Correspondence
| Author | Brian Harvey |
| Date | 01 March 1972 |
| Published date | 01 March 1972 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1972.tb01329.x |
CORRESPONDENCE
I’HE
ORMROD
REPORT
:
VOCATIONAL TRAIXING
THE
EDITOR,
Jlodrrit
LaZU
Review.
Dear Sir:
I
should like to comment on
a
feature that
I
find disturbing in both the
articles commenting on the Ormrod Report published
ante
(1971)
34
M.L.R.
636
and
642.
Whilst both contributions contained much to stimulate, together
with
a
number of critical comments for which there is
a
great deal
to
be
said, the central problem of the objects of the proposed professional training
schools and the closely associated one of how these schools can be competently
staffed is not in my view tackled with sufficient realism.
Professor Wilson states with regard to the professional courses that
“the proposals of the Committee are far more ambitious and imaginative
than anything of which present activities could be regarded
as
the seed.”
Professor Arthurs takes
a
rather different view, since whilst conceding that
the Report envisages a somewhat broader type of vocational course than
the
Bar
Admission Course in Ontario, he concludes that even if adopted the
courses proposed by the Ormrod Committee would differ “in degree, not in
kind” from the Canadian courses. These he criticises by pointing out that
when
a
student has been engaged in deliberating the issues which have engaged
the world’s finest minds during the academic stage he finds
“
total immersion
in the mundane quasi-clerical work of form-filling, precedent following and
routine tasks” which form
a
large part of the professional courses results
in
loss
of morale and idealism.
The point
I
would like to make quite unequivocallly is that, whether we
like it
or
not, the vast proportion of the actual legal work carried
on
by
ordinary solicitors in England ostensibly consists
of
just such mundane
and
routine tasks. What might appear to be the more glamorous life
at
the bar
is
also
in reality liberally mixed with work
of
a
highly routine nature. The
Committee itself does not duck this apparently unpalatable fact though
they rightly imply that
a
better organised system
of
legal education should
encourage the legal profession to offer its services In wider and less well-
trodden pastures. This in no way should imply that training in the proper
conduct of “routine tasks’’ is not something with which the proposed pro-
fessional law schools should concern themselves. If one conceives the opera-
tion of the legal profession
as
a
process of “social engineering” it follous
inescapably that an engineering project of this magnitude needs
a
legion
of skilled mechanics. These mechanics must be trained, and it is this that
is
the central task of the professional
law
schools. An dcient training systm
will
also
train its mechanics to assume the role
of
engineer when the
occasion arises, but
as
in every other professional discipline the sophisticated
or specialist skill must, if
it
is
to be securely grounded, be superimposed on
n
sound basic technique.
It
must be conceded that inevitably there will be
some who find this training process to some extent “demoralising,” though
this effect can be mitigated by imaginative teaching. One of the problems
which attends the idea of such courses
is
that simulation of professional work
in an institution divorced from
“
the real thing” is bound
to
be dehumanised-
and it is of course easily forgotten in the confines of
a
law school that even
the most apparently mundane probate matter involves dealing with bereaved
relatives tactfully and sympathetically, that the dullest divorce involves
handling
a
distraught spouse and that the most routine conveyancing matter
often involves helping
a
householder face up to the difficulties
of
one of the
largest financial transactions he is likely to undertake.
Law
is about people,
their activities and possessions; the attraction of legal practice
is
that one
is dealing with people and their problems at the “front end” of the business.
223
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