Regular re-accreditation and an end to the ‘general practitioner model’ of training are among the reforms called for by the Legal Services Consumer Panel in its submission to the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) today.

The consumer watchdog tells the review that the current system is ‘failing because it tries to train the typical lawyer when in reality there is no such thing. The legal market is simply too diverse to sustain the general practitioner training model any longer.’

A future system of education and training should be built around ‘an activity-based authorisation regime for individuals and entities’. Reform must include a new type of continuous professional development as ‘the current system is widely discredited’. This would include periodic re-accreditation for practitioners licensed in high-risk areas.

The Legal Education and Training Review is being jointly undertaken by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the Bar Standards Board (BSB) and the Institute of Legal Executives Professional Standards (IPS). It was set up in November 2010 and is due to complete its research phase this year.

According to the consumer panel, future systems of and training should be ‘centered on the needs of consumers rather than on those of law students’. It calls for activity-based training: in will-writing, for example,‘it is difficult to sustain the argument that an individual wishing to set up a will-writing business should undergo the full training that a solicitor must go through when that training demonstrably does not equip solicitors to prepare competent wills’.

In the new model regulated legal entities would be required to allocate specific responsibilities to regulated legal advisers whose level of training would depend on the activities they provide, identified on practising certificates.

The panel argues that activity-based training should make the profession more diverse, as it would allow more entry routes to candidates without degrees. Greater emphasis on entity rather than individual regulation should also give employers more freedom to recruit from a wider market, it says.

On re-accreditation, it says current continuous professional development schemes are ‘widely discredited’. Current sanctions for failing to carry out continuing professional development ‘usually a slap on the wrist or a small fine’ are ‘not an effective deterrent’. The arguments for re-validation ‘should be self evident’. It should be seen by the profession ‘as a career-enhancing measure, not a career-threatening one. It would support further learning and enable lawyers to demonstrate their commitment to professionalism’.

While the panel says it is too early to suggest a specific model of revalidation, it suggests any scheme be linked to the authorisation regime, coupled with the professional register, and should comprise an independent evaluation by a third party of a lawyer’s continued fitness to practise. The evidence base ‘must include consumer input’, though it concedes that consumers ‘will not always be able to judge the technical quality of advice’.