Education review may not report until 2013

The co-chair of the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) has warned that the review commissioned in 2010 may not report its findings until 2013. The LETR was commissioned by the three main legal regulators - the SRA, the Bar Standards Board and ILEX Professional Standards - to identify the kinds of legal education and training that will be required by a changing legal services sector (see "Legal regulators combine on education review").

Reported in Legal Futures, former appeal court judge Sir Mark Potter, who co-chairs the LETR's Consultation Steering Panel with Dame Janet Gaymer, warned last week that the panel had met only once in "a purely introductory exercise" and that it was now "somewhat ambitious" to expect the LETR's conclusions to be ready by the original late 2012 deadline.

News of the delay comes after the Higher Education Academy's decision to withdraw funding from the academic body responsible for conducting the LETR's research, but the SRA have moved quickly to confirm that the research personnel involved with the LETR will continue their work unaffected.

And amid concerns that UK legal education is in danger of falling behind the progress made by globalisation, the LETR is to create a new advisory group to provide its investigation with an international perspective. The decision is a result of the findings of Professor John Flood of the University of Westminster, whose report Legal Education in the Global Context concludes that ignoring globalisation in legal education "could cause serious damage to the reputation of the UK legal profession". Those considering a career in law will be hoping that the LETR can ready its report as near to within Potter's "somewhat ambitious" schedule as possible.