While people have been checking their tax winnings or wallowing in alternative left-wing budget plans, we have forgotten something important – the plight of budding young lawyers, or at least an organisation that trains them (I’m sure they’re just “doing it for the lawyers”).

You see, the Institute of Professional Legal Studies (IPLS) runs Profs courses, the place where graduates of four-year long university degrees go to learn how to be a lawyer, picking up the skills in 13 weeks. IPLS is also an Other Tertiary Education Provider (OTEP), a grouping of miscellaneous organisations with anomalous funding arrangements that usually pre-date 1990. These OTEPS have been funded at the rate of public providers, rather than the private providers which get 9.5% less (why is another post topic), but starting from next year, OTEPs are to get the same rates as private providers.

I am sure there will be great concern amongst the community for this funding cut to the law profession. But there is a glimmer of hope. The IPLS is a committee of the NZ Council on Legal Education (a statutory body) and, while it used to be the only player in the market for training unemployable university law graduates, it now has competition. IPLS competes with the NZ College of Law (owned by the NSW Law Society), which had more enrolments than IPLS last year, even though the NZ College of Law was operating on the lower private provider rate. So obviously it is possible to survive, nay thrive, on that lower rate, which might give you some solace as you think of the plight of lawyers this weekend.

Hold on, if we can give lawyers professional skills for 9.5% less, could we do the same for academic skills in the previous four years…?