Chief Justice Andrew Bell on warpath after lawyers lash ‘box-ticking’ practical legal training courses

NSW’s top judge has foreshadowed a historic overhaul of legal training after lawyers across the state lashed existing courses as an expensive and irrelevant “box-ticking exercise”.

In an extraordinary intervention this year, Chief Justice Andrew Bell expressed “profound concern” about the “extremely high” cost of practical legal training (PLT), which is a prerequisite to practising law. The training starts after a budding lawyer completes their degree.

Bell wrote to thousands of NSW lawyers in February, urging them to complete a survey of PLT to “inform possible reforms”.

He said the results of the survey, released on Monday, “generated some serious concerns about the cost and quality of PLT available”.

“Over 2500 responses were received from the cohort of recently admitted practitioners, and over 2000 from supervisors,” Bell said.

“Only 43 per cent of recent graduate respondents considered assignments were practical and career relevant with only 40 per cent considering that methods of teaching were satisfactory. Only 13 per cent of recent graduate respondents considered that the course was reasonably priced.”

PLT takes 15 weeks full-time and there is a separate work experience component. Most respondents (74 per cent) “agreed or strongly agreed that the work experience component … was useful for building practical knowledge and skills”, Bell said.

The survey was conducted by independent research agency Urbis at the request of the Legal Profession Admission Board (LPAB), which regulates the admission of graduates to practise law.

Urbis said in its report that “PLT was reported to be a box-ticking exercise, lacking relevance to legal practice”. Course fees of about $10,000 could be “prohibitive” and were not “always seen as providing value”.