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Francis, A M; McDonald, I W --- "Part-time Law Students: The Forgotten Cohort?" [2006] LegEdDig 30; (2006) 14(4) Legal Education Digest 17

Part-time Law Students: The Forgotten Cohort?

A M Francis & I W McDonald

[2006] LegEdDig 30; (2006) 14(4) Legal Education Digest 17

39 Law Teacher 3, 2005, pp 277–298

Legal education in the UK has for many years catered for students who are unable or unwilling to study full-time through the provision of part-time law degrees. Many law schools have worked to improve access to law programs through the provision of flexible methods of delivery; by day-time, evening, weekend programs, or through some combination of the above. However, the provision of part-time schemes of study largely rests upon a broader sector divide between old universities and the former polytechnics, with the latter providing the majority of options for the potential part-time law student. Therefore, for many higher education providers of a law degree the part-time law student is seemingly irrelevant. While many other institutions do accommodate students who wish to study part-time, it is the premise of this article that part-timers remain a ‘forgotten cohort’ of undergraduate law students, arguably even within law schools offering part-time law degrees.

This article demonstrates that part-time law students represent a significant and growing proportion of the undergraduate cohort. It argues that, despite a shift in government policy that appears to emphasise the importance of part-time routes in legal education, existing research regarding the purpose, content and delivery of a law degree continues largely to forget, subsume and undervalue law students who study part-time.

The provision of ‘face to face’ qualifying law degrees most clearly brings into focus the issue of how part-time law students are treated within our law schools. Moreover, it is the authors’ hypothesis that part-time law students could be considered more vulnerable entrants to higher education, given their educational background, financial concerns and desire for direct contact with staff and students. Despite the shared teaching and learning context of part-time and full-time law students, part-time law students possess a distinctly different profile to full-time students. Furthermore, this background and their experiences suggest that they are more likely to stand at the intersection of multiple disadvantages when seeking to enter the legal profession.

Part-time higher education has received significant attention from educationalists. However, this interest has not been matched by legal pedagogical research. A review of the literature reveals that part-time law students are at best identified as simply a statistical percentage of the law undergraduate population. Beyond this, any distinctiveness they may possess as a group is subsequently ignored or subsumed within the study as a whole.

An alternative explanation of the invisibility of part-time law students may lie in the broader assumptions held throughout higher education about who our students are. Clearly, mature students participate across all paths of higher education and recognising the limitations of a front-end model of education can point us in the right direction for responding effectively to many different students’ needs. However, with part-time routes adult learners predominate — not the received picture of the ‘typical’ student profile. As the voices of younger typical students are privileged, part-time law students and their needs are often forgotten.

A major problem for part-time students is their invisibility within law schools and legal pedagogical research. This invisibility is arguably in part due to an unwillingness to deal with a body of students who are perceived to be ‘messy’, complex and heterogeneous. However, even a cursory examination of the biographies of part-time law students would reveal that, in addition to the anticipated background of the part-time law student as part of a socially disadvantaged section of society or as an entrant to higher education through non-traditional, vocational or Access course routes, a significant proportion of part-time law students are middle-class or hold more traditional educational qualifications, including university degrees.

This raises a central concern of educationalists wary of the broad promises made by proponents of a learning society: to what extent does lifelong learning serve to entrench educational inequalities in society? Research has demonstrated a close correlation between lower socio-economic groups and low rates of participation in education. As long as institutions fail to interrogate their own attitudes towards lifelong learning, the mere existence of part-time law degrees may not actually help to broaden the social composition of those studying law.

This problem is compounded by part-time law students’ limited choice of institution. Their choice is limited by the fact that it is typically only new universities who offer part-time law degrees. Moreover, as part-timers are typically tied to a particular area by work and/or family commitments, most potential part-time law students will only have one program available to them.

The introduction of a genuine choice for those applicants has several consequences. First, existing providers can no longer take this pool of potential students for granted. Moreover, this competition should bring into sharp focus the range of strategies with which all universities seek to engage with and fulfil their responsibilities to their local communities. Older universities have made great strides recently in developing strategies to widen participation within their local communities. However, these schemes have tended to focus upon students who conform very closely to the assumed typical undergraduate profile in that they are still firmly located within the front-end model of education.

New universities have an established history of reaching out to young people from lower socioeconomic groups. They have recognised that, in order to encourage these potential students to participate in higher education, they need to employ innovative and creative strategies to engage with these students and encourage them to apply. However, in simply providing an alternative path to study without engaging in further strategies to widen participation meaningfully, institutions may find that part-time student numbers are inflated by those taking a ‘second bite’ at higher education — perhaps well qualified professionals looking for a change in career, rather than people with broken educational and employment histories from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

The issues of what and how part-time law students should be taught require a consideration of the purpose of part-time legal education, both in itself and in comparison to the education of full-time students. In other words, the central concern is that of the equivalence of part-time and full-time law students’ education. The information made available by law schools to prospective students suggests an equivalency between part-time and full-time law degree programs. Perhaps more significantly, such information tends to concentrate on opportunities and resources rather than the specific needs of students, be they part-time or full-time.

It has been argued that legal higher education engages in some problematic assumptions about the ‘typical student’. There is widespread evidence that the legal profession holds its own assumptions about the ideal entrant to the profession. In this context, it is important to consider part-time law students’ aspirations and experience in the training contract marketplace. Corporate recruitment brochures sell a lifestyle to the young urban professional. It is difficult to see where the forty-something part-time law graduate with child care responsibilities fits in with the picture of the typical trainee solicitor in a large city firm.

Clearly, a part-time law graduate who entered their degree program with a few formal educational qualifications and who had extremely limited opportunities to secure legal work experience is going to be significantly compromised by the operation of these criteria.

The authors’ concern about the capacity of part-time law graduates to meet some of the criteria used by the large recruiters is compounded by other assumptions that the profession may be making about the ‘ideal recruit’. It may be that regardless of the applicant’s qualifications in certain respects — for example, degree classification, life experience, communication skills — a part-time law graduate may struggle to demonstrate that they possess other more intangible attributes that are valued by the profession. Clearly, many full-time law students may also have part-time jobs, have non-traditional qualifications, attend a new university and be from an ethnic minority, for example. However, part-time law students are much more likely to be all of these things. As such, the multiple disadvantages they experience demand more specific attention than has been available to date.

Nevertheless, greater research is needed about the career aspirations of these students, for the point remains that a small number of law firms can be seen as the recruiting profession, and genuine equality of opportunity demands that those graduating from a part-time law degree should not feel that their career opportunities are limited to those areas of work which are perceived to be lower status by the profession.

Notwithstanding the increasingly blurred lines between full-time and part-time students and criticisms of the maintenance of such rigid distinctions, the fact remains and the sheer numbers involved demand attention. Moreover, there are specific and compelling reasons for concentrated study of part-time law students. Their position raises questions regarding policies of lifelong learning and widening participation with legal education. In comparison to full-time students, their relative heterogeneity and the barriers they face during their degree raise distinct pedagogic issues relating to the validity of assertions of equivalency made by both law schools and the students themselves. Notwithstanding the lack of available evidence, it is possible to speculate that the distinctive backgrounds of part-time law students will require legal educators and the profession to adopt a more nuanced approach to the recognition of these students’ needs.


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