Minister: Education pathways to the legal profession to be overhauled
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Education and training pathways into the legal profession face an overhaul after justice minister Helen McEntee said she would seek to implement recommendations in two reports published by the Legal Services Regulatory Authority.
The LSRA outlines potential structural reform which could allow different training routes to becoming a solicitor and a barrister beyond those currently available.
One of the reports also says now is not the time to consider ways of joining the two professions of lawyer and barrister, but recommends that it be looked at afresh in five years' time.
The two reports submitted to the minister are: , and .
The first recommends reforms to, for the first time, define the competence and standards required to practise as a solicitor or barrister.
It also recommends the establishment of a statutory framework to accredit existing providers of legal practitioner education and training as well as, also for the first time, allowing new providers to be accredited to provide professional training for solicitors and barristers.
The second report by the LSRA says while it would be "premature" to recommend that the two branches of the profession be unified at this stage, the matter should be revisited in no less than five years, by which time infrastructure may have evolved for it to become a reality.
Ms McEntee said there needed to be "more equity and diversity in access to the legal professions and in their education and training structures" and she would work with the LSRA to achieve that.
"We must address those financial and administrative barriers that aspiring lawyers continue to face at the outset of their careers once and for all," she said. "We need a more open legal services sector to support our open economy in a way which can be to the mutual benefit to both citizens and enterprise in their access to justice."
The minister has also asked the LRSA to review economic and other barriers faced by young barristers and solicitors and to return to her with recommendations. Areas to be considered will include remuneration, working terms and conditions available, and the ability to take maternity leave.
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