The Gazette 1979

GAZETTE

SEPTEMBER 1979

reinforce the learning process but also relieve the intensity of the course. For those reasons we hope before long to be able to restructure our course so as to introduce into it some periods when the students will undertake field work in practice. Modern theories of recurrent education would seem to indicate that this concept is sound in principle, and we are hopeful that the difficulties of putting it into operation are not insurmountable. Components of legal Education The next matter I want to talk about is a rather broader one; it concerns the integration and co-ordination of the whole legal educational process; the Legal Practice Course/apprenticeship components of it and the Law School/Legal Practice Course components. For the analysis of these various components of legal education we are, of course, indebted to the Ormrod Committee Report. That report, you will recall, recommended that the training process be planned on a three stage basis — 1. The academic stage; 2. the professional stage, comprising (a) institutional training; and (b) in-training; and 3. continuing education or training. There would be few, if any, who would quarrel with that as a correct analysis of the educational process. But there are two things about it that, if not fully understood, are apt to mislead. One I have already referred to: the use of the expressions "in-training" and "practical experience in a professional setting under supervision", to describe what I think amounts to apprenticeship. The other is the reference to planning the educational process in "stages". From the use of the word "stages", there has grown up, I believe, a tendency to think of the process as consisting of a series of unrelated, sequential steps which, if taken one at a time, will produce the desired result. Each stage, it seems to be thought, may be given without any particular regard for the demands of the next stage. Those providing any one stage may, as it were, do their own thing. Now to look at it in that way is, I believe, both wrong and mischievous. The "stages" of which the report speaks, are, of course, steps in the process, but they are also interrelated component parts of that process, and they must be seen as such. They each have their own proper educational objectives, but they must all be co-ordinated towards the objective of the whole exercise. Each stage must have regard for the legitimate demands of the next stage, and each must bear in mind the ultimate goal of the whole process. What is required here is also a definition of roles; but a definition that recognises the requirements of the other roles in the process, and of the overall process itself. Objectives of Law School Education I have already spoken of the need to re-examine the objectives of Legal Practice Course training, to determine the role of apprenticeship training, and to interrelate them so that the one provides a proper foundation for the other. But we must try too to grapple with the very difficult question of determining the objectives of the Law School component — the academic component — of legal

So far as I know, no thoroughgoing investigation of these questions has yet been made, but I think it must be made if we are to bring coherence and direction to this part, at least, of the legal educational process. Purpose of Student's Apprenticeship And then what of the other dimension of the professional ingredient of legal education: apprenticeship? There is a need, as I have said, to define its role and to determine its proper objective. But an equally pressing need, I think, is to being home to all that it still does have a role, and a very important role, in the educational process. This was clearly recognised in the Ormrod Committee Report, but the pity is, I think, that in doing so it used such expressions as "in-training in practice" and "practical experience in a professional setting under supervision". The result has been, I believe, that the profession has come to think that these expressions mean something different from apprenticeship, something that does not involve them in any particular responsibilities. It sometimes seems to me that the ideal of apprenticeship in the practice of law is one that has now been almost entirely lost. No doubt there are a number of reasons for that. The increasing pressure on practitioners in their daily work leaves them with little, if any, time or inclination for teaching apprentices. The tendency these days to specialise means that many practitioners hesitate, if they have apprentices, to venture teaching them anything beyond the confines of their own specialty. And then too I think there had been a tendency for many years now to leave it all up to the Law Schools anyway; what students don't learn there they can pick up as they go along. Now, I fear, the temptation will be to leave it all up to the Legal Practice Course; to think that students should know it all by the time they have finished there. But, of course, that is not right. Law Schools cannot provide the experience, the teaching and the guidance that belongs to apprenticeship. Neither can Legal Practice Courses. It was never intended that they should. It was never intended that Legal Practice Courses should be a substitute for apprenticeship, but rather should be a complement to it. I believe therefore we must take some active steps to revive and restore the ideal of apprenticeship in law; to bring home to practitioners the sacred trust they hold to teach those who would undertake the practice of law; to pass on to them something of the wisdom and experience that years of practice have taught them. And when I speak of apprenticeship here I envisage a form of training that involves active participation on the part of the practitioner in accrodance with a predetermined set of objectives. And then I think we should be exploring ways of integrating Legal Practice Course and apprenticeship training. In particular, I think we should be looking at the possibility of introducing some element of apprenticeship into Legal Practice Courses. Our experience of conducting those courses in Canberra has led us to believe that they suffer from the fact that the course itself is too intensive and that the students are left too long unacquainted with the realities of practice; students should have an earlier opportunity to apply the skills they are taught to the raw materials of practice. Some field work during the course would, we believe, not only

134