In an announcement guaranteed to stoke controversy equally among the practising profession and in legal academia, skills minister Matthew Hancock wrote in an article in The Daily Telegraph newspaper that he wanted to expand apprenticeships to cover the professions, specifically lawyers and accountants.

Graduate flood

The Law Gazette weekly newspaper reported that Mr Hancock pinpointed recent moves by England’s BPP Law School, which is reported to be in discussions with regulators over plans to launch an apprenticeship ‘pathway’ as an alternative route to qualifying as a solicitor.
The move is bound to trigger controversy as many claim the legal profession is already flooded with graduates. Speaking to The Guardian newspaper, Matthew Weait, a law professor at the University of London’s Birbeck College, said: ‘It is not that there is an insufficient number of competent law graduates to satisfy the market, but that firms are extremely sensitive to economic conditions and expand or shrink training opportunities as efficiency requires.’
Still, some in academia welcomed the move. Professor Richard Moorhead, director of the Centre for Ethics and the Law at University College London, said: ‘Opening up an apprenticeship route ... is neither new nor radical. It will not significantly dilute the quality of lawyers, and might even improve it.’

Hedge fund boom

Meanwhile, in the US, reports emerged at the weekend of one booming area for lawyers -- private equity houses and hedge funds.
According to a report on the Law.com web site, lawyers specialising in Dodd-Frank Act regulatory matters can almost write their own tickets at those businesses. The site quotes Adam Reback, a chief compliance officer at hedge fund J Goldman & Co: ‘If the pace of new regulation continues the way we've seen in the last year or two, I think more and more [financial services] firms will be adding to their legal and compliance departments. It means more filings, it means more leg work, it means more monitoring. You just need more people to get it done.’