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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jessica Booker" data-source="post: 33840" data-attributes="member: 2672">Sorry long post due to geeking out about this....No worries! I knew a bit about the tender process for the SQE assessments and to ensure there was some integrity it was explicitly stated by the SRA that the the company awarded it wouldn't be able to provide prep courses.1) The non-law diversity point is a key one. All the time careers advice in schools is unequal (and in many state schools woeful), there is a real advantage of making the conversion process less time heavy, which in turn means it means there is less of an opportunity cost to it - not just the financial costs of the course itself.Diversity in non-law grads in the legal sector is known to be pretty awful. Diverse candidates tend to come from law degrees much more easily given the heavy investment in things like the Sutton Trust, and the much higher levels of diversity in law undergraduate cohorts. Non-law trainees tend to be much more likely to be white, middle-class, from the Home Counties, and privately educated. Sorry to anyone this may not apply to! There was also a really bad reputation of the non-law applicants being the ones who chose a degree course that was much easier to get into/perceived to be easier at a top uni because they were the bright but a lazy sixth form student (this would apply to me <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" />) and because they had been told by the privately educated network that you could do a non-law degree and still become a lawyer (not me). Many people who haven't had good careers advice still think to be a lawyer you have to do a law degree at undergrad (like medicine/dentistry).Until the GDL and LPC become MAs/LLMs, this was even worse as generally the Bank of Mum & Dad had to fund GDL and LPC courses of those who did self-fund. I think many people would be surprised how many non-law grads secure their TCs when they have just started the GDL, so by default again that group are even less diverse than the general non-law applicant pool.2) Exactly - it does open up opportunities because employing trainees just got A LOT easier - no training principal needed, no three areas of law needed, no sign off needed, no PSC needed. Although this will impact small firms (and in-house legal teams) more, I think this also applies to larger firms too. For example, the Indian desk in London at a MC firm can now recruit their own trainee and they don't have to rotate around other departments. The partner can choose to recruit someone with very specific experience/skill set relevant to their team (languages/connections to India), rather than having to pick and choose from a trainee cohort that have been recruited for the firm more generally. For some of the more niche departments with specific requirements (IP, International Arbitration, ACT) they may choose to take their own trainees rather than through a centralised graduate recruitment process. This is what happens in Investment Banking with "off-cycle" intern and grad hires.You have to remember, the vast majority of training contracts are completed by people who self-fund. Sponsorship of the LPC represents probably no more than 30-40% of the training contracts out there. Now people will be able to start a "training contract" without even starting a course - for the law that isn't as complex as some of the major players in the city, do you really need to have done a course that costs upwards of £12k to do basic probate/real estate documents? Could this not be learnt on the job? I think this is the major difference for the big commercial firms - their work is so complex/complicated they need the training ahead of someone starting, hence why they are investing into these prep courses with BPP and the like. But that's an extreme of the market (just the most vocal where it has the most money). Many people will be able to now join a firm straight out of uni and undertake SQE 1 and SQE 2 during their training contract - as seen with Kennedys. This is how so many professions actually work (Finance, Investment Banking, Real Estate, Accountancy) that maybe in another decade even the top law firms will realise they could move to this model. The legal sector is just rubbish at risk taking and they still think that getting anyone in without the equivalent of the GDL/LPC is risky <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite8" alt=":D" title="Big Grin    :D" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

Verification: Our company is called, "The Corporate ___ Academy". What is the missing word here?

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