme which allows solicitors to have a coupon inhouse which counts as a "discount" against their billable hours targets, thus hours they plug into lawtech sessions are hours they don't have to try to make up elsewhere.

Third session was from Shruti Ajitsaria (Head of Fuse at Allen & Overy). Shruti was probably my favourite speaker of the day and is generally just a great source of friendly information - if any of you want something to put on your CV you may want to look into (politely) contacting her to find out if you can go down to Fuse to see what they do down there, as she mentioned she was open to the idea yesterday of solicitors coming in and I doubt she would mind law students contacting her too.

Shruti spoke about how she got to opening Fuse after working as a derivatives solicitor at A&O for a long time and becoming frustrated at the lack of tech coming through. She mentioned an example of frustration during the GFC. A&O had a ton of derivatives agreements, which were created in Microsoft Word, printed off, signed and filed away somewhere. They had thousands of these, with 90% of them being pretty standard with identical clauses. After the crisis began, clients would need to know what the contract said about e.g. insolvency. So they would have to dig out the derivatives contract, from thousands, flick to the right page to find the insolvency clause. Or they needed to know whether the contract was signed. So they would have to dig out the derivatives contract, from thousands, flick to the right page and check whether it was signed etc. She said a simple monitoring program which could have automated this would have saved them hours of time but the problem was this was how derivatives had always been done and change is a difficult thing to push in law firms.

Fuse works with all departments of A&O and encourages them all to work with the tech companies and try to create something, with the end goal to try to develop a better work/life balance for their lawyers and attempt to cut down on the 60/70/80 hour week by moving the time-consuming manual labour over to technology.

Last up in the session was Julia Salasky, (founder of CrowdJustice) who worked for Linklaters and the UN before growing frustrated with the lack of creativity with which she was able to do her work. Everything is very much how it has always been, so she wanted to do something differently. She spoke a lot about having an entrepreneurial attitude and what that means; she basically boiled her most important lessons down to not being afraid to fail and accepting that there are some fires which you can't put out as you work. Sometimes you have to let the fires in the business burn whilst you concentrate on other areas.


Session 2

The second morning session talked about the skills that the next generation of lawyers need/the current missed when they were hired. It featured research from BPP and talks from Jo-Anne Pugh (Director of Strategic Design at BPP), Adam Corphey (Head of Innovation Technology at BPP) and Mark Collins (Global Head of Knowledge Management at Herbert Smith).

They had conducted research before the conference with 77 legal entitites (inc. Global firms, National firms, Regional firms, Small/Boutique, in-house etc) to find out exactly what they felt were missing. The 9 areas they highlighted for future candidates, with the ones they chose as most important in bold, are:

• Commerciality - i.e. commercial awareness, understanding the law firm is a business, understanding business trends etc

• Tech/Digital skills - i.e. the ability to analyse tech and data, awareness of lawtech (with exposure to it a big plus in their eyes - you can get exposure by heading to demo events etc)

• Written Communication - Interestingly, they said written communication is a major area which needs improvement upon hiring. They said the ability to write concisely with attention to detail just isn't there in new hires, even when simply drafting written comms in the form of emails, and they spend a lot of time developing this.

• Client facing skills - Personally think it's a bit of a weird one for them to have highlighted. It doesn't seem an area that students can work on that heavily? Maybe Jaysen will disagree and come up with examples of how to develop these skills but personally believe this is something which law firms should expect to teach, not expect future candidates to have.

• Flexibility & Resilience - I think probably obvious that adaptability is a big skill to be sought out by firms at the moment. With Lawtech & the SQE coming in, there seems a lot of change to be afoot in the legal industry and they want candidates that they feel can deal with this.

• Professionalism - Not just how you present yourself at interviews (appearance, etiquette etc) but also other areas too such as your social media presence, as social media begins to play a bigger part of day-to-day professional life and moves away from being a totally separate entity.

• Time & Self-management - Law firms want, more and more, someone who can demonstrate that they can manage themselves and their time effectively. They mentioned examples such as demonstrating project management skills (even on a small scale such as planning and organisation of group activities).

