Universities this year saw a record drop of 5.2 per cent in applications to study law. Fees have risen at a time when interest in participating in apprenticeships has also increased – according to a recent report by the Office of National Statistics, 16.6 per cent more people took up apprenticeships in 2009/10 than in the previous year. Meanwhile in the legal market the advent of ABSs serves both to highlight the diversity of legal services offered and to change the models by which these are delivered. In doing so, will there still be a place for the law degree, or will the market be better served by on-the-job training?
The proposed ban on referral fees is unlikely to bring about the positive changes promised by the government – it will just create hard work for regulators, argues Susanna Heley
Anyone living in the south-coast town of Eastbourne in the late 1950s would be familiar with the name Dr John Bodkin Adams. His murder trial was (at the time) the longest in British legal history, but, instead of going to the gallows, remarkably, the overweight doctor was acquitted on 10 April 1957 and resumed medical practice in Eastbourne some four years later. But was he an angel of mercy or an unconvicted mass murderer who killed his patients decades before we heard the name Harold Shipman?
