Digital Directions

Student Essay Competition - Highly Commended

UKCLE’s student essay competitions (part of the Higher Education Academy’s Student Awards) attract interest from around the UK. We have held seven competitions to date and previous winning essays can be accessed through the UKCLE website.

Congratulations to the winners of the 2011 competition writing on "Is the law degree fit for purpose?"

Over 40 essays were submitted and entries were of a high standard, and this year's highly commended award goes to Matthew McGhee from Magdalen College, University of Oxford. Read Matthew’s essay below:

2011 highly commended

Is the law degree fit for purpose?

Matthew McGhee (Magdalen College, University of Oxford)

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The premise of the question seems simple. The answer is, however, necessarily complicated, largely as a result of the multiplicity of meanings that one might attribute to the question. To establish whether the law degree is fit for purpose one must consider what the purpose of that degree might be. To risk introducing circularity, presumably the purpose is to train undergraduates to think like a lawyer. It is at this preliminary and fundamental stage that divergences of opinion occur. Does this make the aim to teach what the law is or is it to teach why it is the way that it is? This distinction is evident from a cursory look at two of the leading law degrees; LSE publicly state that they are black letter lawyers and concentrate on the words in statutes and cases to discover what rule applies where. The Oxford degree, on the other hand, has a very different outlook and encourages the development of an intuitive sense of the principles that form the basis of English law in an almost philosophical approach.

The more one considers the question, the more it opens itself to further interpretations. One is reminded of a Russian doll; if a crack is found and pried at, the doll opens up to reveal a different doll inside, with this process being repeated. To answer the question posed, one pries at its meaning only to find that a condition precedent to the answering of that question is the answering of a question to clarify the meaning of the first question! The doll inside the question of what it means to say that a law degree trains the undergraduate to think like a lawyer is what sort of lawyer is one envisaging? An academic lawyer or a practicing lawyer? And should a distinction be drawn between the judge and the advocate (both being practicing lawyers)? It seems that the shorter and more simple sounding the question, the greater its remit through unspoken assumptions giving rise to various permutations.

However, leaving to one side the complexities of the hidden meanings lurking behind the question, one might base an answer on the common view of the law degree as being a step on the way to the law as a vocation. Whether one chooses the path of a solicitor or a barrister, there are further steps to take beyond the qualifying law degree in the form of vocational courses. This may be compared with other jurisdictions where a law degree allows the graduate to commence practice without the need for further studies, an example being the Juris Doctor (JD) in the USA, though admittedly this is a postgraduate degree. Is this a failing of the UK law degree to fulfil its purpose in the sense that it does not adequately prepare its graduates for practice, as evidenced by the requirement for further training? One rather suspects not for two reasons. First, it is not possible that one course can teach a student all that one needs to know to be a successful practicing lawyer – a criticism of the BPTC (formerly BVC) is that it purports to train individuals in certain skills that are arguably best learnt through practice. This leads to the second reason, which is that learning how to practice effectively is a continual process and, whilst not wishing to descend into clichés, the adage that ‘you learn something new every day’ seems here to be particularly apt.

An issue that one must address is that one might have two lawyers who are equally successful in practice and are in all ways identical, except that one read a traditional law degree whilst the other took the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL). Does the very fact that there may be no difference between them show that the law degree is inefficient for the purpose that the common view attributes to a law degree, namely creating lawyers? This may seem to be the case if one looks exclusively at the GDL in comparison with the law degree – if one can do in one year what a law degree does in three years, with there being no difference between the two routes when it comes to practice, then it surely shows that the law degree is inefficient? However, this is only the case if one misrepresents the situation. If one is to judge efficiency by the timescale of the route, then one must take account of the fact that a precondition to the GDL is that one already holds an undergraduate degree. The simple reason for this is that whilst the GDL teaches how the law applies to a given scenario, it does not encourage the same incisive way of thinking that is required in practice in addition to a working knowledge of the law. Thus it would seem that the law degree is actually the more efficient route.

