BARBRI Global’s Director of University Partnerships, Chris Howard, caught up with Andy Unger, Head of the Law Division at London South Bank University (LSBU), about the university’s innovative approach to legal education and their new LLM in Legal Practice with SQE Prep, designed to set up their students for success in their future careers.
Chris Howard: Andy, it’s great to have a chat with you. I want to start with your role as the Head of the Law Division at London South Bank. What changes have you seen in the way legal education has developed, and at the university since you’ve taken on this role?
Andy Unger: Well, I can start even earlier because I’m very old! I did a training contract and the Law Society finals many years ago and was chair of the Trainee Solicitors Group. We campaigned for better legal education, resulting in the predecessor to the SQE, called the Legal Practice Course. Since I’ve been at South Bank, the profession has realised it doesn’t need to control what is taught, how it is taught, and how it is assessed as carefully as it used to. There used to be a committee of lawyers dictating the syllabus, but that’s no longer the best way to learn or teach.
Now, the solicitors’ profession doesn’t even require a law degree. If you’ve got the knowledge needed to pass SQ1, they don’t mind how you prepare for it. This gives us greater freedom to design courses that work best for our students. The Bar still requires a bit more, but they’ve also stepped away from controlling the content and method of the law degree. If the higher education sector approves your law degree, so do they.
That’s really interesting. Can you tell me about the new LLM in Legal Practice SQE at London South Bank University? What was the thinking behind its design, and how does it prepare students for practice?
We had our own students’ needs in mind when designing the course. There was a particular niche for an LLM course to help students manage the cost of SQE preparation through loans. I think we’re one of the most affordable taught courses, with fees of £11,000 as a home student, and as it’s a Master’s course, you can get a loan.
We wanted a course that did a number of things that are slightly in tension. One is to prepare you for the Solicitors Qualifying Exam Part One, which is a two-day test with multiple choice questions, focused purely on knowledge. You don’t have to meet the normal academic requirements of case names and referencing. You either know it or you don’t, which is much more closely aligned to practice than academic work.
But at the same time, we have to deliver a course that is genuinely at a postgraduate Master’s level. Additionally, we wanted to apply our own pedagogy – experiential learning, clinical legal education and case simulations, which are all very relevant and appropriate for an SQE course. So, we’ve got a course that pulls in slightly different directions.
We have always been very impressed by the BARBRI method for SQ1. When BARBRI first came over the Atlantic, bringing all of the experience of the U.S. State Bar exam preparation, it seemed to me that you would make very interesting partners. The issue is that it’s very difficult to write good SQE questions – they have to be authentic, with five plausible answers, and so on. So, anybody familiar with the test has an advantage over someone who isn’t, even if they have the same level of knowledge. We wanted our students to have that high level of preparedness for the course, which is why we chose to work with BARBRI.
Effectively, your online SQE1 course, the 40-week model, is embedded in our course, and students self-study that. Then, with us, they take modules that partly cover SQ2 skills. We have three modules focused on skills: an introductory module in the first semester and two advanced modules for written and oral skills. We’ve also added reflective and theory-based modules to prepare for the postgraduate dissertation. This gives students an opportunity not just to learn the law but to critique it, forming an informed opinion about whether the law is good or could be better.
Lastly, because we are very interested in law and technology, we’ve created a law and technology module. Our sense of the future is that all lawyers will need to work with technology and recent data indicates that lawyers with generative AI skills are earning more than those without them. So, we’ve included a law and tech module.
What else do you do to support students with their career ambitions?
We have all the usual career services of a modern university, but our biggest contribution is the legal advice clinic. If you’re not in work, you can work a day a week in our legal advice clinic, so you can get a little bit of Qualifying Work Experience (QWE). More importantly, every week there’s an opportunity to practise in the clinic where we give advice to local people face-to-face in our drop-in clinic.
We offer careers and networking events throughout the year, and we have close links with the South London Law Society, local firms and connections in the city. We advise students to get their foot in the door any way they can, whether through training contracts, summer internships, or paralegal work. The SQE allows for QWE, so working as a paralegal counts towards qualification.
Tell us more about the legal clinic, the opportunities it offers, and how people can find out more?
There are links on our homepage with more information about the clinic if you want to read more – we are so proud of it! This current clinic has been running for about 10 years, but we’ve had clinics going back 30 years throughout the lifetime of the law school. It’s because we believe that people learn from their mistakes. They learn by doing. Live supervised and supported client work is the epitome of that, and our clinic is pretty substantial. We see about 70 students go through the clinic and work in the clinic every year. It’s exciting and challenging because it’s not letter-based and it’s not triaged by a member of staff. Clients come in on a drop-in appointment three or four times a week and teams of students interview them, go to the back office, and give them initial advice.
