University law teachers and the College of Law have clashed over professional conversion courses for non-law graduates hoping to become barristers or solicitors.
The Society of Public Teachers of Law wants Common Professional Examination courses to be doubled from one to two years to give graduates a better and broader grounding in the law. But the College of Law in London, which provides around half of all CPE places, believes such a move would make the course too expensive for most students.
Institutions are already expecting a drop in the number of applications for CPE places of around 20 per cent - on top of a 22 per cent fall in numbers last year. Local authority cuts in discretionary awards to cover course fees of up to Pounds 4,000 and a drastic shortage in training places with legal firms have been blamed.
Roger Earis, director of academic studies at the College of Law, said that if the CPE was extended to two years only well-off graduates would be able to afford to take up places. That would be bad news for the average student and deprive the profession of a pool of potential employees with expertise in a wide range of subjects outside legal studies.
Research by the college had also shown that CPE students performed better than law graduates in the next stage of training for solicitors. Recent figures for the legal practice course showed a pass rate of 87 per cent for CPE students and 82 per cent for law graduates.
"The one-year CPE is a very intensive course and many firms want to employ people who have passed for that reason," Mr Earis said.
But the SPTL, in its submission to the review of legal education being carried out by the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee, argues that the constraints of time on CPE students lead to students learning the law by "cramming", rather than by achieving a full understanding of the facts they learn.
Peter Birks, SPTL secretary, said that the current arrangements did not allow for sufficient breadth or depth of study. "There are not enough training places for the number of people coming through anyway. If a smaller number came through on a two-year course we might be able to put together some sort of bursary system for them," he said.