• Teamwork - They highlighted the various real functions of what they meant by this. They don't just mean playing in your local football team but rather displaying emotional intelligence and a desire to work within a team to better serve firms who are, increasingly, working across business functions with mixed teams.They also said email has begun to destroy internal social interactions and they want candidates who would prefer to walk across the office and actually talk to the person they need to.

• Creativity - The final skill they selected as important, they want candidates who are creative and have new ways of thinking. Try to figure out ways of displaying this on your application but, also, take it with a pinch of salt given I'm not entirely convinced they mean they want an entirely new breed of candidate, rather a slightly creative variant on the ones they get now.

 

[Jonty]

Continued here due to the character count limit.

Session 3


The afternoon session had an intense two hour session on the SQE.


To begin with Julie Brannan (Director of Education at SRA) began with a discussion about why the SQE is necessary. She highlighted the big drop-off of student numbers between graduation with a law degree and commencing the LPC, pushing forwards the idea that whilst some of these graduates will have simply chosen a career outside of traditional law, it is unacceptable that the current method of LPC/TC means many will simply not be in a position to take a gamble, thus those of a certain social class will be discouraged from pursuing a career in law. She also highlighted the LPC pass-rate of white candidates (80%), Asian candidates (50%) and Black candidates (40%) as further proof that change is necessary to try to counter-balance the current situation.


However, details were light on the ground as to what the SQE will consist of. We know it'll be 2 parts with 2 years of qualifying experience necessary. The 2nd part may be more focused on practical skills picked up by the experience, so in theory it would be done at the end of the qualifying period. The qualifying period is still up in the air, but it seems experience gained under the supervision of a qualified solicitor will be enough. In short; the SQE is coming but nobody seems to know what it'll be.


After this it got fun (or irritiating depending on which side of the fence you sit on) as Thom Brooks (Dean of Durham Law School) had a rant about how the SQE is similar to Brexit - nobody asked for it and the details as to how it'll happen are nil; SQE means SQE. After this, Richard Moorhead (Chair of Law & Professional Ethics at UCL) stood up and similarly offered a criticism of the SQE; how nobody really knows what is going to happen or what the effect will be. He called for a slow transition into it, a testing of areas alongside the current system. Crispin Rapinet (Training Principal at Hogan Lovells) similarly echoed the criticisms of this approach to change within the industry. He stated it's impossible to move forwards and plan without any detail.


Maeve Lavelle (Director of Education & Community Programmes at Neota Logic) offered a different perspective on the SQE's introduction, talking about how change is necessary within the industry from both a social perspective (given the increasing lack of access to justice but also diversity issues within law) as well as discussing the need for cognitive diversity within the industry, which is unlikely to happen quickly or at all if change isn't embraced. She drove home the point that change isn't something the legal industry does quickly and that the SRA seemingly taking a backward step from being hands-on involved in regulating universities/law firms over SQE actually indicates a smart move on their part, a nod to the fact that regulators in most industries struggle to keep up with change.


After this we heard more of the same criticisms of the SQE from Chris Howard (Professor of Legal Education at KCL), a discussion on the importance of pro bono projects from Linden Thomas (CEPLER Manager at Birmingham Uni) and a general talk about the value of a law degree from Andrew Francis (Professor of Law at Leeds Uni).

Session 4


The final session of the day was quite interesting and featured a panel discussion of apprenticeships are affecting other industries and what training/development is happening within them. Euan Blair (CEO of Whitehat), Keily Blair (Director of Regulatory & Commercial Disputes/Head of Legal Training at PwC), Iain Gallagher (Senior Manager of Emerging Talent at Santander), Sam Harper (GC at Deliveroo) and Samuel Gordon (Research Analyst at Institute of Student Employers) had a general discussion about the pros and cons of apprenticeships, and whether the legal sector would introduce them or not. I'm not really going to detail out the points because my notes are pretty crap from this section of the day and also I'm not sure how relevant it'd be to you lot given your aspirations but the end takeaway from this session was that apprenticeships can be great or terrible, it depends on the person. More firms should do it as it can encourage social mobility far more than most other initiatives but it seems unlikely we'll see the legal sector introduce them in any meaningful manner.

