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GAZETTE
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1985
Apprenticeship — In-Office
Training — Suggestions for
Improvement
In endeavouring, with limited resources, to monitor
apprenticeship, the professors from the Law School have
visited a number of offices, to discuss with Masters and
apprentices the progress of the in-office training period.
A number of useful suggestions have come from the
discussions with Masters and apprentices which take
place during such visits. It has been thought useful to
compile a list of these suggestions which are set out below.
It is appreciated that many of these suggestions will
already have been put into effect in many offices, none-
theless there may be others which it may be thought
appropriate to adopt.
(a) Allow the apprentice — with the client's consent —
to sit in on interviews and later allow the apprentice
to interview clients;
(b) have the apprentice deal with a file from beginning
to end rather than pitching him in in the middle of a
case;
(c) if the apprentice is given a file which is already
running he should be acquainted with the present
state of the file and the office's policy in relation to
the case before it is handed to him;
(d) apprentices should be brought to court from time to
time so that they can observe what happens in court
and become more acquainted with Advocacy in
action;
(e) the apprentice could be given the job of reading the
journals and passing around notes to keep people in
the office up-to-date with developments;
( 0 if acceptable, the apprentice should be encouraged
and given time to become familiar with the office
book-keeping system;
(g) one person — usually, but not necessarily, the
master — should be responsible for the apprentices'
in-office training. A record of attendance and
progress to be kept;
(h) formal meetings, even if brief, to be held on a
regular basis between master and apprentice to
review progress of the apprenticeship. Initially these
could be say each 4-6 weeks, later quarterly should
suffice. The information process should be two-way
and designed to produce mutual benefit.
Central to the idea of apprenticeship is that, over the
training period, the apprentices should become familiar
with all the areas of practice in which the office engages. It
is in the performance of the role of a lawyer, to the extent
that an apprentice's experience and practice skills permit,
that the learning initiatives occur. The master should seize
every opportunity of showing the apprentice how to
recognise and handle ethical problems and issues of
professional responsibility. The apprentice should learn
how to conduct himself towards and show courtesy to the
client, the Court and his colleagues, especially his more
senior colleagues.
•
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