Interviews and focus groups were semi-structured, involving an initial series of prompt questions. Prompt questions were derived from the over-arching research questions and for the group (eg, students, academics, practitioners, regulators) participating. As the context of the research changed (eg, in relation to ABSs and the Welsh jurisdiction consultation and with increasing integration between stages 2 and 3) and as data gathered from previous groups was analysed, questions for later groups were refined and developed to focus on gaps or matters of particular interest to the researchers at that time. Participants were also able to raise issues of concern to them, and within the overall context of the research, not specifically addressed in the interview guides. Reproducing the interview guides for each group would be impracticable and in some cases would prejudice the anonymity of participants. An indicative selection of guides is, therefore, provided. In some cases key questions are emboldened.

LETR Questions for Skills and Mobility focus groups

Key LETR Questions (educators and practitioners)

• What is the role of legal education and training and its relationship to maintaining professional standards and regulation in the sector?
• How do formal education and training requirements work in concert with other regulatory tools to deliver conduct of business regulatory objectives?
• What should be the educational standards for entry to the regulated professions?
• What should be the requirements for continuing education, accreditation and quality assurance for regulated individuals and entities?
• What requirements should be placed on approved providers of legal education and training?
• What problems do you face regarding issues of equality, diversity and social mobility? How can they be addressed? How might they change in the future?
• How does our system of legal education and training prepare our lawyers for international work?
• How do you expect the Legal Services Act 2007 to impact on legal education and training in general [and your own training programmes in particular]?

Skills, knowledge and attitudes questions

• What skills, knowledge and attitudes are relevant now:
  • At the point of qualification/exposure to the public (see list A);
  • After the point of qualification/exposure to the public (see list B)? Are there particular roles for which education and training should be mandated? Are there any other useful means of establishing or managing competence after qualification?
• How do these skills emerge (if they do) from university degree courses, GDLs, LPC/BPTC/equivalents, and/or CPD?
• How do these skills emerge (if they do) from the workplace during the training contract/pupillage/equivalent or otherwise? What should the relationship between the classroom and the workplace be in an effective legal education and training system?
• How should Welsh law be addressed in the legal education and training system for lawyers? Is there a case for different systems for
  • those practising or intending to practise in Wales; and
  • those practising or intending to practise in England?
• Should there be mobility between professions? If so, how could this be achieved?

• and what knowledge, skills and attitudes will be needed in the future in the legal services sector, both pre- and post-qualification?
  • How, and to what extent, do you expect ABSs to impact?
  • If regulation was activity-based, would it fracture the professions into a series of “mini professions” (eg. wills, mortgages, tax)? Would your sector still need its own basic qualification(s) first?
  • How, and to what extent, do you expect digital technologies to affect the law?

• If you were the regulator, what would you keep and what would you change about the current system for legal education and training?

LETR Questions for professional bodies and regulators

Education

• Please tell us about the educational standards and training requirements for entry to your profession. What challenges will need to be addressed in the next 10 years?
• Please tell us about the requirements for continuing education, accreditation and specialist accreditation in your profession. What challenges will need to be addressed in the next 10 years?
• What problems do you face regarding issues of equality, diversity and social mobility? How can they be addressed? How might they change in the future?
• How does the system of legal education and training in your sector prepare your sector for international work?
• To what extent should there be increased scope for mobility between legal professions?

Regulation

• What issues of the regulation of business, or the regulation of education and training, are specific to your sector?
• How does regulation in your sector safeguard the quality of legal services provided to consumers?
• What regulatory risks are there in your sector?
• What is the appropriate level of regulation in your sector necessary to safeguard the objectives of the Legal Services Act? In what ways will such regulation satisfy the principles of proportionality; accountability; consistency; transparency and targeting?
• The Legal Services Act 2007 includes the regulatory objective of promoting “competition in the provision of services”.
  • Do you see scope for competition between regulators?
  • Do you see scope for sector-wide regulation by activity rather than by title?
• What aspects of regulation, or of education and training, developed in your sector do you feel could be of wider application to other parts of the legal services sector?