_______________________________________________________________________________


To be honest with you guys, it was a really great event and I was pretty lucky to be brought along to it. A lot of influential people were there to speak to and a lot of differing opinions to be heard.

The one thing that really struck me though was made apparent in Session 3. A lot of people talk about the need for change in the industry but when it comes down to it, people don't really want it to happen because it may threaten what they have now. I got the impression, from sitting in that room and listening to senior legal figures mocking the SQE and the SRA within the safe confines of the echo chamber of the conference, that it didn't matter what changes were really submitted, if they were wholesale then they would find criticisms of it and paint it as bad.

Not to try to defend the SRA, as I think they're doing a pretty poor job of selling the SQE given the total lack of information they are releasing, but I think the approach they're taking (drastic changes) are a better way of doing it than minor tweaks here and there. There isn't much to dispute that the current system favours a certain background (ethnic, class and educational) and that this needs to be combated. A major overhaul followed by tweaks to actually make it work is, in my opinion, a more realistic approach to solving the current issue than to try it the other way round.

Anyway, thought I'd throw my two cents in at the end there, hopefully there is some information within this entire post that people find useful on how law firms are thinking about the future.

 

[Coralin96]

Wow @Jonty this is absolutely incredible, thank you so much for writing this up, there's so much good information in there. That's really interesting to read about hiring from the perspective of law firms and the SQE debate. You must have a fantastic memory!

 

[Jonty]

You must have a fantastic memory!

I'm glad there is useful stuff in there! I did have some notes from the event, just irritating that I left some pages on a pad in the room during a break and then couldn't find it again after the break. Someone, somewhere, will have a few pages of utterly illegible writing.

Anyway, thought I should write it up in case it can be of use to anyone, I think it's the kind of thing everyone should know about personally.

 

[Jaysen]

Continued here due to the character count limit.

Session 3


The afternoon session had an intense two hour session on the SQE.


To begin with Julie Brannan (Director of Education at SRA) began with a discussion about why the SQE is necessary. She highlighted the big drop-off of student numbers between graduation with a law degree and commencing the LPC, pushing forwards the idea that whilst some of these graduates will have simply chosen a career outside of traditional law, it is unacceptable that the current method of LPC/TC means many will simply not be in a position to take a gamble, thus those of a certain social class will be discouraged from pursuing a career in law. She also highlighted the LPC pass-rate of white candidates (80%), Asian candidates (50%) and Black candidates (40%) as further proof that change is necessary to try to counter-balance the current situation.


However, details were light on the ground as to what the SQE will consist of. We know it'll be 2 parts with 2 years of qualifying experience necessary. The 2nd part may be more focused on practical skills picked up by the experience, so in theory it would be done at the end of the qualifying period. The qualifying period is still up in the air, but it seems experience gained under the supervision of a qualified solicitor will be enough. In short; the SQE is coming but nobody seems to know what it'll be.


After this it got fun (or irritiating depending on which side of the fence you sit on) as Thom Brooks (Dean of Durham Law School) had a rant about how the SQE is similar to Brexit - nobody asked for it and the details as to how it'll happen are nil; SQE means SQE. After this, Richard Moorhead (Chair of Law & Professional Ethics at UCL) stood up and similarly offered a criticism of the SQE; how nobody really knows what is going to happen or what the effect will be. He called for a slow transition into it, a testing of areas alongside the current system. Crispin Rapinet (Training Principal at Hogan Lovells) similarly echoed the criticisms of this approach to change within the industry. He stated it's impossible to move forwards and plan without any detail.


Maeve Lavelle (Director of Education & Community Programmes at Neota Logic) offered a different perspective on the SQE's introduction, talking about how change is necessary within the industry from both a social perspective (given the increasing lack of access to justice but also diversity issues within law) as well as discussing the need for cognitive diversity within the industry, which is unlikely to happen quickly or at all if change isn't embraced.


