Jonathan Goldsmith drew an analogy between lawyers and doctors in his optimistic piece ‘Solicitors pass medical'.

However, I believe the comparison is problematic and the effects of that admittedly common assumption have been responsible for much of the disarray in the legal education market.

Consider this statistic from the Law Society’s annual statistical report: ‘In 2010 the 1.7% of firms with 26 or more partners employed 41.6% of all solicitors in private practice.’

That 1.7% almost without exception comprises commercial firms – large commercial firms that can, unlike many smaller firms, budget for the cost of trainees.

These trainees are more likely to qualify into career streams that have far more in common with those found at professional services firms, not those of doctors.

The commoditisation of many of the other streams of work undertaken by solicitors only reinforces this progression.

Comparing law with professional services, we can find one crucial distinction.

In the latter, the aspirant gets the job and then takes up the training. In law, in most cases, the aspirant takes up the training on the promise of the job.

A large proportion of these jobs have already been earmarked for those fortunate or talented enough to sidestep the terrifying drop from LPC into unemployment.

The few remaining places are fought out for by the massive back-stock of those who have completed the LPC and, of course, by those who complete it each year. None of this is particularly new.

But these trends propel us naturally towards a fundamental split in the profession. City solicitors and those undertaking commercial work have very little common interest with those undertaking, for example, human rights work.

It will similarly become natural and appropriate that different regulators represent different interests.

The law schools understand this. There are around 45 law schools in England, many of which are already or are fast becoming well-run, efficient and highly commercial businesses; businesses that understand that they are increasingly providing a form of training in professional services.

It is no coincidence that Kaplan and BPP both have a background in finance education.

Law schools are often lambasted unfairly for not being more restrictive in their approach – for not stemming the flow of those completing the LPC.

But they understand that the pairing of law and medicine in so many minds is no longer appropriate and have adapted to this by offering increasingly separate paths for those wishing to work in increasingly discrete areas.

On joining council I believed that education was the solution to the ‘oversupply’ and that informing students of their chances of success was the most reasonable way to proceed.

Now I am less sure.

I think it is the deep-seated assumption of the equivalence of the legal and medical professions that has led to this imbalance.

Moreover, this assumption is so entrenched it would take a huge change – most likely a massive regulatory overhaul of qualification – to challenge it.

While work-based learning is an admirable attempt to establish a new career path, introducing it while preserving the training contract has caused justified fears of a two-tier profession.

In light of all this, I welcome the review of legal education.

But whatever its conclusions, those making policy will have to take into account the commercial argument that oversupply leads to competition, competition leads to higher quality and quality benefits the consumer; and then balance this against the interests of aspiring solicitors.

The situation is far from a catastrophe – as Mr Goldsmith points out, one need only look at the strength of UK law firms abroad to find evidence of a system that is clearly working on some level.

Yet it is clear that the balance between commerce and education has not quite been achieved yet, and propagating the comparison between solicitors and doctors only helps to keep the discussion fixed in the past.

Beth Wanono is the outgoing Law Society Council member for students and trainees