The future

• How do you see the following affecting your sector:
  • ABSs
  • Changes in funding in higher education
  • Changes in public funding for legal services
  • Expansion of the unregulated sector
  • Increasing divergence between English and Welsh law
  • Competition from abroad (eg EU lawyers practising in the UK; outsourcing of legal services)
  • Developments in IT
• What are your hopes and fears for the future development of your sector?
• What else would you like to tell us?

LETR Questions for Skills and Mobility focus groups (students)

• What do you think of when you are asked to describe a lawyer? What are their characteristics, skills and backgrounds? How do you perceive the professions?
• What would make a student choose law as a profession? Why might a student want to become a lawyer (family, money, prestige, influence, community, etc)?
• What qualities do you think a law student would require?
• What skills, knowledge and attributes do you think a lawyer needs? Would someone feel they could acquire these in the course of a university education? Or during their LPC/BPTC or its equivalent?
• Might fear of not getting a traineeship/pupillage/job discourage students from studying law?
• Do you think that changes in the way legal services are provided (eg through the Co-Op) have any impact on the way law students are educated?
• If you obtained a job in one legal profession, might you be interested in changing to a different legal profession later on? Should it be possible to change between different legal professions?
• How do you think Welsh law should be dealt with in the legal education system? Should there be different systems for those planning to practise in Wales and in England?
• How might the primary and secondary education of a student (the quality of the teaching, the prestige of the school, state vs private, etc) influence their decision to study law?
• Should there be affirmative action policies for students from minority or socially disadvantaged groups, such as recruitment quotas, or acceptance of lower academic standards?
• What are the main barriers to people from different groups in society entering the legal professions?
• What practical steps might be taken to facilitate the entry of more people from minority or socially disadvantaged groups into the legal professions?

Evaluation form for Solicitors and their Skills

Solicitors and their Skills

Background

The Legal Education and Training Review (http://letr.org.uk/) is a joint project of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the Bar Standards Board and ILEX Professional Standards. It constitutes a fundamental, evidence-based review of education and training requirements across regulated and non-regulated legal services in England and Wales, to ensure that the future system of legal education and training will be effective and efficient in preparing legal service providers to meet the needs of consumers. As part of this project, the LETR research team is investigating how solicitors deploy their skills. Essentially we want to find out how much time solicitors working in different fields of practice spend on different tasks, and thereby start to establish if there is a set of core skills for solicitors, or if the profession is becoming specialised to the point that those working in different fields of practice employ largely different sets of skills.

Prior to the establishment of the LPC, the original Solicitors and their Skills report found that whatever their area of work, the tasks solicitors performed, and the skills they used, were broadly similar (Sherr, 1990). It is notoriously difficult to obtain accurate assessments of how people spend their time, without objective observation, so the original study involved “non-participant observation”; researchers following solicitors around with a stopwatch and recording their activities against a list of tasks. Concerns with cost and confidentiality mean that to replicate this study would be impractical, but developments in electronic timekeeping mean that non-participant observation should no longer be necessary, as there are new ways to identify how solicitors deploy their skills. So now we need your help to investigate if or how solicitors’ skills have changed in the last two decades.

How Do You Spend Your Time?

Concerns for accurate billing and accountability have resulted in a proliferation of time management systems, which record the activities of solicitors in 6-minute increments. We are asking you to pick a 5-day period (preferably Monday-Friday) and at the end of that period (the following Monday perhaps) to go through your timesheets and identify how much time you spent each day on various types of task. The next page features a table for you to complete and return. Please fill it in as illustrated in the example below (times are given in minutes):

Where there is uncertainty about which category to put an item into please do not enter it more than once. In particular, where, say, a letter of advice to a client is drafted please put this under “Client Handling” rather than “Drafting”. Any further questions about this research or how to fill in the form should please be directed to Simon.Thomson@sas.ac.uk.

Legal Education and Training Review – Solicitors and their Skills Timesheet

Please complete this form and return to the person co-ordinating this study for your firm. All data will be held securely, and you will not be identified in any reports.