41% of would-be barristers fail King's Inns course

Tom Young

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0709/1224274349361.html

THE FAILURE rate for those seeking to qualify as barristers in the King’s Inns is over 40 per cent, The Irish Times has learned.

Those who passed the BL degree, taken after a one-year full-time course or a two-year modular course, will be called to the Bar next week, and 118 were listed on the King’s Inns website as having passed the examination. The full list for conferring next week is 125, according to the King’s Inns, which includes seven who repeated one or more subjects.

The figure for the total number who sat the exam was not available, but according to a student who counted them during an exam that required candidates be paired, the total number sitting the exam was 212. This gives a failure rate of over 41 per cent.

There were 125 full-time students last year, 69 modular students sat the exam and the remainder were repeat students.

It costs €12,560 to do the BL course. There is also a €600 fee for the entrance exam for those with a law degree from a recognised institution. Those without a law degree must do the King’s Inns diploma in legal studies, which costs €10,050.

Camilla McAleese, under-treasurer in the King’s Inns, acknowledged there was a high failure rate, though she expressed surprise that it was as high as over 40 per cent. “I don’t think it’s up on last year,” she said.

“It’s a very tough course,” she said. “We are sending these people out as qualified professionals. They do have to work very hard. There are multiple choice questions in criminal and civil law and you must get more than 50 per cent to pass. If you get 49 per cent you fail. There is no appeal.”

There are appeals, however, of the results in other subjects with written answers, where students may, on payment of €120, appear before an Education Appeals Board made up of a judge of the Supreme Court, a High Court judge and two barristers. According to student sources, no appeal was successful this year.

The failure rate for the Law Society, where study is interspersed with periods in a solicitor’s office and the exams are spread out over two years, ranges from 4 to 15 per cent for the Professional Practising Certificate 1 exam and from 4 to 20 per cent for the final PPC2 exam, according to a spokesman.

Discuss ...

Arsenal1986

I'm shocked by that. I've always heard from any barrister that I know that the BL is pretty easy and the entrance exams are the hard part. Has there be a move toward making these harder to try and slow down the amount of barristers being called to the bar?

Lawstud

Perhaps the powers that be are attempting to quell the numbers due to the over supply of barristers.

Perhaps due to the popularity of the law as a carerr the profession as a whole is attracting such large numbers that the standard of those attempting the course(s) is not where it should be.

The appeal process for the exams is outrageous. The requirement to attend before a Supreme Court Judge and a High Court Judge to argue that your exam was marked incorrectly is a little OTT not to mention prohibitatary. Surely, the teaching staff within the Kings Inn could look after this aspect of examinations.

In fairness I think the failure rate for the FE1's is around the 50% mark. These exams are not specifically mentioned in the article but i think its worth pointing out. The low failure rate for the PPC's is probably due to the fact that most trainee solicitors have worked in office before the PPC1 and all will have at least one years in office experence before the PPC2.

mikemac

There are appeals, however, of the results in other subjects with written answers, where students may, on payment of €120, appear before an Education Appeals Board made up of a judge of the Supreme Court, a High Court judge and two barristers. According to student sources, no appeal was successful this year.

I or most taxpayers don't want judges to be dealing with this, they have more important work to do.

Why can't the lecturers and heads of department in Kings Inn deal with appeals?

enry

Just to clarify the training with regard to becoming a solicitor.

Firstly you must have a degree not necessarily a law degree but a degree nonetheless I find that most people training to be solicitors do in fact have a law degree. Secondly you must complete all 8 fe-1s you must attend six months of ppc-1 before starting your two year training of which 3-4 months are spent in college on ppc-2.

In other words you will pay to the law society 8,500 Euros for ppc-1 and prob around 4500 Euros for ppc2 which is more expensive then kings inn (so you spend one full college year in college plus 20 -21 months training in office.)

You also have to find a solicitor to take you on and at present if you are not in one of the big firms you would be lucky to get paid while training or have you fees paid and it is very hard to get a contract signed at present unlike kings inn where you in once you pass your exams.

You might also find that you firm expect you to would while in blackhall.

In conclusion it’s more expensive and more time consuming to qualify as a solicitor then a barrister. So if you have a law degree go for the easy life down in the law library.

To prevent a high failure rate in king’s inn they should make the entrance exams harder and let anyone with a degree eligible to do them. What are they afraid of?

johnnyskeleton

Tom, Isn't there some rule on boards.ie that you shouldn't post an article and ask people to discuss it without setting out your own opinion first?

I think it is quite surprising though.

Arsenal1986 wrote:

Has there be a move toward making these harder to try and slow down the amount of barristers being called to the bar?

Lawstud wrote: »

Perhaps the powers that be are attempting to quell the numbers due to the over supply of barristers.

Perhaps due to the popularity of the law as a carerr the profession as a whole is attracting such large numbers that the standard of those attempting the course(s) is not where it should be.

Could be either of those things, although jthe statement from KI says that the fail level is in line with last year.

I would imagine that those who failed failed on one or two of several exams so should be able to get the repeats.

