The Legal Education and Training Review 2013 report can be viewed here.
There was much to welcome from today’s publication of the “Legal Education and Training Review” , from our perspective of the BPP Legal Awareness Society. It is one of the biggest student societies across all campuses and all disciplines at BPP, and we are totally independent of BPP University College itself and its various schools. This allows us to pursue our own projects our way.
BPP is a unique institution, based in a number of centres in England. I myself graduated from Cambridge, and did my research degree there. I have just, however, completed 7 (non-continuous) years at BPP, having done my Graduate Diploma in Law, Bachelor of Laws, Master of Business Administration and Legal Practice Course with them. They are one of the few places in the country with specialist units in both law and business. However, BPP is very much “a profession-facing organisation” which specifically trains people in behaviours, skills and knowledges bespoke to the legal, finance and business professions. There is therefore a high density of skills within our particular network. Students at BPP have been very keen in the last two years to devote their time voluntarily to supporting our activity at the BPP Legal Awareness Society.
We hold our fortnightly meetings at BPP Law School, Holborn. The LETR (“Legal Education and Training Review”) advised that it does not wish to make ‘commercial awareness’ a formal requirement of the academic part of legal training, regulated for solicitors by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). However, it did wish to promote its importance in the overall legal curriculum. BPP Law School Holborn runs the traditional and accelerated Legal Practice Courses (LPC), and is therefore well suited to host also this entirely student-run activity. With my committee, we host meetings discussing recent transactions and general trends in commercial and corporate law.
I personally have also completed a Master of Law in Professional Legal Practice, covering six big areas of commercial and corporate law, at the College of Law. I therefore, on behalf of our society, where I am President, welcomed very much the emphasis on “commercial awareness”. I feel the Report, published today, went a long way to explaining why lawyers might benefit from such a training.
Not everyone will end up for the whole of their careers in a large commercial or corporate set, but it is essential I feel for all professional law firms to understand why and how all businesses fail. Some law firms unfortunately fail. This could be due to poor marketing of products and services, poor strategy analysis and implementation of a business model, inability to apply commercially innovative approaches, inability to forecast, budget or cost basic processes, and so it goes on. Understanding this at an international level is essential for some work. The legal profession faces substantial opportunities and challenges both here and abroad in the next 20 years or so, and the LETR was able to provide a compelling reason why commercial awareness is essential.
In my own society in January 2013, I hosted four workshops for law students from all over the UK, providing one hour sessions in each of marketing, strategy, innovation and leadership. These were very well received, and each student received a certificate of attendance. You can even view the talks and download the materials here. Whilst I myself have a disability, I think communication is a vital skill. There’s no point instructing a highly intelligent and capable lawyer if he or she cannot communicate basic concepts well. Students who attend our meetings become conversant in the language of business, and understand why it is so important, beyond their application forms for training contracts. In an informal setting, we are able to lay the foundations for a lifelong commitment to continuous professional training, and develop skills such as problem identification and solving in a pleasant way.
We always talk about issues that simply are not covered in the core or elective parts of the Legal Practice Course, and students who have attended our meetings in the last two years have provided us with very positive feedback. I was interested to note the existence of societies from other legal providers, but I really do feel we are a leader in the national student community when it comes to many competences of the lawyer of the future the LETR introduced us to today. Commercial awareness is very much at the forefront of these.
Shibley, BPP Legal Awareness Society
President
June 25th, 2013
