The trainees of tomorrow – time to change our expectations?

The seasoned lawyers of today often regale current trainees and paralegals of the times when preparing for final exams were a very different affair to what they are now. There’s no denying that the process of studying a law degree and preparing to train as a solicitor has changed dramatically. For instance, the days of having to trawl through tomes of legal antiquity, all to dig out the golden thread of legal knowledge for an assessment or examination is, for the most part, a thing of the past. Online legal databases and practitioner tools have brought the expansive collection of a good law library into our desktops and mobile devices.

Even though times have changed, we can all fall into the trap of holding tightly to the challenges of our own qualification journeys which in turn can lead to the hopeful trainees of tomorrow being judged through the lens of yesterday. The experiences of the articled clerk, the LPC-qualified trainee solicitor, and the graduate undertaking qualifying work experience, are all complex and nuanced in their own way, each with their own unique trials and tribulations. The point here is that the expectations placed on aspiring lawyers have shifted with the times, as has the skillset vested in the law graduate.

And it’s shifting again.

The expert navigators of the Halsbury’s index from ‘yesterday’ work alongside the masters of the Boolean search terms of ‘today’. ‘Tomorrow’ they will both stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the prompt engineers of the AI-evolved workplace.

The veterans of law who mastered the art of deep learning, to become almost purely instinctual with their legal craft, collaborate with those junior-to-middle career lawyers who know how to access and research the leading developments of law with just a few clicks and a fearless confidence in technology and automated processes. Their future assistants and trainees will know how to generate solutions, drafts and analyses for most new cases that come through the door, or at the very least have the confidence to triage new cases with technology serving as their working partner rather than their tool.

Arguably—and it’s an important argument to have—the focus on ‘depth’ of legal knowledge in legal education and training is diminishing over time, replaced by ‘breadth’ of legal knowledge and an ever-increasing embedding of practical skills; soft, technical, and commercial. While many may (and do) baulk at the changes to undergraduate and vocational level training, the challenges that evolving technologies pose to academic assessment integrity make these moves a necessity in most cases. That is not the only reason for these changes, but it is an important reason. A more important factor, of relevance to employers, is that law students and graduates need to be offered an education that, insofar as possible, prepares them for the realities of working in the legal sector that they will be joining – not the sector of the past.

Those involved in recruitment processes must ensure they are prepared to adapt their expectations when it comes to their future trainees. There are, of course, many factors that applicants are assessed against which go far beyond legal knowledge and fluency, but now is the time to reflect on what legal skills you should actually be looking for. Live, offline problem-solving assessments or competency interview questions, for example, may not allow the skills-enabled, technology-integrated, AI-competent graduate to showcase the value they can bring to a firm in terms of efficiency and evolution of practice. Yet, with the AI landscape evolving at the rate that it is, those are the skills that will be essential in the longer term, and this is certainly being recognised by legal educators in many institutions. The SRA have made it clear through the change in academic requirements for qualification that the journey to becoming a solicitor is leaping in a new direction, so our expectations need to leap with it, regardless of whether we agree with the changes.

So, to get to the final message of this piece: we, as lawyers of today, need to be open-minded and adaptive when it comes to what we expect from the lawyers of tomorrow. Our recruitment processes may need to mollify any overly rigorous tests of legal knowledge-recall, and instead focus more heavily on realistic working simulation and professional skills. Instead of expecting one generation to drag themselves to the other’s way of working, we would all benefit greatly from sharing knowledge, experience, and skills as a two-way exercise.

In the case of the trainees of tomorrow, it’s fair to say that the challenges of our own training journeys create great opportunities for learning for those we supervise, but equally the evolving learning experiences of these future lawyers brings fantastic opportunities for experienced lawyers and firms to grow and adapt too. Do not be afraid to be more open minded with your expectations.

Louis Harman is a legal consultant, senior lecturer in law and LLB programme leader at the University of Lincoln’s Law School