hrtraining

The Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) should recruit a high-powered team of young lawyers to vet its proposals and provide fresh insights into the future of the legal marketplace, Professor Richard Susskind has urged.

Around a sixth of practising solicitors – and a quarter of those working in-house – say they have been bullied in the workplace, according to a survey on wellbeing in the profession. Almost one in five of solicitors suffer from severe stress or worse, the figures also suggest.

Law students believe that alternative business structures will mean more job opportunities but lower salaries and status, according to a survey conducted by the College of Law. It also found that four in ten post-graduate students are shouldering debts of more than £20,000

The system for training lawyers is not fit for purpose, the Legal Education and Training Review research team has suggested. The team of academics floated a series of ideas that in some instances would represent radical reform of the present regime.

A fifth of lawyers who have so far responded to a survey on stress in the profession are currently suffering from clinical depression or another mental illness, it has emerged.

The Legal Services Board has approved Bar Standards Board proposals to introduce an aptitude test for prospective Bar students. The test aims to weed out the bottom 10% of candidates.

Innovative legal businesses such as Riverview Law, Co-operative Legal Services and Parabis are demanding a new approach to educating and training new lawyers as they create different roles for them, such as project management and data analysis.

It will take up to 10 years for the true effects of alternative business structures (ABSs) to be felt, Professor Richard Susskind said this week. He said the only certainty at the moment was that much of the £25bn legal market is “very inefficient”.

Putting “values and ethics” at the heart of legal services provision will be one of the key themes taken forward by the Legal Education and Training Review following a major symposium in Manchester, along with quality of legal services and paralegals.

A groundbreaking project that aims to encourage students to think about innovation in the post-alternative business structure world – and help them develop new ideas for delivering legal services – has been launched by Sheffield Hallam University.

Most trainee solicitors think that the legal practice course has prepared them for legal practice, a new survey has shown. The results arguably run contrary to the sentiments coming out of the ongoing Legal Education and Training Review.

There has been a surge in large law firms paying partners bonuses over recent years along with distinct shifts in the way they compensate partners more generally and away from lockstep, new research has revealed.

The Legal Education and Training Review should lead to alternative routes to qualification through a modularised and work-based approach, the Law Society has said. It comes as Professor Stephen Mayson has expressed concern that the review is in danger of being subsumed by vested interests.

Lawyers’ legal education and training should be aimed at the specific activities they will be authorised to practise rather than at achieving a particular title, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has urged.

The minimum salary for trainee solicitors will be scrapped on 1 August 2014, the board of the SRA decided yesterday, saying it is not the job of a regulator to control wages. Firms will be required to pay the national minimum wage of £6.08 an hour.