After this we heard more of the same criticisms of the SQE from Chris Howard (Professor of Legal Education at KCL), a discussion on the importance of pro bono projects from Linden Thomas (CEPLER Manager at Birmingham Uni) and a general talk about the value of a law degree from Andrew Francis (Professor of Law at Leeds Uni).

Session 4


The final session of the day was quite interesting and featured a panel discussion of apprenticeships are affecting other industries and what training/development is happening within them. Euan Blair (CEO of Whitehat), Keily Blair (Director of Regulatory & Commercial Disputes/Head of Legal Training at PwC), Iain Gallagher (Senior Manager of Emerging Talent at Santander), Sam Harper (GC at Deliveroo) and Samuel Gordon (Research Analyst at Institute of Student Employers) had a general discussion about the pros and cons of apprenticeships, and whether the legal sector would introduce them or not. I'm not really going to detail out the points because my notes are pretty crap from this section of the day and also I'm not sure how relevant it'd be to you lot given your aspirations but the end takeaway from this session was that apprenticeships can be great or terrible, it depends on the person. More firms should do it as it can encourage social mobility far more than most other initiatives but it seems unlikely we'll see the legal sector introduce them in any meaningful manner.

_______________________________________________________________________________


To be honest with you guys, it was a really great event and I was pretty lucky to be brought along to it. A lot of influential people were there to speak to and a lot of differing opinions to be heard.

The one thing that really struck me though was made apparent in Session 3. A lot of people talk about the need for change in the industry but when it comes down to it, people don't really want it to happen because it may threaten what they have now. I got the impression, from sitting in that room and listening to senior legal figures mocking the SQE and the SRA within the safe confines of the echo chamber of the conference, that it didn't matter what changes were really submitted, if they were wholesale then they would find criticisms of it and paint it as bad.

Not to try to defend the SRA, as I think they're doing a pretty poor job of selling the SQE given the total lack of information they are releasing, but I think the approach they're taking (drastic changes) are a better way of doing it than minor tweaks here and there. There isn't much to dispute that the current system favours a certain background (ethnic, class and educational) and that this needs to be combated. A major overhaul followed by tweaks to actually make it work is, in my opinion, a more realistic approach to solving the current issue than to try it the other way round.

Anyway, thought I'd throw my two cents in at the end there, hopefully there is some information within this entire post that people find useful on how law firms are thinking about the future.

Brilliant insights, Jonty, thank you for taking the time to share this. Apologies in advance for the many questions, there’s so much good content in there!

Interesting that Fuse are interested in using tech to improve work/life balance. If that happens, that’ll be a real breakthrough – I think there’s a lot of merit to reducing hours to increase productivity and I’d love to see more firms experiment with that.

I didn’t realise that Crowd Justice were there, she clearly has injected a lot of creativity into the profession! Do you know what she meant by letting the fires burn?

Re: the qualities of future lawyers – when I started as a trainee, I soon learned how unprepared I was for written communication (despite thinking this was a strength of mine). Even simple concise emails took a long time. I plan to teach legal writing and drafting in our future courses.

The same goes for flexibility and resilience – the way law school taught this was very poor, despite it being one of the most important skills – especially when you’re working until 3-4am a few days in a row.

Would you mind expanding on the point about time/self management – how would law firms test this (beyond setting time limits to complete activities)?

I’m still open minded about the SQE, I think it poses some great ideas but I’m surprised that they’ve pushed it and set a deadline despite having few concrete details. On the other hand, it may be linked to the point you made at the end – that change won’t really happen unless the SRA go after it aggressively. Was there anything about how it’s problematic in terms of training future lawyers?

 

[Jonty]

Brilliant insights, Jonty, thank you for taking the time to share this. Apologies in advance for the many questions, there’s so much good content in there!

Question away - there will be tons I can remember from yesterday that I wasn't consciously able to write up, so might as well ask whatever you can think of and I'll be happy to answer!

