Back to the Future: A Modern Legal Apprenticeship

As AS Law students will no doubt be about to learn, a legal education can be an expensive business when you factor in the cost of a degree as well as GDL/LPC/BVC depending on your chosen route into the profession. Perhaps it's not too surprising then to see that lawyers themselves are now arguing that the time is right for a new route into the profession in the form of Modern Legal Apprenticeships. Strangely, these almost hark back to the old days of doing your "articles" by on-the-job training. For an example, see the scheme run by prestigous firm Pinsent Masons in conjunction with ILEX. 


Another example of reform to the legal training process is shortened law degree programmes such as the one offered by the College of Law (if you want to find out more about this, they are holding a web seminar, or "webinar", on 5th Oct - click here for details).

Routes into the legal profession

All about law is a really good website for law students that's just had a revamp.

There's a really good interactive diagram of routes into the legal profession. There may well be more ways in than you thought - for AS study with OCR, you only really need to know the graduate path... but for your own life, you need to know that there's more than one way to skin a cat!

Listen...

...to this interview by legal blogger Charon QC with the Chief Executive of BPP law school for an insight into the academic and vocational stages of training to be a solicitor or barrister.

You could even take notes. Should I hold my breath?

Got what it takes?

...to become a top city solicitor?

Listen to this podcast of top legal blogger Charon QC talking with Lynn Johansen of Clifford Chance. A lot of what she says about the application and training process applies to most city law firms.

Meanwhile, there's another podcast here about the College of Law opening a new branch right here in Manchester. Some of you may end up studying there one day! Have a listen to find out what it might be like...

Training just got harder for would-be barristers (but easier for solicitors)

...says the Times today. Great stuff in here to throw into an exam answer on problems of training - good for A02 points!

AS students - read the article and answer the following questions for your file on the legal profession:

1. What is being proposed to "weed out" some people who want to do the BVC?
2. What did Derek Wood's reports say about the standards of some current BVC programmes?
3. In a given year, how many graduates are competing for how many pupillages according to the article, and how many places are there in percentage terms?
4. What will the revamped BVC be called?
5. What do you think the impact of these changes will be on students from disadvantaged backgrounds?
6. What measures are coming in to make it easier to qualify as a solicitor?

Training routes into the profession

A nice diagram here if you're not clear about how it works. ...