The Solicitors Regulation Authority has given a thumbs up to ‘work-based learning’ as a route to qualification without the need to secure a training contract after analysing the results of a two-year pilot scheme.

A report on the pilot results, produced by Middlesex University, concluded that the scheme had been successful in its approach to assuring quality.

However, it made a number of recommendations for a more robust and integrated set of outcomes to assess trainees' competence.

The report recommended that more work be undertaken in setting out the skills and attributes needed for qualifying as a solicitor.

It suggested that a credit system should be introduced to assess incremental learning, and to open the door to more flexible routes to qualification and transfer between professions.

The report suggested that the work-based learning portfolio used in the pilot should be retained and developed as an on-going learning journal.

It added that the SRA should address barriers to entry at secondary school level when choices of university, courses and future careers are still being formed.

Susan Bews, chair of the SRA's education and training committee, said: ‘The WBL pilot has been extremely valuable and we are grateful to those firms and trainees who took part in the exercise.

‘The work will improve the rigour of our assessment processes and has the potential to offer a wider range of trainees the opportunity to complete their training through alternative routes.

‘There are two continuing strands to the pilot involving paralegals, and the combined route where a single provider is responsible for the law degree, Legal Practice Course and assessment which will be finalised in 2012.

‘We now have a firm basis on which to develop our work further, and this will be fed into the overall Education and Training review which we, the Bar Standards Board, and ILEX Professional Standards are undertaking.’

Seventy-nine students took part in the pilot, of whom 70 passed following completion of the course in December 2010.

Some firms nominated candidates to whom they had already offered training contracts.

Other participants were volunteers working in law firms or in-house legal departments in roles that otherwise would not have led to qualification.

In both cases, participants were assessed either by their employer or by an external provider against a set of eight learning outcomes involving practical legal experience.

Read the work-based learning report.