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The Legal Training Handbook is an essential manual for all firms. It provides guidance on how to manage training as part of the business, meet the training needs of solicitors, and design and deliver effective training.

Following the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR), the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) launched wide-ranging reforms of the legal education and training framework. For solicitors in England and Wales, it changed nearly all parts of the qualification pathway, and nearly all aspects of required training.

The Legal Training Handbook helps firms navigate these changes by explaining and providing guidance on the requirements, which include:

• the period of recognised training and the training and qualification requirements for trainees
• the ‘equivalent means’ route to qualification
• the Continuing Competence approach, which replaced the CPD scheme
• the Competence Statement
• transitional arrangements.

The book covers other developments such as legal apprenticeships, and also the qualification requirements for other 'lawyers' under the Legal Services Act 2007.

It concisely sets out the information needed in an easy-to-access way, with summary tables and lists of relevant reference and source materials.

Contents

Part A: Managing training in the business  Part B: Qualification as a solicitor in England and Wales  Part C: Other qualified lawyer qualification requirements  Part D: Meeting training needs within the business  Part E: Delivering the training programme. 

About the Author

Melissa Hardee is a solicitor and was training partner at CMS Cameron McKenna and then director of the Legal Practice Course at City University's Inns of Court School of Law, before setting up international consultancy, Hardee Consulting, in 2008. She has long been involved in legal education as chair of representative professional and education bodies, and as a member of regulatory committees and working groups, as well as validation panels in England, Wales and Scotland for the various stages of legal education. She is also President of the City of Westminster and Holborn Law Society.