The Business Case for Expanding Apprenticeships

Liz Ritter

Head of Business Development, BPP University Law School

Apprentices can help provide firms with a strong talent pipeline, new ideas and new perspectives, explains Liz Ritter.

Legal apprenticeships offer a unique point of entry into the profession, affording candidates the opportunity to earn as they learn and giving firms and other employers access to a large pool of legal talent.

From an apprentice’s point of view, the benefits are clear. In addition to having the cost of their education covered, they are also able learn from experienced professionals right from the word go. They get to know their firm, its clients, values, systems and processes inside out at the same time as completing an academically rigorous course.

It is no wonder firms report that by the time apprentices are in their final two years they are working at a level equivalent to a newly qualified solicitor who has chosen the traditional route. Because they are so immersed in the way their firm works, apprentices are able to develop a level of maturity that allows them to take on responsibilities at a far earlier point than might have been expected. Some even have their own case-loads and are contributing to their employer and developing their own skills at an exceptionally high level. That they are able to do so is down, largely, to the diverse experiences apprenticeships enable candidates to gain on the job.

Those experiences are, by definition, many and varied. Graduates who have chosen the traditional training contract route typically spend their time rotating around their law firm’s departments in four- or six-month bursts. As apprentices spend six years working with their employer before qualifying, their opportunities to learn are far greater. As well as the different practice areas, they have the scope to spend time in business support and technology and innovation teams, developing the crucial range of practical skills, knowledge and behaviours that future lawyer should possess. Being able to understand how a firm works in such a granular way is invaluable for the business leaders of tomorrow.

Owing to the unique way apprentices learn – with 80 per cent of their time spent learning on the job and 20 per cent in the classroom environment – they can take what they learn in the virtual classroom and apply it to the work they do. As with their peers who have chosen the traditional route, apprentices learn the black letter law, but they are given the opportunity to apply it beyond a purely academic setting. There are clear benefits to being able to contextualise what the textbooks say with a real-life client in mind.

That flow between on- and off-the-job learning cuts both ways, with candidates able to take what they have learned dealing with clients and drafting documents back into the classroom, too. Having the opportunity to apply academic learning in a workplace setting enables apprentices to transfer what they have learned into long- term memory in a way that is much harder for full-time undergraduates to do. Unsurprisingly, apprentices’ performance on university assessments to date has been excellent and there is every indication that when the first cohort of apprentices graduates next year it will do so with a strong set of results.

Law firms have long been able to pick and choose from a deep well of junior talent and cast them into the kind of lawyers they want them to be. The beauty of the apprenticeship scheme is that it allows other organisations – law centres, local authorities, in-house legal teams – to do that, too. Thanks to the apprenticeship levy, which is paid by organisations whose wage bill is more than £3m a year, employers that would not previously have had the resources to support junior lawyers through to qualification now have the opportunity to do so.

Perhaps the greatest benefit to participating employers, though, is that it opens up a career in law to people who may otherwise have been put off for financial reasons. Widening access benefits the entire profession because it creates an opportunity to attract a more diverse candidate base. Being able to bring on fresh talent from a variety of backgrounds can only be a good thing: embracing different perspectives and adapting working cultures is how the profession will maintain – and enhance – its vitality.