To what extent should regulators be involved in legal education?

The Legal Education and Training Review has set in motion a slow caravan of responses and think pieces that shimmer in the desert but never quite become solid.

The most extensive response is that of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, which we now epitomise by the catchphrase "bonfire of regulations". Neither Thackeray's nor Wolfe's books had happy endings, as I recall.

In 'Training for Tomorrow', the SRA makes the point that the regulatory objectives of the Legal Services Act must be kept at the forefront. Of those points, the sixth is "encouraging an independent, strong, diverse and effective legal profession", which is to be applauded. This encompasses education and training. So where in this is the regulator's role? And what should it be?

Academic latecomer

Law is a latecomer to academia. We see it emerging as a university course in the late 19th century. Academics and the professions tussled over who should be the gatekeepers and resolved their differences in the 1970s in favour of academia with oversight from the professions.

The profession did more than oversee; it started prescribing and so we arrived at the "core" subjects, CPEs, LPCs, etc. Most of these were based on little evidence. But the Qualifying Law Degree became the entry point for the profession and it legitimated the academy's role as the gatekeeper.

In professional terms, closure was achieved.

Now it is to be opened up. In its response to LETR, the SRA wants to focus on Day-One Outcomes - the skills and competencies required of a lawyer. How they are arrived at will be left to the many providers incentivised to enter the market.

What will be the effects?

Losing the status of Qualifying Law Degree could potentially delegitimise a number of law degrees and universities granting them. As much as universities claim that law is a liberal education, it clearly fails to demonstrate this with today's curriculum. A few institutions do strive to offer this.

This is important because significant proportions of law graduates do not enter the profession. But it means that the institutions that can maintain their legitimacy in the eyes of the profession will shrink in number.

The other important aspect which is mentioned in the SRA's response is the changing legal services market. Legal services are no longer the sole domain of lawyers. Alternative business structures - which reached 200 last month - don't need only lawyers to provide services. Paralegals, legal technicians and others can do most of the tasks.

Unbundling of legal services reduces the need for astute legal judgments and the increased use of big data analysis will reinforce that trend.

More competition among providers will also reduce costs, along with Moore's Law, and lower returns to lawyers who might start thinking about the opportunity costs of legal education.

So we have an apparent contradictory trend: an increasing legal services market (on the basis of the new entrants and consolidation in the market) served by a decreasing number of lawyers and a rising number '¨of paralegals.

And I haven't discussed the effects of globalisation on '¨this process.

Monopoly over

There will be a division between the theoretical and vocational. It is this space the new providers will enter the market as trainers of apprentices, technicians, etc.

This is why the professional academics - not-for-profit and for-profit - will be fearful. Their monopoly is over and they will have to compete.

Training will take longer in many cases, as people mix classroom and on-the-job training. Not all will want to fully qualify as lawyers, so a much more flexible approach to skill use will be necessary and even a careful analysis of what skills will be needed in the practice. It will, being entity-based, depend on the type of firm or company, which will influence the amount of in-house training to be done.

The legal profession will have to rethink its relationship to academia. Instead of being '¨a passive recipient of novices, '¨it will have to engage more actively with colleges and trainers, which will cost '¨them more.

It may be too much for some firms, but most will have to realise they are now part of the lifelong learning/training process of legal service.