Join us for a 30-minute session to explore the benefits of Paralegal Apprenticeships, which offer a valuable opportunity for both apprentices and employers. For apprentices, these programs provide a chance to earn while learning, laying a solid foundation for a successful legal career. For employers, investing in training from within proves to be a smart approach, and we’ll discuss how you can access funding to cover the costs of training and assessment.
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Transcript
0:05
So welcome everybody along to today’s webinar.
0:08
Today we’re talking about apprenticeships, particularly obviously paralegal apprenticeships.
0:12
Clearly joining us on this webinar today is Amanda Hamilton, our former CEO and our patron.
0:20
Also Nigel Davey, who’s in the background there waving now.
0:25
He’ll be looking after the kind of tech and stuff in the background if there’s any problems, but also he looks after all the marketing at NAP.
0:32
Then also Jane, our CEO who will be answering the questions about apprenticeships today.
0:36
And my name is Chantal Cook and I’m also one of the directors of NELP and look after the PR side of things.
0:43
OK, so let’s crack on with our questions.
0:45
As I mentioned, if you’ve got any questions, do pop them in the chat and we will definitely come to them.
0:51
So Jane, can I start by asking you?
0:53
So I think this is really important to define what actually is an apprentice and how does it differ from say getting a job where you’re saying they’re offering you training on the job or something like that?
1:02
Is it basically the same thing or is it something different?
1:05
The difference with an apprenticeship is that it leads to a recognise qualification.
1:13
It’s all backed by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education and off qual, which is the qualifications regulator.
1:24
So there’s a lot more that goes into it.
1:27
There’s a set standard that has been agreed by not just like the training providers but employers as well, as well as people from my faith etcetera.
1:40
So it’s a lot more to it than just on the job training.
1:47
And where does NALP fit into this?
1:49
Why are we talking about apprenticeships?
1:52
Well, one of the things that we are always looking for is what benefits the paralegal sector and the legal sector as a whole.
2:02
But we decided that as well as being an awarding organisation, we would become an endpoint awarding organisation, Endpoint assessment organisation, beg your pardon, which means that we offer the assessments that apprentices will take at the end of their apprenticeship.
2:25
So they have to do a minimum of, I think it’s a minimum of a year on, but they’re up to two years and they take their endpoint assessment at the end of that and they have to pass that in order to gain their certificate to show that they have passed their Level 3 paralegal apprenticeship.
2:47
So that’s where we fit in.
2:49
We don’t offer the training and we don’t offer apprenticeship as an employer at all, just because it doesn’t fit with with us.
3:00
But we were part of the Trailblazer group and so we were very actively involved in setting the standard for the new paralegal apprenticeship, which was changed quite significantly in 2023.
3:19
So that we were keen to make sure that it covers all different firms and departments in the legal sector that an A paralegal apprentice may work in.
3:35
So it didn’t restrict itself to just looking at the more traditional law firms that were wider.
3:44
Even if they are working in a very specialised department or sector then they can still benefit from doing the paralegal apprenticeship.
3:58
So it’s clear how being an apprentice can benefit the person who wants to become a paralegal.
4:03
But what about the business?
4:04
What’s in it for them?
4:06
Well, they’ve got apprenticeships have got an excellent record of encouraging people that have a passion for that profession to take it up.
4:17
What?
4:18
Even when they perhaps are not, they either don’t want to go into to the more academic side of education, they don’t want to go to university or perhaps they have things that prevent them from going into university.
4:34
But you it’s a whole realm of people that can bring an awful lot of excellent skills to these roles that and they can harness those skills through apprenticeships and harness that enthusiasm for the role.
4:56
It also means that they can build people up from within.
5:01
And we all know as employers that training people from within can bring lots of benefits to businesses.
5:08
The people are more engaged if they they can see a progression and that the business is supporting them in their learning journeys and that sort of thing.
5:21
There’s more loyalty and more staff retention from that.
5:25
So it certainly encourages all of that.
5:30
Then of course, they can also get funding for apprentices to cover part or all of their learning journey, the learning portion, the training portion of what they’re doing during their apprenticeship.
5:45
So that was actually going to be my next question.
5:47
What funding is available?
5:49
Well the Level 3 Paralegal apprenticeship attracts a funding of up to £11,000 per apprentice.
6:02
Now that’s to cover for the the use of a training provider.
6:07
Now some employers have a large enough to be a training provider in their own right, but any training provider must be recognised by I Fate and be on the list of of recognised training providers.
