An edited version of this short blog first appeared in The Times Brief
on Thursday 15 July 2021 (paywall).
After a decade of review, consultation and design, the
solicitors qualifying examination
takes its
first bookings
this month for its November sitting. Traditional law firms have worked hard to update graduate recruitment programmes in advance, while less traditional legal businesses will see opportunities to do much more and develop an entirely different approach to training solicitors.
The use of paralegals and contract lawyer platforms to deliver managed legal services and supplement in-house teams is now well established (
FLEX,
Axiom,
Elevate,
Obelisk,
Factor
for example). Regulatory changes mean that these businesses are now able to employ solicitors that directly advise clients.
There are battalions of paralegals that want to become solicitors and the new exam offers them a cheaper and more flexible path to qualification. Many of these alternative providers, such as at least one of the “big four” accountancy practices (
KPMG), are already offering training that is faster and cheaper than the traditional route.
Those with a steady supply of talented paralegals will be able to offer new routes to qualification because the work experience element of the reformed process is less prescriptive — studying can be done alongside work and the costs of education and exams are much lower. Business like FLEX are
making it easier
for paralegals to be in control of that, and for firms to manage it, with tools such as their qualifying work experience journal.
Over the next ten years there will be a significant increase in the number of solicitors qualifying and the exam will help these alternative legal service providers attract and retain more recruits. It will help them to develop the quality and credibility of their services with better trained workforces — and as supply increases, it may also push down the salaries of newly qualified solicitors and thus the costs of delivering legal services.
The growth of alternative providers increases choice for general counsel at corporations who no longer just buy from the firm where they trained and, as a result, the new businesses are able to attract more complicated legal work.
Ultimately, some of those providers will be granted the status of alternative business structures, (see
Elevate Next UK
for example). which they can staff with lawyers that they have trained. In the process they will march directly on to the territory of traditional City law firms.
Those firms can respond and some are already well placed to do so (
BCLP Cubed
or
Pinsent Mason Vario
for example). They need to create structures that are pipelines for diverse talent into top law firms rather than stress that working in their their alternative offer is not a route to a training contract. Salaries of £100,000 may be justifiable for elite young professionals, but if that is a law firm’s only strategy for training solicitors then they are in effect abandoning large-scale and routine work to the alternative providers and retreating up the value chain.
Strategy for law firms won’t be driven by the new exam or indeed any other of the regulatory reforms of the last ten years. But they provide an important context, and law firm leaders need to develop more modern workforce strategies to compete.
