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9 J. Soc'y Pub. Tchrs. L. n.s. 434 (1966-1967)
The Inter-relation of Academic and Professional Training

handle is hein.journals/sptlns9 and id is 442 raw text is: 434 SOCIETY OF PUBLIC TEACHERS OF LAW THE INTER-RELATION OF ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING* By L. C. B. GowER A. What is the distinction, if any, between academic and professional training? i. There are some, including perhaps some participants in this conference, who will regard the subject of this paper as a non-subject. They will deny that it is possible to draw any meaningful distinction between legal training for academic and professional purposes. I myself do not share that view-which I regret because it has robbed me of a perfect excuse to decline the flattering but onerous task of writing this paper. I think it is both possible and desirable to make such a distinction. But it is essential to be quite clear what the nature of the distinction is and, more especially, what it is not. And what, in my submission, it most emphatically is not, is a distinction based on a division of the seamless web of the law into academic subjects and practical subjects' the former only being suitable for study at an institution of higher learning such as a university, and the latter suitable only for study under professional auspices. However, the contrary view has, in the past, been fairly widely held in England even among academic lawyers and it is still firmly believed by a good many practitioners in a good many countries. Hence it may be advisable first to attempt to dispose of that heresy, as I believe it to be. 2. The heresy is based upon twin assumptions. The first is that there are certain legal subjects which, though useless (or virtually so) to the legal practitioner, have nevertheless a high cultural content which makes them peculiarly valuable as part of the education of a gentleman. The second assumption is that there are other subjects which are essential for the practitioner but, perhaps for that reason, are, as the academics would put it, devoid of cultural content or, as practitioners would say, beyond the grasp of airy-fairy academics. Pre-eminent among these are Taxation, Company Law (Business Corporations) and Procedure. The more extreme proponents of this view appear to believe that if a subject is practically useful it cannot be cultural or academic; and vice versa. Another test is said to be whether the subject is largely based on case law or on statute. If the former, it is cultural and therefore academic; if the latter, it is probably practical but certainly not cultural. This extreme view is still widely held among practitioners and in the past has been influential in the English universities where traces of its * A paper delivered at the Ditchley Foundation Conference on Training for the Law, July, 1967. I There are, of course, objections to dividing the seamless web in any way at all. But, for pedagogic purposes one has to. However, many teachers are now questioning whether the traditional divisions, based largely on pure conceptualism, are ideal.

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