6:23
And it also covers the endpoint assessment, which again must be provided by an endpoint assessment organisation for that particular apprenticeship.
6:34
So that is quite a substantial amount of funding that’s available in order to encourage employers to to get involved in this.
6:40
Yeah, absolutely.
6:41
Because one of the things that something, you know, especially if they’re a smaller law firm or employer and that, that it can be that how much is it going to cost me to get this person who doesn’t have a degree or whatever and is going through this route?
6:57
How much is it going to cost me to get them up to there or where?
7:00
With apprenticeships, the funding is there, it’s available and they can use that and it’s good for the business and for The Apprentice themselves.
7:10
That’s really useful to know because I think as an apprentice you might be worried that the thing that you’re going to get kicked back at or say you could go to your employer and you say, you know, I’d like to do an apprenticeship to be a paralegal, that the kickback is going to be, we can’t afford it.
7:23
But actually knowing that piece of information, knowing the funding that’s available, it’s then much easier to make that argument to an employer that they absolutely should be doing that because they’ll get that funding plus all the other benefits of having that apprentice being qualified.
7:36
That’s the really useful piece of information.
7:38
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
7:41
And I do think it is a win, win situation for all those involved, to be honest.
7:47
Now, I know that you kind of talked about all the benefits and so on to the employer and there clearly are plenty and obviously loads and loads for the individual as well.
7:55
But I guess there’s still some people who will see apprenticeships as just being a way to get some, you know, useful cheap labour.
8:02
Is that a fair assessment?
8:03
Does that still happen?
8:04
Is it even true?
8:06
No, not really.
8:08
Most legal apprenticeships, including paralegal apprenticeships are quite competitive salaries, to be honest, for the, the level that they’re starting at.
8:19
And they’re, you know, they’re, most organisations don’t just offer them the minimum amount of available for an apprentice or allowable for an apprentice.
8:31
They because of the role that they’re doing and the benefits that they’re bringing to the firms that tends to be recognised in, in better salaries than just sort of the bare minimum.
8:48
That’s good to know as well.
8:49
And now what qualification once once you’ve been through your apprenticeship, what qualification do you come out with at the end of the apprenticeship?
8:57
You come out with the Level 3 paralegal apprenticeship certificate which is issued by I fain the government and what not.
9:06
So it is fully recognised there’s no mandatory qualifications that they must take with it unless they haven’t got A, at least a Level 2 English and maths because that they must have those.
9:26
But they at the time they take their EPA, they’ve got to show that they’ve got those so they can start their apprenticeship without having that and gain that during their apprenticeship alongside anything else that they do from qualification perspective during their apprenticeship is voluntary.
9:50
It it’s optional now there are some qualifications out there.
9:57
It’s like NALP does the Level 3 certificate for paralegal technicians and we have actually mapped that quite extensively against the standard for the paralegal, the Level 3 paralegal apprenticeship.
10:14
So that the the learner hasn’t got sort of two lots of learning from, you know, two different angles as it were.
10:21
They can do the same learning and be able to take kind of their apprenticeship endpoint assessment and do the Level 3 paralegal technician without too much sort of additional learning required.
10:38
Now you mentioned that in order to be an apprentice and to have an apprenticeship, you needed to have the Level 2 for English and maths.
10:45
Is there any other qualification that you need to have before you start, for example, any kind of paralegal qualification before you start?
10:52
No, no, there’s nothing else.
10:55
Apprentice apprenticeships are designed to allow people that the most access into the various professions that they’re they’re covered.
11:07
And so at a Level 3 apprenticeship, the minimum is always a level 2 in English and Maths.
11:16
Great, so that’s it, just need a level 2 in English and maths.
11:19
Then you take your apprenticeship and you end up with your Level 3 apprenticeship certificate at the end of it.
11:24
Yes, yeah, super great.
11:26
Well, I think that covers all the questions that I had to ask.
11:29
So let’s throw the questions now open to the floor.
11:33
If you’ve got a question that you don’t feel we’ve covered or there’s something you particularly like to ask Jane about apprenticeships, and please pop the question into the chat and we will definitely answer those.
11:43
So I’m going to hand over to Nigel to kind of curate those.
11:47
He, I think Jane’s covered most things and I think she’s actually answered this question as well.
11:53
Matthew’s asked what level do paralegal apprenticeships start?
11:57
Level 3 is the lowest that we do.
12:00
It’s the only one currently for paralegals.