We don’t take cases to court, but we take people’s issues, convert them into identifiable legal issues, and explain to them where they go next. We can refer them to local law firms, to other clinics or to our own evening service. So it’s the real thing and I think you develop skills and confidence by having that kind of access and experience. When you go to interviews, you’ve got real things to say in answer to those typical interview questions too.
Because it works for the law degree, we’re now moving to a position where we can offer a clinical guarantee. Every student who comes onto the course starting this year is guaranteed a place in one of our clinics. The principal clinic is the legal advice clinic, giving housing, employment and social welfare advice to local people. But we also have other clinics. One is our human rights clinic, where we work with NGOs on human rights issues around the world, and we have Solutionise, which is a clinic based in Croydon, where law students work with business students and IT students to support local businesses and startups. We’ve also got a new policy clinic, where instead of writing a traditional dissertation, students reply to a specific government consultation on law reform, Law Commission, or the Government Sentencing Council. We’re going the whole hog because we think it works.
Let’s talk about legal technology. How can students best prepare for the new wave of legal technology, and what further changes do you see in the profession?
I think you have to start by informing yourself and being open to what’s new and not to be frightened of it. We’ve been working on legal technology for about six or seven years. Tools like predictive analytics and contract automation are already changing the profession and lawyers need to be familiar with technology and work with technologists. A lot of work that newly qualified lawyers and trainee lawyers do can be automated already – discovery, due diligence, contract writing, assembling contracts. All of these can be automated, and so there’s a question about whether there will be jobs when you finally qualify. We were concerned about that, so we started looking into it and developing our teaching. I think along the way, we’ve learned that lawyers don’t need to code. There will be jobs, but they may be different jobs and you may be working in different ways.
The profession is quite conservative. It’s not unrecognisable today compared to five, 10, 20 years ago, but the change is happening and I think the rate of change will continue to increase because eventually corporate clients of commercial law firms will become more and more aware of the benefits of technology and generative AI. ChatGPT has given that a real spin, and they’ll say, “Why aren’t we getting the benefits of that technology? Why are we still paying you chargeable hours to go the long way?” Then everything will start changing faster and faster and the jobs will change. So I think you need to be familiar with that.
Even if you just go to events, follow podcasts, you should inform yourself. Richard Susskind is obviously the place to start. All of his books, like “Tomorrow’s Lawyers” and “The Future of the Professions” and “Online Courts” are a pretty good place to start mapping out what we teach, which are the skills that lawyers need to work with technology and technologists.
Aside from legal tech, what other transforming issues do you see in the profession?
I think a lot of it is related to technology, like online courts and online dispute resolution. It’s worth being aware that technology enables legal businesses to locate or partially locate themselves outside the UK. Alex Hamilton, who’s CEO of Radiant Law, is a very innovative and interesting lawyer, and part of his back office is in South Africa. So jobs can move around the world and it’s worth being aware of that.
The SQE means fewer traditional training contracts and more diverse career paths in alternative business structures like law tech startups and niche firms. I think there will be more work for paralegals and fewer traditional senior partner roles and fully qualified lawyers. Employers are valuing practical experience over interviews, so students should keep an open mind about different career paths. We have seen students who started in reception, as paralegals or in legal operations, who have gone further and further and eventually, if that’s what they want and the firm wants, supported to do SQE and fully qualify. So keep your mind open to different career paths because I think they’re becoming more diverse.
What are your three top tips for students seeking a career in the legal profession?
Firstly, come to South Bank! Secondly, become aware of the potential of law and technology. Thirdly, gain work experience wherever you can and don’t be afraid to make mistakes – it’s the only way to learn. Don’t feel foolish or like an imposter – ask the questions you need answers to and participate fully in your course and embrace the learning process.
How can students find out more about the LLM in Legal Practice SQE at London South Bank University and apply?
Visit our website at www.lsbu.ac.uk or Google LSBU LLM SQE. You’ll find details about the course structure, fees and how to apply. We currently require a law degree, but we consider applications with good non-law degrees. If you’re confident in your learning, you can come straight to the LLM. Apply through the website.
South Bank is based in the heart of London, and we’re very convenient to legal London. Our fees are competitive, and we offer a rich learning experience. I hope people will consider coming to us!
To see how BARBRI partners with universities, visit our University Partnerships page. Chat with Christopher Howard about opportunities for your law faculty. Mail Christopher.Howard@barbri.com
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