This session builds on Professor Ching’s recent article examining the new qualification regime for solicitors in England and Wales, and the different forms of “liberty” it claims to offer aspiring lawyers. Her analysis highlights how reforms framed around choice and flexibility may distribute opportunity unevenly, and how routes to qualification can embody fundamentally different relationships between autonomy, structure, support, and power. The session situates these issues within broader debates about diversity, regulation, and the risk that apparent freedom may mask new forms of constraint or vulnerability within professional legal education.
On the face of it, in England and Wales, there are many choices open to the aspiring lawyer; in particular which profession to join and which route to follow. This session will consider the extent to which there is positive or negative freedom in those choices. Are we at risk of offering “freedom to”, when what the young lawyer needs is “freedom from”?
About the Centre
The Centre for Legal Education and the Legal Profession (CLELP) is one of the UK’s leading hubs for research and innovation in legal education and the legal profession. We study how the profession and legal services market are changing, and how legal education in law schools is evolving through rigorous empirical, doctrinal and socio-legal research.
Our members research, teach and collaborate across themes that shape modern legal education and practice, including LegalTech and Generative AI, Clinical Legal Education, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging in the Legal Sector, Legal Ethics and Professional Regulation, Access to the Profession and Widening Participation, Student Employability and Careers, Curriculum and Assessment Design, and Communities of Practice in Legal Education.
CLELP sits within Westminster Law School, one of the largest and most diverse law schools in the UK. Our members teach across a wide range of subjects and bring current research into the curriculum. We play a central role in the student experience equipping our students with the knowledge, confidence and professional skills to thrive in their future careers. Through our Legal Careers, Employability and Professional Development Hub, led by CLELP’s Student Fellows, students can take part in activities that connect legal education with practice, explore routes into the profession, and build the skills and attributes most valued by employers.
About the speaker
Professor Jane Ching
Professor Jane Ching is a qualified solicitor and Professor of Professional Legal Education at Nottingham Law School, where she is Director of the Centre for Legal Education. She qualified as a solicitor in 1990 and worked in private practice before joining Nottingham Trent University in 1993 to design and teach on the Legal Practice Course. Her work focuses on postgraduate legal education and the education and training of lawyers in workplace contexts. In 2019, she received the NTU Vice Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Academic Practice. She is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and currently serves on the Education and Training Committee of the Nottinghamshire Law Society and the Legal Education Committee of the Society of Legal Scholars.
