Login
Powered by
MOMENTUM
MEDIA
Powered by MOMENTUM MEDIA
NSW Chief Justice Andrew Bell has intensified his push for changes to PLT and advocated for a price reduction, but the nation’s largest provider of PLT says that while it supports a review and will “rethink” its criteria, it affirmed that the costs for such professional education are "unlikely" to change.
During a speech he delivered earlier this year at the NSW Law Society’s Opening of Law Term Dinner, NSW’s top judge, Chief Justice Andrew Bell, highlighted the escalating costs associated with PLT and warned that these excessive fees impose a considerable financial burden on prospective lawyers.
In his speech, CJ Bell unveiled that the largest provider in the practical legal training (PLT) sector, the College of Law, “has been generating an average ‘surplus’ of almost $16 million per annum over the past decade and has accumulated ‘retained earnings’ of just under $180 million”.
Now, His Honour has released The Legal Profession’s Experience of Practical Legal Training report. Published on Monday (14 April), Bell CJ presented the findings of a survey he commissioned in February, which garnered responses from over 4,500 individuals. Of these, more than 2,500 responses came from recently admitted practitioners, while over 2,000 responses were from supervisors.
His Honour stressed that the data they’ve gathered has raised “serious concerns” about the quality of the mandatory training that law graduates are required to complete, which costs around $10,000.
The survey revealed that only 43 per cent of recent graduates felt that assignments they completed were “practical and career-relevant”. It also found that only 40 per cent of respondents considered the teaching methods to be “satisfactory”.
Additionally, a strikingly low 13 per cent of the recent graduates believed that “the course was reasonably priced”.
Urbis, an independent research agency commissioned by the Legal Profession Admission Board to conduct a survey, found that many participants view PLT as merely “a box-ticking exercise, lacking deep relevance to legal practice”.
Additional themes Urbis identified were participants’ concerns regarding the “lack of academic rigour” within the PLT courses, viewing the costs of PLT as “prohibitive”, and seeing paralegal work as “more useful”.
In response to these concerns, Bell CJ announced that the Court of Appeal’s Justice Tony Payne, who chairs the LPAB, has established a “PLT Working Group”.
This group, which consists of LPAB members and senior practitioners from NSW, will be tasked with considering “both short- and long-term proposals for reforms addressing the cost and quality issues relating to PLT”.
Following the report’s publication, the CEO of the College of Law (COL), Neville Carter, has come out with a statement acknowledging the concerns raised by CJ Bell and what the LPAB survey uncovered.
In addressing the criticism regarding the PLT criteria, Carter emphasised that the baseline standard for what COL teaches every student is “non-negotiable”. However, he indicated that “the College agrees it is time for a rethink of the prescribed competencies”.
“An important next area of enquiry following through on the survey should seek to understand with more particularity precisely what areas of knowledge and skill the profession sees as wanting in new graduates in order to inform a next statement of competencies which reflects that view,” Carter said.
Carter indicated that any shifts in competency requirements will naturally raise questions about tuition fees, but "having regard to the cost of professional education across all professions worldwide", he noted that COL believes changes to the fee structure are “unlikely” to occur.
While Carter stated the importance of stakeholders taking the survey “seriously and use it to support next stages of review”, he noted that the survey “needs to be considered as part of a more comprehensive review”.
He added: “The findings from the survey need to be weighed against other evidence such as detailed student evaluation data gathered at institutional level, especially when benchmarked to targets and comparative data, including comparative data drawn from Commonwealth sources, notably the [Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching].”
Editor's note: The headline for this story has been updated to reflect College of Law's support for a review of legal professional education.
We're evolving — and so should your insights. Heads up — Lawyers Weekly is going premium from 1 May for just $5 a month. Stay informed without missing a beat. More information coming soon.
Get breaking news
Grace Robbie
