Lawyers square up for battle over practice

law students and lawyers are embroiled in a bitter dispute over what enables someone to practise law in Spain. At the moment, anyone who has completed a first degree in law can set up a practice and take on clients.

The lawyers' professional body wishes to tighten up access to the profession by making two years' additional practical experience a prerequisite. Law students say that this would force recent graduates to act as cheap labour.

The professional body believes training should take the form of either an extended work placement with an established law practice or studies at legal practice schools, to be completed after graduation.

Julia Latorre, head of the San Feliu de Llobregat law association, said: "The problem is that a law graduate is not equivalent to a lawyer. Many students are confused as to this distinction."

The lawyers point out that some form of postgraduate training, either university or work-based, is the norm in all other European Union countries.

The students say that on graduation they will have already completed five years' training. Imposing a further two years is not only excessive and unfair but also devalues the law degree. Blanca Ruiz-Zorilla, a fifth-year law student at the University of Barcelona, thinks such a requirement would make access to the legal professional more elitist as legal practice schools are expensive and work placements often not available.

Studying law is very popular in Spain where there are more lawyers per head than in the United States. Many students are convinced that the law associations are motivated by economic self-interest rather than a desire to increase standards.

Lawyers and students agree that more practical experience is needed than the present degree provides. The question remains under what conditions this training is to be undertaken and whether it should take place in the workplace, in schools run by the law associations or in universities.

Student representatives of seven law faculties meeting at Salamanca recently proposed that work experience should form an integral part of the first degree rather than for two years subsequently. Eduard Font, law professor at the University of Lerida, and a practising lawyer, believes one solution could be if the law practice schools were run by universities instead of by law associations.

"In this way they might be better accepted by the students, who at the moment see the schools as barring their access to the profession," he says.

While practising lawyers may have a wealth of practical experience, they do not have a teaching vocation, he says.

The most prestigious Spanish legal practice school is run by the University of Murcia aided by the law association and he believes this could be a model for the rest.