The document summarizes the key findings and recommendations from the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) regarding legal education and training in the UK. The LETR sought to enhance the quality, accessibility, and flexibility of legal education and training systems. Its recommendations included a greater emphasis on assuring continuing competence through workplace learning/CPD, needs-led approaches, standardized vocational assessment, and increased flexibility in delivering legal education. Implementing the recommendations will require resources, coordination between stakeholders, and ongoing evaluation to ensure links between education and competence.

1. The LETR’s in the post:
The Legal Education and Training Review’s
conclusions and some implications for law schools
Julian Webb
University of Warwick
Formerly LETR Research Lead

2. What is LETR?
• Review of ‘LSET’ regulation
• Two phase project –
– June 2013 Report = outcome of the
first phase
– Phase 2 (ongoing) is for the
regulators
• First phase has been research-
led:
– Independent research team
– Evidence-based
• Literature review
• Qualitative research (focus
groups/interviews; 306 respondents)
• Quantitative surveys – ca. 1250
respondents
• Stakeholder engagement (responses
to draft papers, conference, input
and advice from ‘CSP’)

3. Key messages
• No clear evidence that the system is
fundamentally not ‘fit for purpose’
• Need to build on strengths and address some
weaknesses for the future
• Overarching theme: enhancing quality,
accessibility and flexibility of the LSET system(s)
• Seeks to engineer a shift to regulation by design
rather than a heavy emphasis on content and
process regulation

4. “The recommendations in this report are... designed
as part of a socially robust, long-term, approach to a
number of deeply-embedded problems. Their
primary purpose is to set-up a longer-term set of
structures and relationships which will work to deal
with difficulties in the system in a much more co-
operative, co-regulatory way, building upon real
evidence and greater transparency” (Para 7.5)

5. What does that mean?
• Focus on ‘LSET’ system
• Greater emphasis on assuring ‘continuing competence’ – ie
workplace learning/CPD
• Needs-led approach: day one outcomes as a starting point
• Greater standardisation of (vocational) assessment
• Reduction where possible in content and process regulation
• Increased flexibility in delivering/blending stages of training
• Reduction in information barriers
• Need for cooperation between regulators in setting and
assuring standards

6. Main recommendations - LLB/GDL
• Foundations:
– no significant increase above 180 credits (Rec. 10)
– a possible move to outcomes-based definition (but also ‘broad content
specification’ ) (Recs. 6, 10)?
– Greater freedom to change balance/weighting of ‘subjects’?
• Ethics
– Not a Foundation subject, but QLDs/GDLs need to demonstrate focus on
legal values, the relationship between law and morality, and the role of
lawyers (Rec. 7)
• Skills
– Concerns about written and oral communication skills highlighted
– Discrete assessment of research, writing and critical thinking skills in the
LLB/GDL (Rec. 11), must be at level 5 or above.
• Diversity
– University law schools should be obliged to publish diversity data (Rec. 24)
04 February 2015 6

7. Other recommendations
• Structures
– Flexibility – opportunities to work and study in different configurations
(more ‘earn while you learn’)
– Adjusting periods of supervised practice (such as the training contract)
– Supporting apprenticeships
– Fairer access to internships and placements,
– Improved training framework for paralegals
• Information
– On diversity
– On careers, pathways, research and evaluation of LSET
• Greater coordination of information resources, research and
development, and educational evaluation – ‘Legal Education Council’
04 February 2015 7

8. Responses(!)
• A missed opportunity
• Long-winded
• Business as usual
• Better than expected
• A decent compromise
• Sensible recommendations
• An important milestone
• Interesting times ahead

9. Wider reflections
• The new political economy of LSET:
– Liberalisation, innovation and marketisation – an unresolved
relationship
– Clearing a discursive space for liberal legal ed? But...
– Competition and market differentiation between providers?
– Competition between pathways?
– Reduction of information barriers – double-edged
• LSET regulation: increasingly central to legal services
regulation?
– Diversification of regulation – competences, standards, training
audits as key regulatory tools
– LSET and the professionalisation of para-professions

10. The big challenge?
“So whilst on the surface everyone (kind of) is saying they are (sort of) happy, no
one is smiling. And no one is smiling because the research tells them there is not
enough research; the research - and a moment's thought - tells them there is no
easy solution; there are many hard yards; and it is everyone's problem, not yours,
not mine, not theirs. It's ours.
The research stands as an astute reminder that this is the reality:
implementation is everything. This will require resources (knowledge, skills,
bodies, money) and it will need mechanisms for change.
For that reason (I surmise) they propose that the different constituencies
coalesce around things like working out outcomes: what does a lawyer need to be
able to do at day one. And they propose a Legal Education Council to advise
regulators and act as focal point for sharing best practice. This kind of negotiated
solution will require a great deal of energy and goodwill. I wonder if anyone is
really up for it. A more likely scenario is the regulators who want change will
liberalise, permit change and (if they do not skimp) properly assess it. That would
require both a fleetness of foot and a robustness about testing the links between
competence, education and training which we have yet to see attempted in the
legal sector.”
Prof. Richard Moorhead, Legal Week blog, 27 June 2013

11. Phase 2 prospects
• Abolition of JASB; reduce duplication of QAA functions
– De facto deregulation of the academic stage?
– The QAA Benchmark
• SRA ‘bonfire of regulations’
– New competence framework (commissioned)
– Removal of unnecessary regulation (in progress)
– New CPD framework (under consultation)
• Regulation of paralegals ‘on the shelf’
• How much co-ordination?
• LEC and information functions?????

12. Developing a community of practice....
“A resounding sentiment was that there needs to be
a permanent conversation about the future of the
profession – from broad and creative imaginings of
future business structures, to assessing emerging
technologies, to pedagogical reform in the training
of lawyers – to encourage lawyers to innovate
within their own practice setting. More often than
not, participants affirmed that there should be
space within the CBA for these issues to be
discussed on a more regular basis.” (Canadian Bar
Association, 2014:24)
...the fundamental tension between education of
lawyers as delivering public value and education of
lawyers as delivering private value is structural. The
tension may manifest itself in different ways under
different conditions, but it will always be with us
and must always be managed. Other matters likely
to continually give rise to stresses, challenges, and
the need for managing change are: the economics
of law schools; the rapid evolution in the market for
legal services; the function and value of
accreditation standards; the financing of legal
education; the role of parties other than law
schools in legal education; and the role of media in
understanding legal education and communicating
with the public.
Since these forces and factors will always be with
us, it is prudent for the system of legal education to
institutionalize the process of dealing with them. All
parties involved in legal education should support a
framework for the continual assessment of
strengths and weaknesses and of conditions
affecting legal education, and for fostering continual
improvement. The process should ensure that not
only law schools, but also practicing lawyers,
judges, and other interested actors have a voice and
an opportunity for meaningful contribution.” (ABA
Task Force, 2014:29)

13. Some sources
• M. Thornton, Privatising the Public University: The Case of Law (Routledge, 2012)
• A. Sherr and S. Thomson, ‘Tesco Law and Tesco Lawyers: Will Our Needs Change If
the Market Develops?’ Oñati Socio-Legal Series, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2013. Available at
SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2293660
• J. Webb, ‘Regulating Lawyers in a Liberalized Legal Services Market: The Role of
Education and Training’ 24(2) Stanford Law & Policy Review 533-70.
• Special Issue: Law Teacher, vol. 48(1) (2014).
• H. Sommerlad et al (eds) The Futures of Legal Education and the Legal Profession
(Hart, 2014), forthcoming.