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GAZETTE
JULY-AUGUST 1978
Education and Training of Solicitors
Apprentices
Some Comments on the New Law Course
Professor Richard Woulfe,
Director of Education,
Incorporated Law Society of Ireland
The publication in 1967 by the Society of Young
Solicitors of its report "The Education of a Solicitor"
opened a debate on the education and training of
solicitors in the Republic of Ireland. There had been a
growing body of criticism of the existing system which
allowed apprentices to qualify without any experience or
any adequate experience of the day to day practicalities of
being a solicitor. The publication in England in 1971 of
the Ormrod Report and of the Armitage Report in N.
Ireland in 1973 gave impetus to the move for reform
based on separating the academic stage from the practical
stage of legal education and training, with a buttressing of
apprenticeship as the traditional means of imparting legal
skills by introducing a practice orientated course of
intensive instruction by legal practitioners to impart to
apprentices the skills and procedures which they would
need in the early years of their professional lives. The first
step in the change was the introduction in 1975 of a
university degree as the normal method of entry to
apprenticeship. This change was taken further by the
Solicitors Acts 1954 and 1960 (Apprenticeship and
Education) Regulations 1975 (S.I. No. 66 of 1975) —
"the New Regulations" — under which the Incorporated
Law Society's new Law School has been set up with a
new course of instruction and new style final examination
and, subject to completion of the necessary statutory
instrument, a new fee structure. The first part of the Final
Examination uhder the new regulations is effectively an
entrance examination and will be held in December 1978
and each subsequent December, the subjects for
examination being Property, Contract, Tort,
Constitutional Law, Company Law and Criminal Law.
The Society recommends that intending apprentices,
other than 1975 and 1976 entrants to Irish University
Law Faculties, should not become bound as apprentices
until they have passed the Final Examination First Part
and thus secured a place in the Law School. Because of
uncertainly in the minds of some practitioners, it is as well
to re-state the qualifications for apprenticeship. Only the
following may become apprentices:—
(i) Persons holding a degree of Bachelor of Arts or
Bachelor of Law of an Irish or United Kingdom
University.
(ii) Persons holding a university degree or other
qualification which, in the opinion of the Society's
Education Committee in the particular case, is equivalent
to the degree referred to at paragraph (i).
(iii) Persons who have passed the Preliminary
Examinations of the Socity held in the year 1976 or in
any subsequent year.
(iv)Persons who have been exempted by the Society's
Education Committee from the Preliminary Examination.
Persons who have served as bona fide Law Clerks for
seven years or more prior to their application for
exemption may fall into this category.
School leavers are not eligible for entry to apprenticeship
The normal method of entry is by obtaining a
University Law Degree and subsequently passing the
Final Examination First Part: accordingly, school leavers
should apply for admission to the University of their
choice. Graduates in disciplines other than law will have
to spend a year studying die six subjects set in the Final
Examination First Part.
No person may, of course, become apprenticed until he
or she has passed the Society's First Irish Examination,
which examination has to be passed by all intending
apprentices irrespective of where they were born.
The student's remaining hurdle is to secure a master.
The Society's Education Committee will entertain
applications from solicitors of five years standing to take
an apprentice and also applications to take second
apprentices. Sole principals or partners in firms are asked
to take apprentices when possible and to notify the
Society of their willingness to do so.
Once apprenticed, the student embards on a half year's
Professional Course in the Society's new Law School at
Blackhall Place. The Law School will open its doors to
the first students under the new system in mid-February
1979 and the students will pursue a 9.00 a.m. to 5.00
p.m. five day a week course of study in the school until
the end of July 1979: the second of the professional
courses will, subject to demand, commence in early
September and finish in mid-February 1980. This
strange looking February-September-February cycle
arises because most students will be completing their final
degree examinations in September/October and the
entrance examination to the Law School will be in
December of each year. Furthermore, August has
traditionally been the principal vacation month for the
legal profession and the instruction in the new Law
School will be given almost entirely by Practising
solititors. These instructors will be divided into
Consultants and Tutors. The Consultants have been drawn
largely from members of the twelve sub committees
established early in 1977 each of which sub committees
considered a major area of practice and decided what
aspects of that area should be taught on the professional
course. These voluntary sub committees worked very
hard and have now moved on to the preparation of course
materials. The first group of Consultants — some 40 in
number — have already undergone ('enjoyed' might be
too coloured a word) a series of four week-end training
sessions at which the motto of the new Law School
"learning by doing" was applied. A typical instruction
module will have the Consultant prescribing the advance
reading which the student must do before the entire class,
and their tutors, gather in the assembly hall where the
Consultnat then demonstrates that skill stating his
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