This highlights the error in the assumption that the function of a law degree is just to place its graduates one step closer to a legal career. The purpose of the law degree is not simply to manufacture lawyers. The proper purpose of a law degree is to allow its students to develop a sophistication of thought. That the law degree also fulfils the other precondition to commencing legal practice by imparting the requisite working knowledge in no way diminishes the relevance and value of the pursuit of intellectual betterment for its own sake, a purpose performed admirably by the law degree.

As a postscript to this discussion, that the natural inclination is to answer this question by asking whether the law degree adequately prepares its graduates for legal practice reflects on the national attitude – partly incited by successive governments – that one should undertake various projects and treat those projects simply as stepping stones, rather than enjoying the undertaking for its own considerable merits. This is somewhat ironic given the number of ministers in government who have done the law degree themselves, yet are evidently not in practice.

New College of Humanities: Legal Education, Science and Ethics

Having watched the recent unveiling of the New College of Humanities, and much discussion and debate surrounding this event, I felt moved to point out, echo and elaborate on some of Richard Moorhead's blog comments on Lawyer Watch.

Indeed, offering a law degree based upon the University of London's International Programme (previously known as the London External) is not exactly innovative, which Julian Webb expands upon in his blog hEaD SPACE.

Where favourable comment may be passed is the combining of the traditional academic subject-based study with a broader curriculum from a core 'professional skills' module and three other core modules:

• Logic and Critical Thinking
• Science Literacy
• Applied Ethics

These additional modules appear to be core throughout all NCH's programmes: it is vague as to whether these modules will be tailored towards the study of law, or more generic in their approach.  If they are subject-oriented then perhaps they do not provide a wider, more liberal educational aspect and differ little from the types of options and electives available in many other institutions.  If they are truely generic, then perhaps cross-fertilisation between disciplines can be achieved.

Legal Ethics is likely to enter into the curriculum for England and Wales, as Richard points out, so the study of applied ethics may well need to enter into the UoL programme as a core module for the qualifying degree.

The study of science, scientific theory and the use of scientific evidence in a legal context has already been well explored by the legal education community.  Indeed, previous blog posts have evaluated and the 'law and forensic science education in the 21st century’ event supported jointly by UKCLE and the Physical Sciences Centre.

Going as far back as 2008, Carole McCartney and I explored the prior knowledge of law undergraduates and their likely understanding of scientific theory in our survey of science-based A levels / Highers.  Whilst NCH may be attracting the A* student, they may not have a good grounding in science to start.

Logic and Critical Thinking: I've yet to find an LLB programme that does not address these skills both pervasively and directly in the curriculum.

It will be interesting to see if their success is based upon 'smells like Oxbridge' where fees appear to equate to quality; or whether the creation of a new institution will allow greater emphasis to be placed upon learning and teaching, which is sold as the old-fashioned type rather than the adoption of cutting-edge innovation.

Student Essay Competition - Runner up

UKCLE’s student essay competitions (part of the Higher Education Academy’s Student Awards) attract interest from around the UK. We have held seven competitions to date and previous winning essays can be accessed through the UKCLE website.

Congratulations to the winners of the 2011 competition writing on "Is the law degree fit for purpose?"

Over 40 essays were submitted and entries were of a high standard, and this year's Runner up was Sitanta Ni Mathghamhna from Birkbeck College, University of London. Read Sitanta’s essay below:

2011 runner up

Is the law degree fit for purpose?

Sitanta Ni Mathghamhna (Birkbeck College, University of London)

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To determine whether the law degree is fit for purpose, one must first ascertain its purpose. Is it to provide a liberal education, the ‘’advancement of a particular disposition towards life, involving the acquisition both of knowledge, but also a particular habit of mind’’¹, or is it to equip students with a training which will enable an effective transition to the practice of law? Or indeed, a combination of both?