Interesting that Fuse are interested in using tech to improve work/life balance. If that happens, that’ll be a real breakthrough – I think there’s a lot of merit to reducing hours to increase productivity and I’d love to see more firms experiment with that.

Yeah - I like that these things are being said this early on too, hopefully it'll instill the right focuses in law firms with regards to how technology can help them. I think the worst outcome would be if we introduced all this tech and lawyers were still consistently working 60/70/80 hour weeks.

So with regards to letting the fires burn - Julia effectively said that as a lawyer moving into the world of running her own business, she was constantly fire-fighting across the business. She was putting all her time and effort into simply keeping the business running, without really pushing it forwards, but once she accepted that sometimes there are problems you can't deal with right now, you'll be having an easier time of it. She's not advocating that you ignore every single problem but rather than lawyers have a harder time learning to not try to solve every single issue at once, rather let the "fire" burn in that area of the business. She was paraphrasing this podcast/article from Reid Hoffmann (who founded LinkedIn and helped found PayPal).

With regards to time mgmt/self-mgmt skills - I think it's more about getting involved in various activities that allow you to display your experiences in this area. Leadership such as running societies, project management on pro bono projects etc all make practical use of these skills. Obviously it's not just positions of responsibility that display this, just a few examples that sprung to mind. But law firms are choosing this as an area that students are generally weak on, so anything that anyone can do to push themselves ahead will likely set them in good stead.

I’m still open minded about the SQE, I think it poses some great ideas but I’m surprised that they’ve pushed it and set a deadline despite having few concrete details. On the other hand, it may be linked to the point you made at the end – that change won’t really happen unless the SRA go after it aggressively. Was there anything about how it’s problematic in terms of training future lawyers?

There were tons of issues with it that I got from both the sessions and talking to people outside of the sessions to get their feelings on it. Concerns over upholding the quality of solicitors, worries over the future of the law degree, question marks over how much of a difference it'll actually make. But, again, it felt like these criticisms and issues (whilst valid) were coming from a place of worry over the speaker's future role, not the SQE itself.

Personally I'd be happier with a complete re-design of it all and have three methods of entry into law firms:

1) The law degree route

This will feature a re-designed law degree that cuts out areas that aren't necessary from the existing LL.B by shrinking some of the modules down to allow for more modules to be completed each year. My reasoning for this is simple; I don't, personally, remember all that much from my first year of law and I doubt trainees starting/finishing their TC make use of the majority of the stuff they learnt. Maybe certain areas (e.g. contract law) should stay as a big module but beyond that a revamp could take place. The final year will be a variant on the LPC that brings through professional training such as drafting skills. After completing this, students are able to go straight into a qualifying legal experience (which requires minimum 6 months in an actual law firm) and, after a minimum of two years, take the SQE 2 exam. Once they've passed this, they're qualified.

2) The non-law degree route

This will feature a similar qualification to the GDL being created for non-law graduates to take. It'll be the SQE 1 and somehow do enough to get SQE 1 students onto a similar performing level to the LL.B students as above. After completing the SQE 1, they're able to go onto the final part mentioned above.

3) The non-degree route

I also have no issue with people completing an apprenticeship rather than taking an educational route. It'll involve a similar length and style process as the other two, except obviously also feature paid work in the process. Perhaps the length of time it'd take to complete the theory on top of the paid day-to-day work means the two year QLE would be possible to be shortened (given they'll be working day-to-day in a law firm anyway)

I think my version would allow for more flexibility for law firms be happy by letting them continue choosing their preferred candidates but also do away with the need for costs of the LPC by, basically, incorporating a variant into the LL.B. The continuance and re-confirmation of the value of the LL.B would also see the unis kept happy.

 

[Jaysen]

Question away - there will be tons I can remember from yesterday that I wasn't consciously able to write up, so might as well ask whatever you can think of and I'll be happy to answer!

