Crumbling, Creeping or Enduring - The Foundations of Legal Knowledge at a Time of Training Reform
![handle is hein.journals/amcrae104 and id is 12 raw text is: Crumbling, creeping or enduring
- the foundations of legal
knowledge at a time of training
reform
by James Hand and Claire Sparrow
Legal education periodically goes through periods of
potential flux. There have been at least five major reviews
within the last 50 years comprising two Command Papers
- Cmnd 4595 (the Ormrod Report of 1971) and Cmnd
7648 (the Benson Report of 1979)) and three reports by
the profession (including one by the short-lived Advisory
Committee on Legal Education and Conduct (ACLEC)). We
are currently in the midst of the individual regulatory bodies'
responses to the latest of those reviews - the Legal Education
and Training Review 2013. While a range of issues are up for
consideration, including the work-based element of training
and the general requirement of having a degree, the likelihood
is that foundation subjects will remain, to the dissatisfaction
of some.
THE SEVEN FOUNDATIONS OF LEGAL
KNOWLEDGE
In 1971 the Ormrod Report, having surveyed the content
of law degrees, identified five core subjects: constitutional,
criminal, land, contract and tort (as well as the English legal
system). Equity and trusts was subsequently added. While
the continued existence of core subjects was challenged in
a 1994 consultation paper by ACLEC, before they reported
the profession announced, in 1995 and with ACLEC's
acceptance, the replacement of the six core subjects with the
seven foundations of legal knowledge which saw European
Community law join the others and some additions to the
content of the original six. The stated rationale for the
foundation subjects was that they:
arisefrom thefact that all prospective solicitors and barristers need
a common grounding in these seven lawfoundations and because
the vocational courses build on the students' knowledge of these
foundations and must therefore be able to presuppose certain
levels offamiliarity, knowledge, awareness and appreciation.
The foundations ... also provide the basis for continuing legal
education and professional development by providing solicitors
and barristers with the necessary knowledge to enable them to
break into new areas oflaw. (ACLEC, 1996, The Advisory
Committee on Legal Education and Conduct First report on
legal education and training, 117 (Annex D))
The expansion in 1995, which fettered the anticipated
possible abolition following the ACLEC report, was roundly
condemned by Peter Birks who opined, among other trenchant
criticism, that The greatest absurdity which will now be
continued for the best part of a decade is the combination
of a list of compulsory subjects and the impossibility of
substitution (Birks, Peter, 1995, Compulsory subjects: will
the seven foundations ever crumble? [1995] 1 WebJCLI).
William Twining referred to this in his 2015 keynote at the
Association of Law Teacher's conference as the creeping
core which could go on to see the inclusion of company law,
ethics and values (which might lead to jurisprudence being
compulsory) or pet specialisms of successful individuals;
Richard Moorhead has written of chopping a few - quite a
few - fingers off the dead hand on the curriculum rather than
seeing its grip tighten (eg at https://lawyerwatch.wordpress.
com/2015/12/10/sqeal-some-initial-thoughts-on-training-
for-tomorrow/).
The 2013 Legal Education Training Review, a joint project
of the solicitors', barristers' and chartered legal executives'
regulatory bodies, was hoped by some to be an opportunity
to abandon the prescription of subjects, but the report
concluded that the range of evidence points to the existing
foundation subjects as a reasonable proxy for what is required
(LETR, 2013, Setting Standards: The Future of Legal Services
Education and Training Regulation in England and Wales (The](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/amcrae104&div=6&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Crumbling, Creeping or Enduring - The Foundations of Legal Knowledge at a Time of Training Reform
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