The undergraduate law degree (LLB) is first and foremost an academic qualification; postgraduate training must be undertaken before practice, for which the degree provides a foundation. Taking this into consideration as well as the fact that only 45% of students who enrol on the LLB end up practicing² it would seem that, even factoring in the fierce competition for training contracts and pupillages, a significant proportion of students undertaking the degree do so for purposes other than practising as a solicitor or barrister. Perhaps with the differing ambitions of law students in mind, the 1996 report of the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Legal Education Conduct (ACLEC) recommended the retention of “independent liberal education in the discipline of law, not tied to any specific vocation”. Therefore the LLB has a dual mandate – while its primary purpose is academic, it must also provide an adequate basis for effective transition to the professional stage of training for those students wishing to practice. With this duality in mind, the question then becomes ‘does the LLB fulfil the criteria of academic education?’ And furthermore, ‘would the expansion of the LLB to incorporate a vocational as well as an academic element render the degree more fit for purpose for those students wishing to practice?’

In answer to the first question it is my contention that the LLB does fulfil the criteria of academic education; undertaking a law degree is challenging, requiring precision of thought, excellent analytical skills and a heightened facility for succinct written and oral expression. Indeed when the Socratic Method of legal argument is employed, attempting to draw from students a combination of critical analysis and information, it gets to the very heart of the meaning of the verb ‘educate’, which has its roots in Latin, ‘to bring out’. The rigorous training, which is sufficiently demanding that less than 7% of law students receive first class degrees, compared with 14% of degree students in the UK overall³, is broad enough in scope to provide grounding for employment in a wide variety of disciplines, giving those 65% of students who don’t go on to practice an excellent foundation for further study or work in non-law related areas.

However there are viable alternative routes into the profession, such as the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL), a one year conversion course for non-law graduates in England and Wales. So why study the LLB if you can use any degree as a foundation for the GDL? Whilst many other degrees, especially language and science degrees for those wishing to practice intellectual property (IP) law, equip students with skill sets invaluable in a legal setting, the skills mentioned above which the LLB inculcates comprise a core component of the proficiencies necessary for successful practice within the profession. Additionally opting for the LLB over another academic discipline followed by the GDL negates the need to spend an additional, expensive, year in education.

In answer to the second question; should the LLB incorporate a vocational element, with students qualifying for practice upon the completion of the LLB, as is the case in certain jurisdictions? This would bypass the requirement for costly postgraduate training, as well as the need to secure that most elusive of creatures, the training contract / pupillage. Initial figures might suggest so, given the surfeit of law graduates and the marked lack of such legal apprenticeships available to instruct them. Indeed the United Kingdom has such an excess of lawyers that the Law Society of England & Wales launched a campaign during the summer of 2009 to warn students about the potential drawbacks of a legal career. Statistics bear out these concerns, with a total of 9,337 students enrolled on the legal practice course (LPC) and only 5,809 training contracts available⁴. Figures for the Bar are even worse; each year an estimated 4,000 would-be barristers compete for a paltry 500 pupillage places, prompting Bar Council chairman Nicholas Green QC to recently warn of the “real qualms” he had about a system which encourages Bar Professional Training Course providers to educate increasing numbers of students.

The dissonance between these figures is troubling; no other profession tries to funnel such an inordinate volume of qualified university graduates into such a small professional opening. A proletariat of undergraduates (in Dostoevsky’s words) are now faced with stark choices regarding their tertiary education, as mounting costs deliver diminishing returns. While qualification upon completion of the LLB might relieve the pressures created by the paucity of available pupillages / training contracts, it would also potentially create under-qualified practitioners. Overall the nature of UK legal education, with a clear partition between academic and professional training, is well suited to both the intricacies of the common law system, as well as the differing ambitions of students. Winston Churchill once observed that his early education enabled him to absorb ’’the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence – which is a noble thing.’’⁵ The LLB provides the grammatical foundation of the common law and its relation to society at large, while professional training supplies the vocabulary, in the form of explicit instruction, required to put that learning into practice.

Student Essay Competition 2011

UKCLE’s student essay competitions (part of the Higher Education Academy’s Student Awards) attract interest from around the UK. We have held seven competitions to date and previous winning essays can be accessed through the UKCLE website.

Congratulations to the winners of the 2011 competition writing on "Is the law degree fit for purpose?"

Over 40 essays were submitted and entries were of a high standard, and this year's Winner was Lisa West, a student from Liverpool John Moores University. Read Lisa’s essay below:

2011 winner

Is the law degree fit for purpose?

