First things first, I have adored my LPC course, and don’t regret it for a minute. It was extremely well taught, and I enjoyed all of the subject content very much. Therefore, this article will come across much more negative than it should – the content of the course is currently advised by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. I have finished all the core and special elective teaching at BPP Law School, Holborn, London. My special electives were in employment, advanced commercial litigation, and commercial law and intellectual property. Yesterday, the SRA/LETR (Solicitors Regulation Authority and Legal Education and Training Review) published their document 02/2012 outlining the key issues. I have a confession in that none of my student peers on the Legal Practice Course have even heard of the LETR; it has not been mentioned by any of the staff to me once during this year, and there is no mention of it on our intranet. A follower of mine on Twitter even in fact mentioned that she had brought it up of her own accord in a training contract interview at a City law firm, and the interviewers had never heard of it.
The report by Prof Julian Webb, published yesterday, makes for very interesting reading in my opinion as a LPC student. In paragraph 45, they itemised the common criticisms of the Legal Practice Course. These criticisms, I think, are fair from my experience of this course. The range of criticisms is described quite extensive, relating both to the overarching design and structure of the course, its specific contents, and its supervision.
The common core is seen as too large and over-prescribed. The Business Law and Practice course, which has a larger number of taught supervisions and hence face-face teaching time, is by the far the largest core module. The emphasis of this course, I feel, is too much on regurgitation of factual material, despite the use of permitted materials. This course does not at all encourage the student to develop the skills essential for life-long learning, and in fact actively discourages original thought or contributions to the topics being discussed as these will not be credited on the rigid mark scheme. What additionally concerns me the most about these modules is that you can have little actual knowledge of vast areas of these subjects and still manage to pass, whereas you could know, for example, a lot about Business Law and Practice (the twenty-six small group sessions and fourteen lectures) and still really struggle to pass the examination through being quite unlucky (whilst know very little but shine brilliantly at the assessment.) The ‘over-prescriptive criticism’ is one which I very much agree with; whilst the teaching materials are excellent, perhaps compared to some university courses, the material is undoubtedly spoon-fed, and leaves virtually no motivation for independent work. I cannot conceive as to how this is good preparation for actual practice as a functioning solicitor. There is absolutely no incentive to read outside the course, indeed read outside of the assessment, for example the latest legal aid reforms, the changing nature of media law and super- injunctions.
Drafting and advocacy training appear to be the most criticised aspects of the course. In my experience, the drafting and advocacy parts of the course are treated as self-contained competences, required as a tick-box pass/fail exercise. This does little to foster an attitude of their relevance to general practitioner work. This may not be a problem as the majority of graduates from the Legal Practice Course will not be called for an interview, let alone be offered a training contract place. Also, the course, some allege, does not sufficiently assist trainees in developing the ability to attend-to-detail (this seems again particularly relate to the teaching of drafting). I think that this criticism that the course does not sufficiently assist trainees to develop an ability to attend to detail in part stems from the over-prescriptive nature of the course. I have witnessed with this with my own eyes in running the BPP Legal Awareness Society, where I feel that it is genuinely very difficult to get some student colleagues to show responsibility, pro-activity, and take initiative. I think this transgresses to the attention-to-detail domain, where the spoon-fed nature of education as a product double declutches students from having an ability to think for themselves. I think an inability to form an argument, but a relative ability to cope with short answer questions, is, however, pervasive at GCSE, A level and the LPC, unlike university degrees.
The assumption of a common pass mark for all skills and knowledge assessments overlooks the fact that in some practice areas, trainees need to be better than competent from day one of the training contract. It seems odd that certain skills have a simple ‘cliff-edge’ pass-mark, where you are considered either bluntly ‘competent’ or ‘not yet competent’. The degree in quality of scripts between 50 and 100 for professional conduct and regulation, practical legal research, and solicitors accounts, I suspect is huge in reality.
Finally, the course does nothing to address equality and diversity issues, save for two sessions on discrimination in the special elective, which many Legal Practice Course students do not take. I beg to differ with anyone who says that “commercial awareness” is a pervasive theme in the Legal Practice Course, either. It might be a pervasive theme in that there are no human individuals as clients, but that’s where this line of argument abruptly ends. Having completed a MBA last year, I would in fact say there is next to nothing in the way of business or management teaching; for example, budgeting, organisational structure and culture, business strategy, innovation, marketing, or performance management are not covered at all on this course. The report itself makes passing reference to ‘commercial awareness’, but this appears as a sop to City firms rather than a genuine wish to engage with the relevance, if at all, of a business education. There are no electives on housing, immigration and asylum, welfare benefits; this, I feel, is a genuine social tragedy, but reflects too the ‘managed decline’ of these services on the High Street.
