The Panel established by the BSB to review the BVC and chaired by Derek Wood QC published its report in July 2008, and all stakeholders – regulators providers, practitioners, prospective students and those advising them – are now getting to grips with its recommendations.

These were comprehensive, in some cases radical, and certainly reflected the range and apparent seriousness of allegations to which the review had been addressed. As listed in Chapter 5, they read rather like a bill of indictment: the recruitment of too many students (numbers had grown by 30% between 2003/4 and 2007/8); for too few pupillages (a 5% reduction over the same period); students who were unaware of the risks they were running when they signed up for an extremely expensive course; content that was insufficiently challenging, realistic and specialised to meet the needs of modern practice; teaching standards that were too low; and a pass level which was lower than any professionally recognisable threshold of competence, even for pupillage.

For providers this must have been depressing. It might also have been somewhat perplexing, because over the last ten years the BVC has been subject to almost constant external scrutiny.

Its current content was prescribed in some detail, via the so-called “Golden Book”, by the Elias Working Party as recently as 2000. Since then, major aspects of the course have been reviewed by no fewer than four working parties, each chaired by an eminent judge, practitioner or academic: Bell (2005); Neuberger (2007); Wilson (2008) and finally Wood. The standards and quality of all BVCs have, moreover, been monitored frequently, via detailed annual reports from providers, and by Bar Council (now BSB) appointed external examiners and panels.

According to Wood, though, there remained … “a gulf of misunderstanding….. between the practising Bar and the BVC. The impression persists among many practitioners that the BVC is flawed in most or all of the ways described (above)”

Faced with all this Wood’s approach was robust, businesslike and fair, and its outcome could best be characterised as “tough love”.

On the “tough” side are its recommendations that:
• The BSB should introduce a challenging aptitude test, covering analytical and critical reasoning and fluency in written and spoken English, which all those wanting to take the course (to be re-styled as the “Bar Professional Training Course”) from 2010 onwards will have to pass in order to qualify for entry.
• The “knowledge areas” should be tested by a combination of multiple choice and “short answer” tests: the former set and marked by the BSB; the latter set by the BSB but marked by the providers
• The pass mark for these tests should be raised to 65
• Those who fail these tests (or any other “summative” assessment) should be allowed only one re-take.

More loving are its conclusions that:
• The rationale for the course remains sound. Wood reaffirms that its “sole function and purpose…..is to introduce prospective barristers to the practical knowledge and skills they will need to provide a high quality professional service to their future clients”. It therefore not only rejects the idea that the course ought necessarily to be accredited towards Masters level degrees, but warns that, where particular providers decide that it will do so, this “should not detract from (its) essential character as a practical training course for the profession”.
• The content of the course is largely fit for purpose (though it recommends the introduction of a new compulsory module on Resolution of Disputes out of Court and that Professional Ethics and Conduct should be separately taught and assessed).
• The quality of teaching and other resources are satisfactory
• The academic entry threshold should remain at a 2(ii) degree. However this has to be set in the context of the new aptitude test, and the removal of any BSB discretion to allow students who have not obtained a 2(ii) to take the course.

Taken as a whole it is a formidable achievement and a great credit to the working group which conducted the review and the small BSB team which supported it.

It manages to distinguish between concerns which are real, provable and serious; and those which are based on prejudice, misguided aspiration, or hearsay; or which simply reflect the “gulf of misunderstanding” noted above

Its recommendations are commensurately measured, sensible and convincing. They are consistent with both the proper educational aims and objectives of a vocational stage programme for the Bar; and with the profession’s responsibilities to ensure the widest possible access and diversity.

It was completed in a remarkably quick time and this despite its having included a specially commissioned survey among students taking the BVC. All stakeholders were thus spared the blight, analysis paralysis and consultation constipation which afflicted the Legal Practice Course over the seven or so years that it took the Law Society to complete the Training Framework Review.

It has therefore strengthened the BSB’s claim to be an effective and independent regulator, - something which will almost certainly be of great benefit to the Bar after the Legal Services Authority starts work on 1 January 2009.

On the other hand, though, there are, of course, limits to what a review of this kind, and at this stage in the history of the BVC and the Bar itself, could possibly have achieved.

Firstly, Wood notes that “(w)e have the impression that the profession has become disengaged from the course which trains its recruits….In truth the course should belong to the profession as much as it belongs to the providers. If practitioners were more willing to take responsibility for it they would, we suggest, be more satisfied with it and there would be fewer complaints”. Some of the review’s key recommendations anticipate and will require a significant level of active support from the practising bar. This cannot be guaranteed, and it remains to be seen to what extent it will be forthcoming.

Secondly, there can be little doubt that over the next few years there will be severe pressures on the profession as a whole, but most especially on the junior bar, and thus the availability of tenancies and pupillages. These will come from a number of directions: the Carter reforms (and the further restrictions on public expenditure, which are inevitable from 2010 or so onwards); the Legal Services Act, and the general economic climate.

Solicitors and others (including CPS caseworkers) could well undertake an increasing proportion of advocacy in the lower courts, while an increasing proportion of qualified barristers could be working from “Legal Disciplinary Partnerships” or “Alternative Business Structures” and the profession’s centre of gravity could shift markedly from independent to employed practice.

We In these circumstances, it seems almost inevitable that in the not-too-far-distant future the Bar will once again have to review its “vocational stage” training, and perhaps even to consider whether a separate vocational stage for barristers and solicitors is any longer justifiable.

In the meantime, however, Wood has provided a clear, sound route map for the BVC’s further development; has (probably) enabled it to a period of relative (and much needed) stability; and has given key stakeholders (most notably students and practising barristers) as much reassurance as to is standards and fitness for purpose as they could

reasonably expect.
Richard de Friend
Chair Academic Board
Senior Academic Registrar
Director College of Law Bloomsbury