By Kim Hawkey – Editor

As debates continue about the fate of the four-year LLB degree (see p 8), it is opportune to consider whether law graduates are being adequately prepared for both practising law and being a professional in the legal profession.

There is no doubt that concerns about rudimentary skills such as reading, writing and numeracy must be addressed (at school level, rather than placing this additional burden on tertiary institutions), as must issues regarding the uniformity of the LLB curricula at the various tertiary institutions. However, addressing these two aspects alone will not ensure that we generate the calibre of law graduates we wish to create.

The number of court applications to have legal practitioners suspended or struck from the roll for unprofessional conduct is cause for concern that, too, must be addressed.

It is not sufficient to assume that law graduates exit university as inherently fit and proper professionals – the numbers being removed from the profession for conduct unbefitting of a legal professional indicate that graduates are ill-prepared for the realities of practising law.

Bad apples aside, there are many in the profession who simply do not have adequate bookkeeping or other practice management skills, while others get stuck in grey ethical areas, with no basis on which to form an appropriate response to the situation with which they are confronted.

One wrong decision in the legal environment can have severe consequences for all role players involved – the client, who may lose a viable case or funds; the practitioner, who may be suspended or struck from the roll in a profession where there are rarely second chances; as well as the legal profession, which stands to have its reputation degraded. Society too suffers as a result of justice being impeded.

Interventions should therefore be made at the very outset of practitioners’ careers – at the tertiary institution level – to inculcate practising law in an ethical manner.

This challenge is not unique to South Africa and mirrors the content of debates that are happening internationally with regard to legal education.

For example, a report by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching titled ‘Educating lawyers: Preparation for the profession of law’ lists ‘inadequate concern with professional responsibility’ as one of two major limitations of current legal education, the other being a lack of attention to direct training in professional practice (WM Sullivan, A Colby, J Welch Wegner, L Bond & LS Shulman ‘Educating lawyers: Preparation for the profession of law: Summary’ www.carnegiefoundation.org, accessed 10-7-2012).

‘Law schools fail to complement the focus on skill in legal analyses with effective support for developing ethical and social skills. Students need opportunities to learn about, reflect on, and practise the responsibilities of legal professionals. Despite progress in making legal ethics a part of the curriculum, law schools rarely pay consistent attention to the social and cultural contexts of legal institutions and the varied forms of legal practice. To engage the moral imagination of students as they move toward professional practice, seminaries and medical, business, and engineering schools employ well-elaborated case studies of professional work. Law schools, which pioneered the use of case teaching, only occasionally do so,’ the authors of the report state.

While it is true that the universities cannot be held responsible for instilling a moral compass in each student, they can assist in developing and improving certain qualities by providing more practical tuition in the form of ‘real life’ case studies, as well as ensuring that students fully understand the ethical and professional parameters in which they will be expected to work as legal practitioners, including those provided for in legislation and professional rules.

By the end of their tertiary education, students should have a proper understanding of what it means to be fit and proper and to ensure that they meet this standard in all that they do.

As the authors of the Carnegie Foundation study state:

‘Legal education needs to … combine the elements of legal professionalism – conceptual knowledge, skill and moral discernment – into the capacity for judgment guided by a sense of professional responsibility.’

A well-rounded law graduate, after all, needs much more than the knowledge of legal theory to succeed in the legal profession.

This article was first published in De Rebus in 2012 (Aug) DR 3.