Who controls university legal education? The Case of England and Wales

The question of who, if anyone, controls university legal education has long been contentious. Contenders for control have historically been either legal academics or legal practitioners or their respective professional bodies. In more recent years other potential contenders have arisen. These new contenders include regulators, whether of practitioners or academics, central university authorities and students either as consumers or more simply qua students. This chapter will look at the historical interaction between those with an interest in university law schools in the United Kingdom. It will analyse changes in that relationship. It will then turn to recent suggested reforms to professional legal education and ask what impact, if any, these might have on undergraduate legal education. Finally, the chapter will look at the two bodies that recently taken an interest in what universities and their law schools do, the Competition and Markets Authority and the Advertising Standards Authority and ask whether their interventions will have any impact on the politics of who controls university legal education in the United Kingdom. The chapter will argue that legal education scholarship has made an important contribution to the debates noted above resulting in a more self-confident and assertive academic body