BSB and SRA move forward on LETR, but accused of failing to collaborate
updated on 10 October 2013
The Bar Standards Board (BSB) has published its framework for the development of education and training in response to the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR).
The strategy sets out six key programmes of work, including:
- establishing a competency framework for barristers;
- aligning the Bar Training Regulations to modern regulatory standards;
- establishing an outcomes-focused approach to CPD;
- sharing data to support the BSB's regulatory objectives in education and training;
- improving access routes to the profession; and
- collaborating on the regulation of the academic stage.
BSB Head of Education and Training Simon Thornton-Wood said: "It is still early days since the publication of the LETR, but this framework will help us to chart a course through a time of significant change in the legal services market. We will be developing these programmes in the coming months and will continue to publish more information on our priorities and progress during this period."
In other LETR news, following a Westminster Legal Policy Forum held in London on Tuesday 8 October, Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Chief Executive Antony Townsend said that the SRA would later this month "consult on an ambitious programme that would strip away the layers of regulation, which neither assure quality nor enable excellence". He went on: "A 'one-size-fits-all' approach to qualifying as a solicitor, in a market where one size actually fits very few, needs to be scrapped. We want to enable a diversity of routes to qualification based on what skills and knowledge solicitors need to have from the first day of qualifying."
However, according to Legal Futures, both regulators were "condemned for appearing to "preserve the status quo" rather than truly working together on future plans for joint qualification" by one of the attendees. Tom Macdonald, head of Leeds Law School, barrister and former SRA official, spoke of his concerns that despite the welcome coming together of the regulators to conduct the LETR, signs of their diverging paths were already emerging - "you are looking at competency frameworks on your own and in isolation" - and added: "Collaboration by name only… isn't - it's a three-year game of 'to me to you, to me to you'."
