HISTORY IS PAST POLITICS - A CRITIQUE OF THE LEGAL SKILLS MOVEMENT INENGLAND AND WALES

In the past thirty years legal practice changed so significantly that a fundamental response was demanded of legal education. Making legal s kills a compulsory component in the vocational stage was an incomplete response. It addressed the technical competence of lawyers but left s ignificant gaps in professional preparation in terms of content and me thodology. By focusing on the educational and pedagogic implications o f the skills curriculum the clinical movement contributed to these gap s. The Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Legal Education and Con duct has facilitated the consideration of a curriculum organized aroun d a more imaginative integration of legal skills in order to begin to tackle these failings and prepare lawyers for the new economic and soc ial challenges facing them. Solutions, however, must permeate every st age of legal education, requiring unprecedented levels of co-operation and interaction between the profession and the academy.