In the wake of controversies and fears over a glut of aspiring lawyers, a hugely complex review of legal education has been launched. Friederike Heine and Alex Novarese assess the task at hand
By wide agreement, when Mr Justice Ormrod was appointed in 1967 to examine the state of legal education, he had his work cut out. Ormrod’s remit was to tackle the conflicting demands made of educating lawyers, which meant reconciling the agenda of the universities – which were intent on maintaining law as a ‘learned’ career – with those of the profession, which was pressing regulators for a greater emphasis on vocational training. Law, the subsequent report stated, “had emerged from the chrysalis of apprenticeship but had not yet discovered satisfactory alternative ways of developing wings”.
