Nothing in this world is inevitable – except the LSB's latest diktat

‘Inappropriate’ and ‘misguided’ are two of the more measured responses to yesterday’s Legal Services Board’s (LSB) draft statutory guidance on how to implement the recommendations of the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR), published last summer.

LETR, you will recall, was jointly commissioned by the profession’s regulators and was the first root-and-branch review of legal education and training in four decades.

Why such a strong response to what, let’s face it, sounds pretty dry stuff from the LSB?

What is it about ‘risk-based and outcome-focused’ approaches, not to mention – your favourite and mine – section 162 of the Legal Services Act 2007, that has people steaming at the ears and declaring that ‘nothing in this world is inevitable except death and inheritance tax’?

It isn’t the assertion by the Legal Services Consumer Panel that the LETR was a ‘missed opportunity to redesign legal education and training around the needs of consumers’, although that is fighting talk in any book and more than enough to get the regulators duelling with rapiers at dawn.

Nor is it the frisson of excitement caused by the, frankly risqué, observation that ‘a liberalised legal services market can only function effectively for consumers if there is a significantly more flexible labour market’.

So what is the fuss about? It’s about the LSB’s, to many, hugely controversial statement that, despite the hundreds of law graduates that have failed to secure training contracts or pupillages, society requires more, not fewer, lawyers to satisfy the ‘unmet need’ of individuals and small-business consumers.

The LSB says that ‘it is difficult to accept the argument that there are too many lawyers’ given this unmet need. Combined with the ‘perceived cost barriers for consumers’, the LSB goes on to assert, it is ‘more likely that the market cannot sustain the [current] number of lawyers at the current cost’ – the subtext of which, we can assume, is that fat cat lawyers (an increasingly threatened sub-species) should be paid less.

The LSB, which of course is the over-arching regulator of the legal services market, goes on to discuss the role of regulators. It says: ‘Given the regulatory objective to promote competition and protect and promote the interests of consumers, it would be very difficult to accept any attempt by a regulator to use its regulatory arrangements to restrict numbers.

‘We therefore propose that the solution to the issues lies not in further restrictions, but in fewer restrictions to the way that people are able to qualify and [to expand] the range of options open to individuals wishing to pursue a career in legal services.’

Let’s all pause while a strangled gasp of ‘what?!’ escapes the parched lips of hundreds of disappointed graduates who are unable to enter the profession.

And then let’s put some flesh on the bones of what the LSB said. Too many young people are looking for traditional careers in the law and are seemingly unaware that the market is changing and tending towards (horrible word) commoditisation. We are left with graduates who can’t get a job in legal services, but would like to work in the sector. We also have non-graduates whose social and economic backgrounds militate against entering the legal (or any other) profession.

At the same time, the LSB says, research shows that individuals and small businesses are hungry for legal services, but cannot afford them.

Why not put the two groups together by liberalising the market and opening up new opportunities for unqualified people, whether they are law graduates who haven’t secured a training contract or school leavers, to work in legal services?

Some people will still climb the slippery pole of the profession, becoming partners and chairs of magic circle firms. But more importantly, others will enjoy a very different career in the law, but one that is also fulfilling.

It’s got to be good for consumers, but will it be good those of you who have already invested thousands in your education and training, only to join the dole queue or become a paralegal?

No, is the short answer.

Jonathan Rayner is a Gazette reporter