Preparing future generations of lawyers for legal practice: what's supervision got to do with it?

This article considers the pivotal role played by supervision in the conduct of legal practice. While the supervision of work undertaken by junior practitioners, trainees and paralegals underpins the processes used in modern law offices, the structures that support such practices have not been closely analysed in the scholarly literature on the practice of law in Australia. Supervision arrangements have always been important to the practice of law and legal education. Arguably,this has never been more so than in current times with increasing numbers of graduates seeking to enter the profession, often with less in the way of practice-based experience than in the past.