Lisa West (Liverpool John Moores University)

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To ask if the law degree is ‘fit for purpose’ is an ambiguous and presumptuous question. Whose purpose and which law degree is being referred to? There are qualifying degrees, exempting students going on to study the LPC and BPTC from an additional year’s study, but likewise there are non-qualifying degrees, and then criminology, criminal justice and other such degrees. All of these are law based and designed for different purposes. If you search for law in the UCAS website, for a course starting in 2011, before you are even given a list of providers you are given 35 options as to what type of law degree you would like to look at; and even if you select “law on its own as a single subject” you are given the choice of 354 different courses¹.

To take a generic LL.B and determine whether it is fit for purpose is still subjective, as each student will come with a different purpose in mind. To demonstrate this I will look at myself and my four housemates, and from there determine if ‘the law degree’ meets their needs.

At this moment in time I am looking to continue to study, before teaching at degree level. For this purpose the degree has allowed me the chance to browse the many areas of law and determine which I prefer. In that sense it has fulfilled its purpose. However, studies have been targeted towards looking at a broad selection of subjects, many of which are compulsory to satisfy the qualifying law degree criteria². To make this degree fit for the purpose of teaching it would need to adopt a broader approach in the first year of study, and to do this by offering a diverse selection of 12 credit modules. This would allow students pursuing academia to narrow down the subjects they take in the second and third years, and in some instances this could lead to a Masters degree or a PhD without the research and worry we now endure in trying to choose which direction to take. As it stands, the LL.B is fit for purpose in the sense that it will suffice for the masses, but will not always meet individual’s needs.

Taking now my first and second housemates, who wish to complete the LPC and BPTC. There has been criticism recently that the LL.B does not fully prepare students for these practical courses, but is that the aim of the undergraduate degree? I assert that the degree should be the foundation of knowledge, and that the practical courses piece together the knowledge and the application of it. Even if one is to disagree with this assertion, there has been a 20% fall in the number of students going on to complete the LPC and as such, proposals to integrate a practical element into the degree should be prevented, as they would only benefit a select group within each cohort³. Suggestions for an entirely separate degree structure for those intending to go on to practice should be dismissed as what would then happen to students who change their minds while on this new degree, or more troublingly, those not on it who would need to be⁴. Therefore, I submit that in providing the necessary knowledge for students to then go on to complete a practical training course, the degree is sufficient and fit for purpose. Those who believe that the undergraduate degree should equally provide a ‘dress rehearsal’ for these courses, however, will always disagree.

My third and fourth housemates took a very different view to their LL.B studies. My third housemate wishes to follow a non-legal path, and took the degree believing it harboured a wide and varied skill set which would put them in a better position than other graduates. My fourth housemate took the LL.B because they wanted to move away from home and, as The Guardian so eloquently puts it, “doss around”⁵. The purpose required by my third housemate, I believe, is the easiest of them all to satisfy. The research, interpretation and analytical skills gained by the study of the LL.B are outstanding, as they are embedded in the undergraduate course⁶. Alongside these skills comes an attention to detail which can only come with time. A student who takes the LL.B for this reason, I assert, is one which knows the value of investing in oneself and ones future. However, the purpose of my fourth housemate is one which is not easily satisfied once one passes the first year of any degree, and is a very poor reason for pursuing the law.

So it appears that the big question is actually what is the point in a LL.B? My opinion is simple; if you ask a cohort of first years in their first lecture what they want to do with their degree the majority will say they aspire to become solicitors and barristers. If you ask again in second year more will say they wish to become solicitors, and when you ask at the beginning of the third year, and after their studies of the dreaded Land Law module, most will not have a clue. The point is that it opens students’ minds to the possibilities and options available to them. The law degree helps us to build skills which will aid us no matter what direction we wish to take after we finish our undergraduate journeys. To tailor degrees to individual purposes would be pointless because we easily change our minds: the majority of students come fresh faced from college or Sixth Form with only a vague idea of where they want to be in five years. So the point? The point of a law degree is to learn about ourselves, our aspirations and futures, what we enjoy and to develop our skills. We just happen to learn the law along the way.