Foreign lawyers to be charged £3,000 to gain English qualification
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The cost of cross qualifying as an English lawyer has more than trebled following the introduction of the Qualified Lawyer Transfer Scheme (QLTS).
Kaplan Law School, which has been appointed as the sole assessment organisation, plans to charge foreign lawyers who want to practice in England and Wales a whopping £3,230. Under the old regime, known as the Qualified Lawyer Transfer Test (QLTT), the exams cost around £800.
Kaplan’s managing director Peter Anderson said: “The QLTS represents a step change when benchmarked against the QLTT that preceded it. It’s inevitable that such an extensive range of assessments, necessary to produce valid and reliable results that adequately protect the consumer and the standards of the profession, is more expensive than its predecessor.”
Under the new regime candidates will be required to complete a range of assessments that will include an extensive multiple choice test, and objective structured clinical examination involving one and a half days of one-to-one assessments with specially trained assessors and clients and a technical legal skills test involving a further one and a half days of on-line research, writing and drafting.
But College of Law chief executive Nigel Savage claimed the hefty cost of the QLTS was down to Kaplan being a monopoly provider. He said: “It’s the downside of regulators dispensing monopoly provision. Legal education and training should be subject to competitive forces. If we have a market for the domestic qualification we should have one for the overseas version too.”
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Readers' comments (20)
Anonymous | 29-Sep-2010 9:50 am
It is about time that foreign lawyers were not just waived through into the English legal profession. Most other countries have far more stringent requirements on overseas lawyers. Also, it never ceases to amaze how little English law foreign lawyers know even if they have been practising for some time here
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Anonymous | 29-Sep-2010 11:07 am
That's one way of looking at it. Another would be to describe it as a bit of a protectionist racket. Scottish lawyers for example often choose to move to England to practice areas of law like Corporate, Tax or Employment which are identical in both jurisdictions. They (or their firms) will now have to pay an extra £2800 for them to cross qualify.
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Anonymous | 29-Sep-2010 12:09 pm
I totally agree with Nigel savage. I'm not sure that a monopoly for the QLTS is a good idea at all for the fees which are exorbitant for someone who is already qualified in his/her own country,
It's true that foreign lawyer generally don't know much of English law, but they get a basic knowledge of common law principles, English law basics, and can also advise someone regarding their own national background and experience.
Furthermore they often advice clients on international matters which necessitate European law or International law skills that they generally have.
I hope this would change because the fees are really prohibitive. I'm also convinced that the integration of foreign lawyers was also a key for English law influence and for the specific position of London in the competition between European capitals to be the first international legal hub in Europe.
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Anonymous | 29-Sep-2010 12:14 pm
Continues to amaze me how English lawyers practise as lawyers without law degrees!
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Anonymous | 29-Sep-2010 12:31 pm
Foreign lawyers don't need to have a detailed knowledge of English law to be effective in the UK.
Large firms and companies increasingly prefer foreign lawyers because they are after people who are efficient, capable of marshalling evidence and fluent in English as well as other languages.
In any event, the implication that all English-qualified lawyers have a detailed knowledge of English law is nonsense and simply another example of a misguided sense of superiority.
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Anonymous | 29-Sep-2010 2:00 pm
Amazing, isn't it! Especially the fact that on average they produce much better results than their foreign qualified counterparts and are so much more client orientated instead of getting lost in some academic discussion.
As to the price - In Germany it will cost you around EUR5000 pay for the tuition in order to do the transfer test (which cost hardly anything). and its almost impossible to pass without the tuition. So really the end result is the same.
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Anonymous | 29-Sep-2010 3:10 pm
Fortunately, for those of us already holding a QLTT linked Certificate of Eligibility from the SRA (fka the Law Society), we can continue sitting the QLTT (e.g., with BPP) until said Certificate expires. Such Certificate is valid for three years from its issue date but, as said, must have been applied for under the old regulations, i.e, QLTT as opposed to QLTS.
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Kangaroo Court | 29-Sep-2010 8:24 pm
Reality is that someone finally woke up to the fact that a rising B&F star from Clifford & Overy in Budapest, rolling in (with every right and every welcome) to London to make that big London coin will barley wince at paying 4x the old price. Hec, he'd pay ten times the old price if he had to. Well, wouldn't you, if you were him?
If I were a cynic I'd be surprised that noone at "the regulator" thought of this "inevitable ... step change" years ago. But there were so many coming then, weren't there ..
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Anonymous | 30-Sep-2010 4:47 pm
In response to "Foreign lawyers don't need to have a detailed knowledge of English law to be effective in the UK.", this misses the point. Of course we foreign lawyers don't need English law at all to be effective in the UK. But we do need it to properly practice Engligh law.
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Anonymous | 30-Sep-2010 8:44 pm
If the spelling and grammar demonstrated by some of the previous contributors are anything to go by, some competency requirements in the English language prior to qualifying would not be a bad idea!
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