I doubt there is a conspiracy to restrict numbers though; the Supreme Court has a number of days set aside next week for the calls to the bar - clearly they were expecting most of the 200 students to be called.

It would be interesting to have some KI students comment on this, although it would be difficult for them to do so.

Also another article critical of KI here:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0709/1224274349374.html

panda_cub

enry wrote: »

In other words you will pay to the law society 8,500 Euros for ppc-1 and prob around 4500 Euros for ppc2 which is more expensive then kings inn (so you spend one full college year in college plus 20 -21 months training in office.)

The Kings Inns course can be taken over one or two years, then devilling for a year and only then can you begin to establish yourself in a self-employed profession. That's pretty time-consuming.

enry wrote: »

You also have to find a solicitor to take you on and at present if you are not in one of the big firms you would be lucky to get paid while training or have you fees paid and it is very hard to get a contract signed at present unlike kings inn where you in once you pass your exams.

The options are there though. Entrance exams aren't looking too easy to me right now though so I would see that as a big enough hurdle.

enry wrote: »

In conclusion it’s more expensive and more time consuming to qualify as a solicitor then a barrister. So if you have a law degree go for the easy life down in the law library.

I don't think you can definitively say that it is more expensive and time-consuming to become a solicitor than a barrister. I certainly don't agree that the law library is the 'easy option'. They aren't exactly comparable.

enry wrote: »

To prevent a high failure rate in king’s inn they should make the entrance exams harder and let anyone with a degree eligible to do them. What are they afraid of?

They have. The pass rate is now 50%.

bahhoweya

I'd love to hear from some of the modular students, I've applied for that course this year and after reading that article i'm a bit worried

Is it as bad as it sounds?!

Are competitions held during the day or in the evenings?

I may see if I can change over

Jowls

I wouldnt worry about it. I wasnt on the weekend coure myself but Ive quite a few friends who did it and they were happy with it. Its a long weekend when you're in but there are a lot of weekends when you're not there. Plus you have the timetable at the start of the year so its easy enough to plan around them.

As far as I know, they also ran competitions at the weekend so people who couldnt go to the midweek ones wouldnt miss out.

Its a good option to have as its a very expensive year if you're doing the full-time course and not able to work as a result.

bahhoweya

Thanks, I feel a bit better now. :cool:

Yeah I originally signed up for the modular course because I have an easy enough job which I like, so I thought it would be a good idea to save up as much money as possible while studying for the first few years in the law library afterwards.

I just hope I don't miss out on too much of the King's Inns experience as a result!

Jowls

As far as I know, teaching there these days is all done in groups. So on both the full and part time courses, the group you are in for classes are the people who you'll get to know best (obviously with the other people you meet at dining, etc). My mates who did the part time have headed off on a few weekend trips with other people from the course (groups of 20-40) so it certainly seems social enough!

Tom Young

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Tom, Isn't there some rule on boards.ie that you shouldn't post an article and ask people to discuss it without setting out your own opinion first?

That may be the case.

Here is my opinion.

The failure rate publication mentioned in this article is round one of the Inns examinations which would have been announced last week or so. There are repeat sessions/sittings in August in which many students who may have 'clipped the fence' will pass the overall degree and get through. I don't believe there is anything more sinister behind this article other than a statement of fact in relation to numbers passing at round one.

Tom

FreudianSlippers

The article is slightly misleading IMO. There are about 15 exams, opinions, legal research, etc that are done at the end of the year. If you fail even one of the exams you have to repeat that exam in August and get called to the bar in October.
The exams were quite difficult this year (especially drafting - which is what many people failed).

I agree with Tom and I believe that it's important to recognise that a small mistake in any one of the exams could lead you to be back in August for repeats. I'd imagine that a very high percent of these 40% who failed will pass their repeats in August and still be at the bar with those who are being called this week when this years class starts working in October. Everyone has a bad exam day and exams have increased in difficulty, not to mention that the standards are very high.

johnnyskeleton

Tom Young wrote: »

That may be the case.

Here is my opinion.

The failure rate publication mentioned in this article is round one of the Inns examinations which would have been announced last week or so. There are repeat sessions/sittings in August in which many students who may have 'clipped the fence' will pass the overall degree and get through. I don't believe there is anything more sinister behind this article other than a statement of fact in relation to numbers passing at round one.

Tom

Makes sense.

All the same the fact that the suggestion (in the article but also in people's views) that it was policy driven is interesting. There have been many calls for the bar to reduce its intake on the supposed basis that there isn't enough work to go around. I'm not so sure about that latter claim, but certainly there have been arguments that the standard should be raised (arguably artificially raised) in order to restrict access to the bar.

The big difficulty is where you make the cut off point - at university, at the entrance exams, in mid year exams, in final exams, after the first few years of practice etc. There are many who after a few years of practice wish that they hadn't done it and, by extension, that the standard was higher so that they might have done something else. However, the entry requirements to the Irish bar are fairly open.

It is ironically suggested that increasing the standards at KI or in the entrance exam would somehow be more meritocratic. But yet I cannot see how any system of entry requirements could be more meritocratic than that of entering a tough profession from the start with no pay and seeing if you sink or swim.