If it’s already tough getting into the Bar, it’s about to become a great deal tougher. All aspiring barristers will soon have to take a special aptitude test before they can sit the one-year vocational training course, a move that could weed out hundreds of applicants a year.

The move comes after a report by a working party under Derek Wood, QC, to the Bar Standards Board (BSB), the body in charge of regulating the profession. It found a huge mismatch between the numbers of students enrolling for the Bar Vocational Course (BVC) and numbers of training places, or pupillage, in chambers.

It also found that the standards of the BVC programmes were not sufficiently rigorous and that many graduates were so “lacking in the qualities needed for successful practice at the Bar, including fluency in spoken and written English, that they would never obtain pupillage, however many pupillages were available”.

With the BVC now costing between £9,000 and £13,000, such wastage is of huge concern. Are students aware of the mismatch? Are they aware, too, that some emerge so poorly qualified that they will never land a pupillage?

The latest figures show that 1,730 students registered last year for full and part-time BVC studies. But even discounting the 23 per cent of overseas students, in any year about 3,200 graduates are jostling for 450 pupillages — the result of past unsuccessful graduates still on the hunt.

The rise in numbers, Wood says, in part reflects the view of some universities that see the BVC “as a means of generating income”.

To drive up standards and ensure would-be barristers are better qualified for their chosen career, his working party proposed a series of measures that have all been adopted.

First, students must have a first or second-class degree, although he admits that there was debate about whether to insist on a 2.1. “But how do you measure a first in golf course design from New Malden with a 2.2 from Cambridge?”

Secondly, from September 2010, every student must pass an aptitude test administered by the BSB before securing a place on a vocational course. This will adopt the model now set by universities for entry in subjects such as law and medicine, and will cover critical reasoning, comprehension and fluency in English. Students may take it at any time and there is no limit on the number of times that it can be taken. But, Wood says, “it will be hard” and all separate sections must be passed. The aim, he insists, is not to reduce numbers so much as to ensure that those who secure a place are competent. But it is likely that numbers will fall.

Thirdly, a revamped vocational course is to be renamed the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC). The present BVC pass rate is low, with students who reach 50 per cent deemed “competent”. The content is also outdated and, above all, the course is costly.

Providers now will reapply to run the new courses that will have a 65 per cent pass mark and be centrally set, but marked locally. Only one resit will be allowed. The courses also will be more practical to reflect that it is a “professional training”, Wood says. The course providers are content with the changes, but he accepts that some will suffer “if there is a very serious fall in numbers”.

The main aim is to raise standards. Students now have to take “an appalling risk” when embarking on the BVC, which hits hardest those from disadvantaged backgrounds. “If we can reduce the imbalance of numbers, it reduces that risk.”

Meanwhile, if it is harder to enter the Bar, becoming a solicitor may become easier. In a radical venture that could widen access, 40 paralegals have embarked on a pilot project run by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) in 46 law firms across England and Wales. The two-year work-based scheme allows graduates from the one-year Legal Practice Course to qualify as solicitors at their place of work, without the need to secure a formal training contract. The assessments will be carried out either by the employer firm or Nottingham Law School. If successful, the scheme will enable hundreds more people to become solicitors via less conventional routes.

At the same time, other trainees are piloting a method of assessment designed to test their skills and competence. Dr Tim Pearce, manager of development at the SRA, said: “At present trainees are just signed off. This will assess practical skills acquired.” As with the Bar, it is all about raising standards. “Widening access is also a good thing — but this is about ensuring that people have got what it takes to be a good solicitor.”

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