Apprentice your way to a legal career

Legal apprenticeships have been big news over the past few months in the legal sector. Firms have been launching their own schemes - in fact, both Kennedys and Browne Jacobson announced in September that their first contingents of apprentices had joined - and the prospect of ever greater undergraduate debt is adding to the popularity of alternative routes into the law.

One organisation at the very forefront of the movement is Skills for Justice (SfJ). A few weeks ago, I spoke to Charles Welsh, relationships manager at SfJ, about his thoughts on the apprenticeship movement and where it was headed. He first described why SfJ has been motivated to get involved: "Broadly speaking, we want to help create growth and jobs for young people. However, we also think that the proposition for firms is attractive, as it will also allow them to be more competitive with their pricing." SfJ is working with around 60 firms in the UK on formulating national occupational standards to cover the sort of work done by non-qualified legal professionals. The new Higher Apprenticeship in Legal Services is part of that long-term project.

Charles describes the mood pervading the legal sector. "Firms have been approaching us, wanting to engage in new ways of producing different strands of resource for their work. That's partly about the changes that the Legal Services Act and alternative business structures are bringing, particularly in the private client arena," he explains. "I think that longer term, firms want to remain competitive and will search for innovative ways to resource and price their work." Buy-in from firms has been encouraging: "Every firm we've contacted supports what we're trying to achieve. There is also positive feedback from the regulators and professional bodies, which say that as long as we've got employers' support, then they'll be behind us too. So we're responding to what some of the more innovative firms are already doing and building on that in an appreciative way."

And it seems likely that many firms will lend their support, as there is a clear business advantage to the longer term, higher apprenticeship scheme's ambition with apprenticeships at Qualifications and Credit Framework levels 5, 6 and 7 in the pipeline. "Someone who had completed a legal services Level 7 apprenticeship would have the same level qualification as the current LPC," explains Charles. "Employers will soon have a wider choice when recruiting for solicitors by taking on someone who is perhaps a bit more experienced and has been fee-earning for up to five years through a government subsidised apprenticeship route, as well as someone who has qualified through the traditional LLB and LPC pathway."

Plus, becoming an apprentice is an attractive proposition for students: "Students in the future could either accumulate £40,000 of debt in their university and postgrad studies, or be earning from the age of 18 in a successful, wealth-creating legal business. We're not saying that if you do all the apprenticeship levels, you will become a solicitor, but there will be a qualification equivalent to LPC-level, which is achievable in the workplace. And the government will fund at least part of it because it's an apprenticeship." Sounds interesting, and certainly a case of watch this space…

For more on legal apprentices, see our section in "More Law".