By Wendy Yang -
The Chief Justice of New South Wales Andrew Bell has announced the outcome of the survey conducted into practical legal training. This comes after the Chief Justice highlighted the cost of practical legal training (PLT) in this state at the 2025 Opening of Law Term Dinner earlier this year.
Conducted by Urbis on behalf of the Legal Profession Admission Board (LPAB), the questionnaire contained two sub surveys including a survey for practical legal training (PLT) graduates (Graduate Survey) and another aimed at supervisors (Supervisor Survey).
The Graduate Survey looked at a number of areas including teaching quality and methods, feedback regarding compulsory and elective subjects, assessment and feedback and work experience. While the Supervisor Survey examined levels of satisfaction with the legal skills of graduate lawyers, whether there’s a need to supplement PLT and consistency of graduate lawyers demonstrating various legal skills.
The results of the Graduate Survey revealed that many graduates perceived PLT as a “box-ticking exercise” which lacked “relevance to legal practice.” Additional feedback by respondents disclosed that PLT costs were often prohibitive and not perceived as “providing value” and PLT is a “required but unnecessary hurdle to being able to practice law.”
The Supervisor Survey found that 42 per cent of supervisor respondents were not satisfied with the practical legal skills demonstrated by graduate lawyers. Critically, responses from this cohort reported “PLT graduates were not always adequately prepared for the realities of work.”
The Chief Justice noted the responses to the survey provide “much valuable data and have also generated some serious concerns about the cost and quality of PLT available in the marketplace.”
“Only 43 [per cent] of recent graduate respondents considered assignments were practical and career relevant with only 40 [per cent] considering that methods of teaching were satisfactory,” he said.
The Chief Justice also announced the formation of a PLT Working Group, formed by Justice Tony Payne, Presiding Member of the LPAB. The Working Group, consisting of members of the LPAB and other senior practitioners, will examine both long- and short-term proposals for change.
