Are law schools facing an existential crisis?

Many universities celebrate their 50th birthday this year or next. That this half centenary is shared across so much of the sector is symbolic of the education revolution in the mid 1960s. As we are poised to celebrate, it occurs to me that many law schools swept up in the celebrations are having an existential crisis in their middle age. And why? Because the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) research report explicitly separated legal education and training from legal services education and training (LSET), the latter being a part of the former, and being that part of the former which is regulated and inextricably linked to reserved activity.

The providers' existential crisis is caused by the necessary decision many now have to make. Which type of education does each law school wish to provide for what sort of learner? To be fair, we have to await the regulators' responses first, but no law school worthy of the name will wait to start planning until then.

The purpose of legal education

To be blunt, there is still no universal agreement about the purpose or purposes of undergraduate legal education, whether to be a general academic liberal arts degree, or a preparation for a professional career, within or without the legal services sector. And although the commentators will continue to argue about it, the argument is totally irrelevant. The proposal to move to a day one outcome competence framework does not inevitably mean the latter type has prevailed; LSET is a subset of legal education, not all of all legal education and training. The argument betwixt and between is irrelevant because each law school can decide for itself, neither model is exclusively right.

Thinking differently

If LETR teaches us anything, it is to start to think differently. Drop the notion that the time-served model is the one and only, be flexible and willing to embrace new pathways to legal careers. The decision we have made at Nottingham Law School, as we prepare our own 50th birthday celebrations, is to offer a flexible portfolio that is intellectual, rigorous and demanding, with specific legal and professional skills embedded. Yes, the curriculum has to be carefully designed and finely balanced, and some black-letter law isn't taught in exchange for space for the learner to develop those skills, but we have prioritised flexibility over positivist rule learning. Why? Because we have to keep our provision relevant to what the students want, what employers want (within and without law) and what we as educators know is valuable.

Educators' understanding

But I'm worried that the national debate is already lagging behind the sector's changes. Educators really are best placed to be proactive given our depth of understanding of the sector, educational and legal, but the behaviour of some is at best reactive and at worst reactionary. Denying the changes that are inevitable in the future of the legal services markets will not stop them happening. The intelligence already exists, whether in terms of student motivations to study law, educational research on most effective and proven teaching methods in law, legal services market demand in terms of knowledge and skills, and informed predications of the next evolution in professional international work. Loyalty to existing curricular will not serve students who need technological and market branding awareness, social and commercial understanding, ethical awareness and an ability to respond ethically, to which I would add the rule of law and exemplary communication skills across the legal discipline. I won't be around to offer another review in 50 years but I hope for our students yet to be born that we get this right.

Rebecca Huxley-Binns is a professor of legal education at Nottingham Law School