SRA says ‘one size fits all’ approach to legal training must end

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has set out a series of proposals to overhaul the UK’s legal education and training system, in response to a major review of the sector, which concluded in June.

In a policy statement published tomorrow (16 October), the SRA says it wants an end to what it called the “one size fits all” approach to the solicitors’ qualification, including the development of more “flexible” routes that are “tailored to specific markets and needs”.

The regulator also proposes a shake-up of what it called the “box-ticking exercise” of continuing personal development (CPD).

The SRA’s set of proposals, outlined in a document called Training for Tomorrow, follow the June publication of the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR), billed as the most fundamental examination of legal education and training in 40 years.

Many of the report’s suggestions echo those of the SRA and Bar Standards Board-sponsored LETR, which said the legal profession had developed “too great a reliance on initial qualification as a foundation for continuing competence”.

On CPD, the SRA warns that the system was not sufficiently focused on outcomes.

Speaking to Legal Week, former Herbert Smith Freehills partner Julie Brannan, the regulator’s new director of education, said: “We want to shift the focus to specifying the number of hours to take, and looking much harder at what comes out of it.

“Each solicitor might have to reflect harder on what their own training needs are. Currently, it’s not targeted, and we only specify that people have undertaken 16 hours a year.”

Brannan also said elements of the SRA’s oversight and checks at the point of prospective solicitors’ entry to training and education amounted to “an easy red tape cutting exercise”, which could be axed and, instead, delegated to individual training providers.

The report concludes that education and training is “out of step with, and not integrated into, our outcomes-focused, risk-based approach to regulation”, and that the SRA should create greater flexibility and help promote diverse access to the profession.

The SRA also says it will address concerns related to the cost of initial training, availability of training contracts, unfair treatment in recruitment and limited recognition of prior experience.