Yeah - I like that these things are being said this early on too, hopefully it'll instill the right focuses in law firms with regards to how technology can help them. I think the worst outcome would be if we introduced all this tech and lawyers were still consistently working 60/70/80 hour weeks.o year QLE would be possible to be shortened (given they'll be working day-to-day in a law firm anyway)

I can see A&O doing this – they seem to be very open minded in the way they run their business – but for the more traditional UK firms and many of the US firms, I’d be surprised if the more senior lawyers were open to it. I can see them being worried about their competitiveness, especially as they tend to operate in packs.

So with regards to letting the fires burn - Julia effectively said that as a lawyer moving into the world of running her own business, she was constantly fire-fighting across the business. She was putting all her time and effort into simply keeping the business running, without really pushing it forwards, but once she accepted that sometimes there are problems you can't deal with right now, you'll be having an easier time of it. She's not advocating that you ignore every single problem but rather than lawyers have a harder time learning to not try to solve every single issue at once, rather let the "fire" burn in that area of the business. She was paraphrasing thispodcast/article from Reid Hoffmann (who founded LinkedIn and helped found PayPal).

I love that. I have heard Peter Thiel refer to Reid’s role at PayPal as a firefighter, but I don’t think I understood what he meant at the time – will check out the Masters of Scale episode! I can relate to spending time putting out fires rather than pushing it forward, it’s something I need to remind myself here, even if it is on a much smaller scale.

So with regards to letting the fires burn - Julia effectively said that as a lawyer moving into the world of running her own business, she was constantly fire-fighting across the business. She was putting all her time and effort into simply keeping the business running, without really pushing it forwards, but once she accepted that sometimes there are problems you can't deal with right now, you'll be having an easier time of it. She's not advocating that you ignore every single problem but rather than lawyers have a harder time learning to not try to solve every single issue at once, rather let the "fire" burn in that area of the business. She was paraphrasing thispodcast/article from Reid Hoffmann (who founded LinkedIn and helped found PayPal).

There were tons of issues with it that I got from both the sessions and talking to people outside of the sessions to get their feelings on it. Concerns over upholding the quality of solicitors, worries over the future of the law degree, question marks over how much of a difference it'll actually make. But, again, it felt like these criticisms and issues (whilst valid) were coming from a place of worry over the speaker's future role, not the SQE itself.

Personally I'd be happier with a complete re-design of it all and have three methods of entry into law firms:

1) The law degree route

This will feature a re-designed law degree that cuts out areas that aren't necessary from the existing LL.B by shrinking some of the modules down to allow for more modules to be completed each year. My reasoning for this is simple; I don't, personally, remember all that much from my first year of law and I doubt trainees starting/finishing their TC make use of the majority of the stuff they learnt. Maybe certain areas (e.g. contract law) should stay as a big module but beyond that a revamp could take place. The final year will be a variant on the LPC that brings through professional training such as drafting skills. After completing this, students are able to go straight into a qualifying legal experience (which requires minimum 6 months in an actual law firm) and, after a minimum of two years, take the SQE 2 exam. Once they've passed this, they're qualified.

2) The non-law degree route

This will feature a similar qualification to the GDL being created for non-law graduates to take. It'll be the SQE 1 and somehow do enough to get SQE 1 students onto a similar performing level to the LL.B students as above. After completing the SQE 1, they're able to go onto the final part mentioned above.

3) The non-degree route

I also have no issue with people completing an apprenticeship rather than taking an educational route. It'll involve a similar length and style process as the other two, except obviously also feature paid work in the process. Perhaps the length of time it'd take to complete the theory on top of the paid day-to-day work means the two year QLE would be possible to be shortened (given they'll be working day-to-day in a law firm anyway)

I think my version would allow for more flexibility for law firms be happy by letting them continue choosing their preferred candidates but also do away with the need for costs of the LPC by, basically, incorporating a variant into the LL.B. The continuance and re-confirmation of the value of the LL.B would also see the unis kept happy.

I can see it being difficult for many lawyers to get on board with the idea precisely because they're inside the profession. Sometimes you need an outside perspective or someone designing it from the ground up to disrupt the industry and fix the existing problems (as tech startups do), especially in traditionally conservative sectors like law.

