{"id":94,"date":"2015-03-02T03:37:23","date_gmt":"2015-03-02T03:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helencarter.com.au\/?p=94"},"modified":"2025-07-05T09:59:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T23:59:13","slug":"the-legal-education-shakedown-who-is-footing-the-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/?p=94","title":{"rendered":"The Legal Education Shakedown – who is footing the bill?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a legal practitioner, business owner and parent, I am often asked to comment on the current state of affairs regarding the interaction between the legal services industry and tertiary education. \u00a0We are close to\u00a0crisis point – and it is now\u00a0widely recognized that there has been an oversupply of law graduates<\/a> for a number of years, with 12,000 graduates each year entering a market that at present can only sustain 60,000 practitioners. \u00a0Two thirds of students indicate that they intend to practice law, but the reality is that only half of them ever will. \u00a0 \u00a0But fixing this may be difficult, given the large number of discrete stakeholders in the Legal world. \u00a0 Universities, Practitioners, Law Firms, Publishers, the Law Society as well as those offering Practical Legal Training, all have an interest in this issue, and often little interest in cooperating with each other.<\/p>\n

The origin of the problem is in the myth\u00a0that legal study is an automatic pathway to wealth and prestige. It is true that for many hundreds of years, legal education has been highly venerated in society. \u00a0Some of history’s great\u00a0leaders, thinkers and scholars have been lawyers. \u00a0But while in academic and social circles Law Graduates have been held (and have most notably held themselves) in high esteem for centuries, the idea that law as a profession is lucrative financially is fairly recent, and already firmly in decline. \u00a0It was only in the late 1970s and 1980s that ‘Law’ in the western economies became synonymous with wealth and prestige, and there is no question that the ship has already sailed. \u00a0 \u00a0In the modern world, Law is now like any other profession: \u00a0there are exceptions for exceptionally talented (or exceptionally lucky) people, but generally speaking the incomes are inline with other professionals.<\/p>\n

But there is still a faint cultural perception that a Law degree at university will inevitably lead to\u00a0\u00a0financial and\u00a0career success. \u00a0School leavers and mature age students\u00a0flock to institutions to study law\u00a0with little regard to the content of the degree, merely for these perceived\u00a0vocational guarantees. \u00a0Once it was announced in 2009 that the cap on University places would be lifted for the 2012 year, Universities began the process of targeted recruitment. \u00a0 For these Universities,\u00a0now run as competitive commercial entities, Law degrees\u00a0are profitable and cost \u00a0little to deliver. \u00a0 Full time students spend as little as 8 hours per week in the class room, and up to 50 hours per week pouring over text-books, case-books and online databases – but contribute as much as $1,000 per week in fees, some from the tax payer, but mostly from their HECS debt. \u00a0 \u00a0With competition between Universities at unprecedented levels, there is little incentive for them to ensure that applicants are suitable, or even capable, of studying the degree. \u00a0In my opinion, if Universities are to be run as competitive commercial institutions, then they too should face the consumer controls that other commercial entities face. \u00a0Section 18 of the Australian Consumer Law<\/em>\u00a0for example, prohibits ‘misleading and deceptive conduct in trade or commerce’. \u00a0Is it not misleading to recruit\u00a0law students to expensive degrees in a manner\u00a0which is so divorced from the vocational reality they face? \u00a0Alternatively,\u00a0 the Australian Consumer Law<\/em>\u00a0also provides consumer guarantees that services be ‘reasonably fit for any purpose that the consumer, expressly or by implication, makes known to the supplier ‘. \u00a0 Law firms\u00a0now report that in order to be considered \u00a0for a role a graduate must be achieving a Distinction or High Distinction Average, have volunteered their time for worthy causes, been involved in impressive extra-curricular activites, be well presented, charming and (basically) better than the other 10 candidates that have those qualities. \u00a0 \u00a0Is a P \/ C average degree from a Law School ‘fit for this purpose’?<\/p>\n

But the story for most law students\u00a0is not over yet. \u00a0Those who finish, most of whom by that stage are burdened with close to $40,000 debt after 5 years of study, are then required by the Law Society to complete Practical Legal Training (also known as a “Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice”)\u00a0before they can be admitted as a solicitor. \u00a0This is yet another highly competitive tertiary education marketplace, which will cost graduates roughly\u00a0another $8,000 in fees for 13 weeks of study, \u00a0and very probably involve them concurrently working in a law firm without remuneration for up to 75 days. \u00a0 From an academic perspective PLT\u00a0offers law graduates virtually nothing they either don’t know,\u00a0or should already know from many years of studying law.\u00a0 In terms of practical skills, as far as many practitioners are concerned PLT offers them nothing at all – certainly nothing that they need to know<\/em> to face the realities of legal practice. \u00a0 It is just yet another way for tertiary institutions to perpetuate the ‘shake down’ of ambitious prospective lawyers – to squeeze another $10,000 out of them before their aspirations run dry.<\/p>\n

It should also be understood that for at least the first two years, a new solicitor is in supervised practice in any case. \u00a0 \u00a0To ensure clients are protected the most important threshold , in my view, is when a practitioner\u00a0seeks\u00a0their unrestricted practicing certificate. \u00a0In my opinion the PLT should be abandoned completely prior to this stage.\u00a0 We should allow\u00a0the graduates be admitted as solicitors as soon as they have graduated from their degrees. \u00a0They can then be in supervised practice for two years. \u00a0When a solicitor seeks their unrestricted certificate, \u00a0it would be highly appropriate for the\u00a0Law Society \u00a0to see them at this stage jump through some more hoops relating to ethics, confidentiality, trust accounting etc. Further exams have far greater purpose, and are better served as part of this more significant gateway. \u00a0It would also give the graduate a long overdue opportunity to earn some actual money to pay all of these fees.<\/p>\n

And if we really want interns in law firms working for free, perhaps this should happen between high school and university. \u00a0If the school leavers were given a dose of the legal industry in advance of University, we might just save some of them 5 years and $50,000 – and potentially send them in the right direction in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a legal practitioner, business owner and parent, I am often asked to comment on the current state of affairs regarding the interaction between the legal services industry and tertiary education. \u00a0We are close to\u00a0crisis point – and it is now\u00a0widely recognized that there has been an oversupply of law graduates for a number of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[236],"tags":[27,23,25,26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8935,"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions\/8935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}