Professional Access Scheme

Designed to widen access to the legal sector; increase diversity within it and provide better careers information.

We are very concerned about how difficult it is to get into the legal sector generally, and how hard it is to find information about legal careers other than those of solicitor or barrister.

Accordingly we have created the Professional Access Scheme which brings together various initiatives designed to widen access to legal careers; increase diversity within the legal sector and provide better careers information.

The Professional Access Scheme is currently running the following initiatives:

Apprenticeship Programme - designed to encourage employers to take on young entry-level paralegals and administration/business support staff and to provide appropriate training and qualifications.

MyLawMentor Programme - an initiative to assist schools to encourage young people to consider a legal career.  The programme links schoolchildren with local practitioners who act as mentors. To learn more, click here.

Careers days – we work in collaboration with the Inspiring Futures Foundation, the Law Society, the Bar Council, Crown Prosecution Service and ilex to run a variety of legal careers days for schools nationwide.

Job Centre Plus - we work in collaboration with the SAS Law School to provide free encouragement and support to people looking for work through Job Centre Plus who may be interested in working in the legal sector.

Route to Qualification - we have mapped out a nationally-recognised career path for professional paralegals which can be followed without the need to purchase training from the Institute. To learn more, click here.

University Law Undergraduates Programme - we are working with a number of University law schools such as Portsmouth University School of Law, to see whether it will be feasible to make law graduates more immediately employable by law firms if their undergraduate degrees and related activities have been mapped against the Institute's Introductory Level Competency Standards for Paralegals

We are always interested in discussing other potential schemes.  Please e-mail details to us in confidence at office @ theiop.org (note breaks in address to impede spammers).


 

Member Login