That's an interesting thought. The problem is that it relies on universities to step up and redesign their law degree, and I'm not sure they'd be willing to do that if it means cutting out existing modules. It would be an expensive move and it wouldn't cater to students pursuing alternative career paths.

What they could do is introduce an extra year for students and then teach the practical skills for the SQE 1. They could market this as a new degree option (the first three years would be the same and the last year would be for aspiring lawyers). Unfortunately, this makes law degrees more expensive, so I'm not sure how feasible it is.

Let's say universities do adapt, I'm not sure what it means for ULaw and BPP (and it's no wonder they're not very happy with it). I was discussing this yesterday with a former graduate recruiter at an MC firm. She was under the impression that prestigious universities had shown an unwillingness to adapt to the SQE 1 and didn't think it would break ULaw and BPP's grip on the market. If this is true, that would be a shame.

I also presume law firms will pay for non-law students with training contracts to study for the SQE 1. The problem is this would reduce accessibility for those without TC's.

I do think it's a step in the right direction and more can be done to improve accessibility and better prepare students, I just hope the SRA comes up with something more robust in the near future.

 

[Nicole]

Hey guys,

I was lucky enough to get taken along to this all day conference yesterday which featured both a cracking guest list and free breakfast & lunch, an all-round win really.

I thought you may find it helpful to hear a little bit about some of the things that were mentioned, as it'll directly affect you all in the near future. You have to bear with me though, I lost some of my notes from the day so there will be parts mostly from memory.


Session 1

The morning session was all short talks (around 10 minutes) about innovation in the industry & what kind of future it may hold.

We heard from David Halliwell (Director of Knowledge & Innovation Delivery at Pinsent Masons) who spoke at length about how the roles within law are changing. He pointed some of the roles now available include legal technologists, legaltech project managers and legal engineers (although Scottish firm Cloch Solicitors are trying to trademark the term apparently, so be careful how you use it!). He went on to talk about how this reflects the move in the industry from the traditional route and how it may well open up to a point where we have far, far more roles on offer within law firms.

They're trying to trademark the term legal engineers!?

This is an amazing post, would you mind if we turn this into a front-page guide (with you as the author) so more students can see it?

 

[Sofia]

Thank you for putting the effort into writing that up, the Legal Cheek conference looked really good!

 

[Jonty]

They're trying to trademark the term legal engineers!?

This is an amazing post, would you mind if we turn this into a front-page guide (with you as the author) so more students can see it?

Yeah - not sure how successful they will be as you have firms like Pinsent Masons opposing it, but I just found it amusing as an aside.

Feel free to do what you want with it! I'm just trying to make sure enough people know some of what was spoken about yesterday.

 

[Nicole]

Yeah - not sure how successful they will be as you have firms like Pinsent Masons opposing it, but I just found it amusing as an aside.

Feel free to do what you want with it! I'm just trying to make sure enough people know some of what was spoken about yesterday.

I wonder what they're thinking! It's been a long time since I learned trademarks but it doesn't sound like it's something that's trademark-able.

Awesome, I'll link it here when it's up

 

[Nicole]

Here it is: https://www.thecorporatelawacademy....g-the-sqe-and-the-sra-at-legal-cheeks-debate/

 

[MightyMoe]

Continued here due to the character count limit.

Session 3


The afternoon session had an intense two hour session on the SQE.


To begin with Julie Brannan (Director of Education at SRA) began with a discussion about why the SQE is necessary. She highlighted the big drop-off of student numbers between graduation with a law degree and commencing the LPC, pushing forwards the idea that whilst some of these graduates will have simply chosen a career outside of traditional law, it is unacceptable that the current method of LPC/TC means many will simply not be in a position to take a gamble, thus those of a certain social class will be discouraged from pursuing a career in law. She also highlighted the LPC pass-rate of white candidates (80%), Asian candidates (50%) and Black candidates (40%) as further proof that change is necessary to try to counter-balance the current situation.


