A side order of business to go with your law degree?

For many savvy students, 'commercial awareness', on first hearing, may just sound like another irritating dollop of corporate jargon. Well, if a career in law is what you want and this sounds like you, put such sentiments aside immediately - because both the legal profession, and the educational pathways to it, look to be changing. The importance which law firms and educational bodies now attach to the phrase is a clear indicator of where the profession is heading: an increasingly overlapping legal and business environment (see our Burning Question section for examples), which is steadily beginning to be reflected in legal education.

As the legal framework which regulates big business becomes ever more complex to keep up with the intricacies of a global economy, the gap between the activities and interests of corporations and big law firms is shrinking. Signs indicate that legal education is beginning to change in response - to reflect the increasing overlap between legal and commercial sectors, and respond to the onus on lawyers to interpret cases and issues from the commercial perspective of their clients. LC.N has already reported how BPP Law School is introducing a programme which offers its LPC and BPTC graduates the chance to obtain a master's qualification in business in just 15 weeks, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Surrey and Portsmouth universities now boast combined law and business departments, with law students required to take modules in business as part of a new overlapping approach to legal education. The University of Reading has also teamed up with Henley Business School to jointly run The Centre for Commercial Law and Financial Regulation, which promotes interdisciplinary research in an academic environment that increasingly allocates funding more favourably to multi-departmental research proposals. Reading has also this year introduced three new LLM courses in conjunction with Henley, which were specifically introduced to add commercial know-how to the skills of law graduates.

Such courses are growing in popularity, but the short and long-term implications of their introduction remain unclear. The competitiveness of the legal jobs market is paralleled by the competition between legal education providers, which must endeavour to provide attractive and varied options to students, lest they lose their young, hungry intellects (and custom) to another institution. It's important to remember this - we must not assume that the variety on offer is solely motivated by a need to respond to the commercialisation of the legal sector. As for law firms and chambers, it's still unknown what attitude they will take to the new qualifications. It may be the case that many of the more traditional employers will continue to look favourably on more established qualification routes - never discount that some organisations, as well as people, like to stick to what they know.

There is certainly credence to the argument that removing legal training from what some would call an unrealistic 'vacuum' must be a good thing for future lawyers and the profession alike. Teaching critical thinking and an appreciation of practical business concerns will certainly, if properly implemented and accepted, be of benefit to future lawyers in a range of legal careers. We'll have to wait and see how this educational practice develops, and indeed how it is received by the legal profession - but in the mean time, remember that commercial awareness is not just a phrase to brush over. It's getting more important, and things may be changing long term to accommodate it.