New Zealand’s law schools need to do more to ease the transition from being a student to being a practitioner, according to Sir Geoffrey Palmer.

The Head of the Law Commission and former Prime Minister made the comments during an address to Victoria’s Law Students’ Society (LSS) last Tuesday.

Sir Geoffrey, the LSS’ first patron, said that while most law graduates finished their degrees wielding an impressive set of analytical skills, they were not as ready as their predecessors for legal practice.

“I doubt that many who come out of the professional course today will be competent to defend people in the district court the moment they finish.

“I sometimes feel that the professional legal education that we had equipped us better than what is available to you now as professional legal education. The way the professional education is handled now does have an air of unreality about it,” Sir Geoffrey said.

Admitting he favoured law being taught as a three-year postgraduate degree, Sir Geoffrey said improvements needed to be made in easing students into their careers after graduation.

“There needs to be a system of supervision of young lawyers that insures that they are not unleashed on the public without safeguards.

“The time I spent in a law office firstly as a law clerk and then as a young barrister and solicitor was invaluable to my legal career. A few years in a law office is a wonderful piece of practical education,” he said.

The former Prime Minister also warned law students against following a particular legal path because of its supposed financial benefits.

“I think a lot of students make bad choices because they want lucrative careers. Whatever you do in the law, you have to have passion and enthusiasm for it, and then you will succeed.

“Students are in the unenviable position of knowing little about the effects of the choices they will make on their subsequent careers, and what choices they do make will almost bound to be wrong […] You’ve got to use your education as a sound background for all the things you cannot predict.”

Inviting those in attendance to ask him questions on “anything you like,” the former Prime Minister said he was unsure whether compulsory membership of student associations was a violation of the tenets of freedom of association.

“I don’t think that’s an absolute easy question to answer; it depends on the circumstances as to whether it’s a violation of the right of freedom of association. I don’t know what the attitude of the students is on this. I would think it’s quite possibly split!”

Sir Geoffrey was a Professor of Law at Victoria University. Since then he has served as the New Zealand Commissioner on the International Whaling Commission since 2002 and President of the Law Commission since 2005

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