The Law Society’s Young Lawyers Committee and I have been keeping track of the NSW review of PLT – instigated and encouraged by Chief Justice Bell of the NSW Supreme Court – with keen interest. The results of the review were summarised by his Honour in a speech a couple of weeks ago.
There is certainly anecdotal sentiment amongst young lawyers that the results of the review reflect the state of PLT in Western Australia. Some have told me that if a survey were to be conducted in this state, the results would be a lot worse.
I personally have mixed feelings.
I think providers like the College of Law and Leo Cussen provide great support to the legal profession, regularly sponsoring events and CPDs (including those run by the Law Society) aimed at assisting law students and young lawyers alike to obtain information to gain employment or excel in established careers. In the post-admission space, they generally (and generously) provide great assistance and education, supported by passionate and dedicated people I admire like College of Law Executive Director Catherine Stokes, who was the 2024 WA Woman Lawyer of the Year.
There also seems to be a place for the big PLT providers as institutions, where there has been a clear move to standardised post-university qualification for admission, to avoid the pitfalls of inconsistent skills education that came with the Articles system. It is also necessary to have places that can provide PLT at scale.
However, in my own experience and the experience of many of my colleagues, it is not clear that the current standardised approach equips law graduates for the realities of legal practice. It makes the $10,000+ fees associated with PLT courses feel like the biggest waste of money in the world when it is needing to be paid on top of the significant amount paid for a law degree.
The essential problem in my view, and certainly one shared by Chief Justice Bell, is that PLT run by the big providers is generally not practical at all. These providers cannot rely on the requirement for supervised hours to claim that it is (especially when some placements are exploitative of law graduates, which is another problem entirely).
In reality, the supervised hours are the leftover component of the Articles system. The courses run by the PLT providers are meant to be the crucial element that actually educates and equips graduates for legal practice. There is very little in the way of assessments that reflect real life practice.
Additionally, save for informing me about trust accounting and the existence of PEXA, my own PLT course did not educate me on anything I did not already know from my law degree. Its assignments were designed to be time consuming but not challenging. The tests were structured to be ones that couldn’t be failed.
All in all, PLT felt like a course aimed at setting a very low floor for legal practice in Western Australia, rather than attempting to pull participants upwards to a standard that the profession should be aspiring to, one that inspires the trust of the clients (and bosses) we serve.
However, I am very hopeful that these problems are ones that can quite easily be remedied by rewriting or restructuring current courses. I would certainly endorse Chief Justice Bell’s suggestion of a capstone course where participants would receive personal instruction in critical skills. Tailored and personal training would yield greater results for participants, given that teachings could be more easily applied to their supervised practice work.
I also agree that practical training should start at university. I note that a lot of skills that would be covered by the proposed capstone course are ones that can be sharpened through participating in competitions in law school (client interview, negotiation, mooting etc). However, the fact these are extracurricular and not everyone has these opportunities (or the time to embrace them if they did), indicates that perhaps they should form part of the main coursework instead.
PLT providers can and should continue their good work in post-admission training. Continuing education is important, and it is a dangerous notion for lawyers to think they do not need to learn anything more or anything new. The way law is practised is changing too rapidly for that to be true. While the YLC considers the next best step to advocate for better PLT in Western Australia, we invite and encourage lawyers and law students (young and old) to write to us with your views (younglawyers@lawsocietywa.asn.au). We are here to represent you.
