The Gazette 1974

Land law. The Part II examination consists o fpapers on : Conveyancing. J«) Accounts. Ill ^ CVenue Equity and Succession. Ifi! Commercial law. H) Company law and Partnership. Either Family law or Magisterial law or Local Government law. The non-degree entrant must do a years course for he Part I examination, and after passing that exam •jerve under articles for 4 years and then pass the Part * Examination. The law degree entrant may be ex- i t e d from any of the subjects in the Part I Examina- ,0 n in which he has obtained a pass in his degree l ami n a t i on and, subject to taking any outstanding objects of the Part I Examination may either take the a r t II Exam and enter into articles for 2 years, or he m a y postpone the Part II Examination until after this Period of articles. The majority favour the former c °urse and are able to enter upon their period of articles ^ith their examinations behind them and are thus able give uninterrupted attention to their principal's ysiness and their own office training. There are pro- v 'sions enabling those who have a degree in a subject Her than law, mature students with experience in Her walks of life and legal executives to serve ortened periods of articles and thus not delay their Salifications too much. must face the fact that our profession has ^Nallenges and competition to meet. There is a call an ever widening legal advisory service. Legal aid extending and will extend its spheres of work, ^dvice Centres will be required to be manned. There . a n ever growing body of laws and regulations to deal I h and our entry into Europe will bring many prob- ^Hs to many of us. There is no dearth of competition V persons able and willing to take over work previously nsidered to be ours. Tax and estate duty consul- V ts > banks, insurance brokers, merchant banks, cut ' n ce conveyancers, etc. ^ ty is not sufficient to consider this subject on the ^ S l s that we can jog along as we have in the past. e must seek to improve. Merely to say that the ystems of training which have served us in the past e necessarily adequate is not good enough. If we n improve our training we must do so. ^ Ormrod Committee . I his state of affairs has been debated, for a long jHie but little action has resulted. Finally in 1967 the ° r d Chancellor set up the Ornirod Committee to Nsider the whole subject of legal education. The F ssibifity of carrying out the recommendations of that £°mmittee which is only now exercising the Law ^>ciety and has been put before the solicitors' branch the profession in a Consultative Document. Much evidence was considered by the Ormrod Com- j t e e , including evidence from The Law Society, and j, 80 "The Prospective Lawyer, Blue Print for the u ture" prepared by the then National Committee of associate Members received serious consideration. It a s a document which followed a very detailed survey Articles in England and it showed their defects, of T ^ r e a t evidence also, showed the desirability t> Universities undertaking their proper role for instruc- e ° n in the law, as they do in other countries, and V'dence also showed the practicability of teaching

practical skills in an institution. This was already being done in Canada and Nigeria and it is a matter of interest that Canada is now proposing to extend this type of training and abolish articles and that New South Wales have now established a practical training course in place of articles, and other Australian States are following. The Ormrod Committee published its Report in March 1971, and I will briefly outline the main effect of their proposals with regard to the main stream of entrants to the solicitor's profession. There were also provisions for graduates in other subjects than law, those with experience in other walks of life and legal executives. Briefly the position is that the profession would wish to receive such entrants and to make their path as easy as possible. The Ormrod Course of Training The Ormrod course of training, consists of three stages. First, the academic stage, secondly the pro- fessional stage, comprising both training in an institu- tion and training in an office, and finally continuing education or training. The entrant starts with a degree, then takes a year s Vocational Course at an institution, and thereafter, although admitted as a solicitor, he will not be allowed for two or three years to practise on his own account or as a partner, so that he will receive office training under supervision. The implementation of these pro- posals will effect a great improvement in the education of our profession. There are two principles on which the Ormrod Report was based. First, in the words of the Ormrod Report "legal education should not attempt to equip the lawyer every subject he may encounter in practice. Instead it should concentrate on providing him with the best possible general introduction so as to enable him with the help of experience and continuing education after qualification to become a fully equipped member of the profession'. And the second principle is inherent in the firts; namely that education and training is a con- tinuous process throughout a lawyer's professional life. The application of these two principles lead to the acceptance of a limited aim for pre-qualification train- ing and a realisation of the enormous importance to be attached to continuing education. Of what then should the limited pre-qualification training consist? On the academic side, a Select Com- mittee of the House of Commons on Legal Education in 1846, in recommending the setting up of law facul- ties at Universities, which did not then exist, said of academic training—"Its chief end is not so much the acquiring of knowledge as creating and maintaining the habits of acquiring it. Nor is it less true that a few subjects well mastered outweigh in real utility many indifferently or partially attended to." 125 years later we find the Ormrod Report saying much the same thing—"The range of the subject matter of the law is so great that no system of education and training before qualification could possibly cover the whole of it except in an utterly superficial and useless manner. The process of acquiring professional knowledge and skills is con- tinuous throughout the lawyer's working life." In those two quotations we find the reasoning which leads to the conclusion that the first and academic stage in a lawyer's training should be attendance at a University where he will receive an intellectual training in the critical study of the principles of some of the main 151