The Gazette 1972

both of which should be concerned to produce better lawyers to serve society. It considered that the profes- sional bodies, as bodies responsible to the public for maintenance of the standards of the profession, must concern themselves with what and how their students were being taught; if they were to hand over all respon- sibility for the teaching of substantive law to the univer- sities and colleges, and to recognise the law degree as part of the professional qualification, they would require some reassurance. But, it is forthrightly pointed out by doing so they would gain important advantages: "Legal education will be in the hands of professional education- alists, whereas the profession itself can never be more than enlightened amateurs who can only give part-time attention to its problems." (Para. 107.) In the same paragraph attention is drawn to inade- quate communication between the profession and the law faculties: "Non-communication breeds distrust, ignorance and misunderstanding". This is a strong motivation for the recommendation that an Advisory Committee on Legal Education, consisting of represen- tatives of the profession and legal educators, should be established. (Paras. 116 and 117 give detailed proposals for the composition and functions of the proposed Advisory Committee.) These are perhaps some of the most significant observations and recommendations of the Committee. There is a correct emphasis on the vital necessity for mutual trust and respect between all concerned with legal education if the proposals are to be successfully implemented. But there is also a degree of caution in this part of the Report. While the professional bodies, it was very wisely asserted, ought not to attempt to specify the contents of the curriculum as a condition of recognition of a particular law degree, if, however, contrary to the Committee's expectations, the gap be- tween die academic and professional bodies widened in the future rather than narrowed, some form of specifi- cation might become necessary, although it hoped it would not. (Para. 108).) Those who may find it difficult to envisage the circumstances in which English law schools would accept professionally imposed prescrip- tion of courses should consider an earlier part of the Report where it seemed clear to the Committee "that almost nowhere outside the British Isles (sic) does the legal profession now exercise the kind of influence on university law teaching that it has exercised here through the subject-by-subject exemption system." (Para. 70.) A reaction which illustrates the dangers in the Com- mittee's wary approach appears in a Memorandum on the Report published (October, 1971) by the Young Solicitors' Group of the Law Society: "We are nervous of an acceptance of all [law degree] courses in their present form as it is our belief that some of them will contain matter largely irrelevant to the general legal practitioner and, more importantly, omit some of the basic legal principles he will require . . ." (Memoran- dum, p. 6, para. 4:2.) This expresses an attitude cal- culated to raise the blood pressure of most university Problems of recognition of law degrees

law teachers and comes ill after a prior admission that: "We are not properly qualified to judge the syllabus of each of such courses". At the same time the Group goes on to recommend that Company Law be an addi- tional "core subject". It is understandable that the profession has to be convinced of the advantages of recognition of the law degree. The Committee had to take the situation as it found it and start from there, so naturally some re- assurance had to be offered by way of inducement to the profession to concede long-held positions. But all that should reasonably be required of the law schools is that the "basic core subjects" (under whatever names) should be included as compulsory subjects in the law degree course. This means that the profession will have to resist the temptation to insist on a larger core. One Australian law faculty, when considering reform of its curriculum to allow for a greater degree of choice on the part of its students, was confronted with professional demands for the inclusion of seventeen compulsory subjects if its degree were to continue to have recog- nition as a qualification for practice. This is admittedly an extreme example, but it does illustrate the problem of professional recognition. "Balance" in America The U.S.A. was held out by the Committee as "per- haps the leading example of a system in which the practising profession and the law schools have attained a balance between academic freedom and professional participation". This was possibly "because in America, to a greater extent than here, the law teachers are seen as an important section of the legal profession". (Para. 70.) Assuredly American law teachers have long had a great sense of academic freedom. But there, as the Re- port itself shows (in Appendix D, para. 123), the prac- tising profession, in the form of the American Bar Asso- ciation, does not, in approving law schools which con- form to its standards, in any way attempt to prescribe the subjects which are taught at the law schools, or the way in which they are taught. The price paid for this freedom from interference is that no exemptions for subjects taken at law school are allowed in the State Bar examinations which in almost all states must be passed in order to gain admission to practice. In recent years, there has been growing criticism in the U.S.A. of its system of legal education and especially of its lack of professional- practical training. The hoary cry from the profession about the law schools not adequately preparing their students for practice has been heard more frequently. This may in time lead to an upsetting in the delicate balance in that country. Another aspect of the problem is die number of law graduates who do not in fact enter the legal profession. The Committee was not able to obtain precise figures but the evidence suggested that 25% would not be an under-estimate. (Para. 118.) It is reckoned that about 50% of Australian graduates do not enter private prac- tice. The law faculties have a duty also to their students who will alter into careers, legal and non-legal, in indus- Curricular Diversification

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