Yesterday I urged the assembled luminaries at the Westminster Legal Policy Forum to do something about the scandalous situation surrounding entry to the Bar (according to one estimate by the Bar Council itself, as few as one in eight students who do the BPTC get a pupillage).
Rather than go on about unsuccessful pupillage-seekers' misery, or law schools' fat profits, I focused instead on how bad it looks to the rest of the world that all it takes to get the title of English barrister is a spare £16k and a 2.2 degree.
This racket has been going on for a good while now, and internationally the message is sinking in that what is perceived to be the top legal qualification in England can be bought (in the US, on the other hand, where entry to Ivy League law schools is tightly controlled, becoming a top lawyer is seen as requiring brains)...