12:03
However, I am currently on the Trailblazer group looking at an advanced paralegal apprenticeship, which will be at level 5, but that isn’t being launched until sort of late spring, summer next year because we are currently going through that.
12:25
I, I can’t give you any details other than we are currently looking at developing that as part of the Trailblazer group with IFA, with employers and with training providers on there.
12:39
I, I think, and Joe, please correct us if I’m wrong, is this, is there a list of people who offer companies that offer apprenticeships?
12:47
Is that what you mean?
12:51
Yes, yeah, there’s there is a, there’s a list of training providers and a list of Epas, but I’m not sure that there’s a definitive list of employers because that ebbs and flows a little bit more than the training providers and the EPA house.
13:21
There’s not a list of people looking to be placed on apprenticeships.
13:27
But if you are looking to be an employer offering an apprenticeship, yes, you do have to go through the apply through I fate to offer apprenticeships because of the funding aspects.
13:43
So you have to be approved to, to show that you are able to support the apprentices that you want to take on.
13:50
And there’s also sort of there are some, I think there are some recruitment agencies and things that also do a lot of advertising for apprenticeships.
14:08
Chantelle, thank you.
14:12
Yeah, so simply simply jobs and also totally legal as well.
14:16
There are the two job sites.
14:17
We also do share when we spot them as well.
14:20
If there are jobs, both jobs and apprenticeship jobs, we share them on now social media too.
14:25
So you know, I know it’s like it’s a lot of places to look for things, but hopefully it does mean that between all of those different options, you’re going to at least you know, you’re going to come across a large number of them certainly.
14:36
And of course your local job centres and things like that are also really keen to sort of advertise if you have apprenticeship roles, because very often that’s sort of people that are going to them because they’re just coming out of education and so they’re looking for apprenticeship roles quite a lot in there.
15:02
So that’s always a really good place to start.
15:05
I will always say contact your local Jobcentre or One Stop Shop for those sort of things.
15:10
Just a few things to remind you of again, National Paralegal Day, 11th of November in the evening.
15:16
Nigel has put the links.
15:17
If you scroll up on the chat, you’ll see the link at the top there for you to book your tickets for National Paralegal Day.
15:23
We would love to see you there.
15:24
We always love to see you there and it’s such a lovely evening as well.
15:27
So we really hope that you’ll be able to join us this year.
15:29
It’s taking place at the Law Society and we’ve got a very nice restaurant there as well.
15:34
That’ll be that’ll be quite nice.
15:35
And of course we’ll be doing our paralegal awards as well.
15:38
So lots to to enjoy on National paralegal Day and there’ll be food and they’ll be drinking.
15:43
Hey, we’ll be there.
15:44
So what’s not to like?
15:45
So come and join us for that.
15:47
That’s Monday, the 11th of November for National Paralegal Day.
15:50
And then also a quick reminder that our next webinar is on the 17th of October.
15:55
And that’s basically what we’re going to do is we’re going to compare the costs of being a paralegal versus being a solicitor.
16:02
This is not how much the training, we know that that the training to be a solicitor can be almost prohibitively expensive, but this is about once you’re qualified, what does it cost you to actually practise in both of those different areas.
16:13
So we’ll be talking about that.
16:15
That’s on the 17th of October.
16:18
Amanda Hamilton, our patron, will be answering questions from the paralegal side and we have Catherine Byers from Morgan La Roche who’s a practising solicitor.
16:25
She’ll be answering it from the solicitor side and so she’ll be bang up to date because she is a practising solicitor today.
16:32
So I think that’s the things.
16:33
Oh and then as I mentioned, our final webinar of the year will be in November, on November the 28th and that will be talking about the new Level 4 qualification.
16:42
So if you’re thinking about maybe getting more qualifications in the new year or something like that, and just like you’ve got a plan and a goal for 2025, then we’ll be letting you know more about the new Level 4 parallel qualification which launches in the new year.
16:56
And we’ll tell you all about that.
16:57
That’s my first look at and that’ll be on the 28th of November and we very much hope you can join us then, right?
17:04
I don’t think I can see any more questions.
17:06
So if you haven’t got any more questions, it’s just for us to say thank you very much for joining us.
17:11
We always really appreciate your company on these webinars.
17:13
It’s so lovely to see so many of you.
17:15
So thank you for giving up your time to join us and hopefully we will see you at the next one and others in the future.
17:22
Other than that, just thank you very much to everyone for joining us today and have a lovely, lovely afternoon.
Previous webinars can be seen on our YouTube channel here.