However, details were light on the ground as to what the SQE will consist of. We know it'll be 2 parts with 2 years of qualifying experience necessary. The 2nd part may be more focused on practical skills picked up by the experience, so in theory it would be done at the end of the qualifying period. The qualifying period is still up in the air, but it seems experience gained under the supervision of a qualified solicitor will be enough. In short; the SQE is coming but nobody seems to know what it'll be.


After this it got fun (or irritiating depending on which side of the fence you sit on) as Thom Brooks (Dean of Durham Law School) had a rant about how the SQE is similar to Brexit - nobody asked for it and the details as to how it'll happen are nil; SQE means SQE. After this, Richard Moorhead (Chair of Law & Professional Ethics at UCL) stood up and similarly offered a criticism of the SQE; how nobody really knows what is going to happen or what the effect will be. He called for a slow transition into it, a testing of areas alongside the current system. Crispin Rapinet (Training Principal at Hogan Lovells) similarly echoed the criticisms of this approach to change within the industry. He stated it's impossible to move forwards and plan without any detail.


Maeve Lavelle (Director of Education & Community Programmes at Neota Logic) offered a different perspective on the SQE's introduction, talking about how change is necessary within the industry from both a social perspective (given the increasing lack of access to justice but also diversity issues within law) as well as discussing the need for cognitive diversity within the industry, which is unlikely to happen quickly or at all if change isn't embraced. She drove home the point that change isn't something the legal industry does quickly and that the SRA seemingly taking a backward step from being hands-on involved in regulating universities/law firms over SQE actually indicates a smart move on their part, a nod to the fact that regulators in most industries struggle to keep up with change.


After this we heard more of the same criticisms of the SQE from Chris Howard (Professor of Legal Education at KCL), a discussion on the importance of pro bono projects from Linden Thomas (CEPLER Manager at Birmingham Uni) and a general talk about the value of a law degree from Andrew Francis (Professor of Law at Leeds Uni).

Session 4


The final session of the day was quite interesting and featured a panel discussion of apprenticeships are affecting other industries and what training/development is happening within them. Euan Blair (CEO of Whitehat), Keily Blair (Director of Regulatory & Commercial Disputes/Head of Legal Training at PwC), Iain Gallagher (Senior Manager of Emerging Talent at Santander), Sam Harper (GC at Deliveroo) and Samuel Gordon (Research Analyst at Institute of Student Employers) had a general discussion about the pros and cons of apprenticeships, and whether the legal sector would introduce them or not. I'm not really going to detail out the points because my notes are pretty crap from this section of the day and also I'm not sure how relevant it'd be to you lot given your aspirations but the end takeaway from this session was that apprenticeships can be great or terrible, it depends on the person. More firms should do it as it can encourage social mobility far more than most other initiatives but it seems unlikely we'll see the legal sector introduce them in any meaningful manner.

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To be honest with you guys, it was a really great event and I was pretty lucky to be brought along to it. A lot of influential people were there to speak to and a lot of differing opinions to be heard.

The one thing that really struck me though was made apparent in Session 3. A lot of people talk about the need for change in the industry but when it comes down to it, people don't really want it to happen because it may threaten what they have now. I got the impression, from sitting in that room and listening to senior legal figures mocking the SQE and the SRA within the safe confines of the echo chamber of the conference, that it didn't matter what changes were really submitted, if they were wholesale then they would find criticisms of it and paint it as bad.

Not to try to defend the SRA, as I think they're doing a pretty poor job of selling the SQE given the total lack of information they are releasing, but I think the approach they're taking (drastic changes) are a better way of doing it than minor tweaks here and there. There isn't much to dispute that the current system favours a certain background (ethnic, class and educational) and that this needs to be combated. A major overhaul followed by tweaks to actually make it work is, in my opinion, a more realistic approach to solving the current issue than to try it the other way round.

Anyway, thought I'd throw my two cents in at the end there, hopefully there is some information within this entire post that people find useful on how law firms are thinking about the future.

Hi I just wanted to say thank you so much for this! I had an interview recently and they asked about the future of the legal profession and I shared some of the things you talked about here !