The future of the route to qualification

One of our annual plan objectives is that we will ''review the professional requirements of the LLB, and the requirements of the Diploma in Professional Legal Practice and the traineeship (PEAT) to ensure that outcomes are delivering the appropriate skills for solicitors of the future'. We also hope to work towards turning the alternative route that currently exists into a proper apprenticeship route that, however, largely relies on colleagues from Skills Development Scotland.

Towards the end of last year and into this year I met with academics and solicitors across the profession. The purpose wasn't to look at the route to qualification and to start again but, rather, noting that the system on the whole produces high quality new solicitors what tweaks need to be made here and there on the route to qualification. More than this, looking five, ten, fifteen years into the future... what sort of skills will solicitors need. If these skills are identifiable is it possible and/or desirable to build these into the current route to qualificaiton?

A number of common themes emerged in these conversations. These were:

- Tax law - this used to be taught in the degree and was in the large-scale review in 2011 moved to the Diploma. On reflection: is the DPLP the right place for tax? Should it be taught on the LLB? Or on the DPLP? Or both?

- Legal technology: there is at present a ''Use of technology'' outcome across PEAT (Diploma and traineeship). This is fairly generic. Given technological advances since 2011 it seems right to focus on this area in particular (and, with one eye on the future, this becomes truer still). What level fo technology skills do future solicitors need? What foundational skills underpin this (e.g. it is all very well wanting people with advanced data skills but the foundational skill may well be statistics. Where could that be taught?) When we talk about legal technology what do we mean? Can the current model deliver what we want? Or is this something better left to retraining whilst qualified?

- Critical non-black letter law skills: the PEAT Outcomes focus on skills (advocacy, interviewing, negotiation etc) but are there skills that solicitors need that don't feature in PEAT. One example consistently given was project management?

- Commercial awareness: is this solely for the traineeship? What can universities do to prepare commercially aware individuals?

- The big one... the position of European Union law post-Brexit.

There may well be other matters which come up some have suggested that as we move towards exiting the European Union that there should be an increased focus on language skills, trade law, international abritration, private international law etc.

Our next stage of development is to host a series of roundtables looking at each of the above areas (tax, legal tech, skills, EU law, commercial awarenss). We hope these roundtables will last around two hours and we will host them here at LSS. We would like each rountable to have between 12-16 people and would like a cross-section of LLB providers, DPLP providers and solicitors from across practice (big firm, high street, criminal defence, in-house etc).

If you are interested - or someone at your organisation is interested - in taking part in the roundtables that's fantastic. Just drop [email protected] an email and outline which workshop you'd like to be a part of.

Thanks!