‘It’s both a blessing and a curse’: law firm attitudes to Qualifying Work Experience in England & Wales
Abstract
This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a published work that appeared in final form in [Asian Journal of Legal Education]. To access the final edited and published work see http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/23220058241246218With the advent of the Solicitors’ Qualifying Exam (SQE), Qualifying Work Experience (QWE) allows for flexibility in the journey to qualification as a solicitor in England & Wales that was not previously permitted by the Period of Recognised Training. This development was heralded as a lever to widening access to the profession, with the potential to assist those who may not have been recruited onto traditional graduate-level training programmes in securing a qualified legal role. This paper discusses the findings of empirical research conducted by the authors with a view to understanding the perceptions of, and attitudes towards, QWE of those responsible for recruitment in UK law firms. It reveals a friction between the perceived, and actual, value of QWE obtained via non-traditional routes and exposes the threat that law firm stances on QWE pose to the regulator’s aim of widening access to the professionSimilar works
This paper was published in ChesterRep.
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