The Value of Competency-Based Education in the Legal Profession: How CPLED’s Practice Readiness Education Program Is Contributing to the Future of Lawyer Licensing
Author: Sam Skinner, PhD Candidate, Osgoode Hall Law School
This article is the first in a three-part series examining competency-based education (CBE) in lawyer licensing and professional formation. Collectively, the series considers three related questions: what competency-based education is and why it has gained prominence in legal education; how competency-based programs are designed and implemented; and what impact competency-based approaches have on candidates, employers, regulators, and the profession more broadly. Throughout the series, CPLED’s Practice Readiness Education Program (PREP) serves as a practical example of how competency-based principles can be translated into lawyer licensing.
Introduction
There is a deceptively simple question at the heart of lawyer licensing: What does a person need to be able to do before the profession is willing to call that person a lawyer?
For much of the history of legal education, the answer has been framed primarily in terms of what a prospective lawyer must know. Law students learn substantive law and legal doctrine; they learn to read cases, identify legal principles, and construct legal arguments. Licensing examinations have traditionally reinforced this model by testing a candidate’s substantive legal knowledge. But knowing the law and practicing law are not the same activity.
This article examines the growing shift toward competency-based education (CBE) in the legal profession and the increasing emphasis on practice-readiness in lawyer licensing. It traces the evolution from predominantly doctrinal education toward integrated models of knowledge, skills, and professional formation, considers the research supporting competency-based approaches, and explores the role of bar admission in developing and assessing professional competence. The post then examines CPLED’s Practice Readiness Education Program (PREP) as a Canadian example of how competency-based education can bridge the gap between knowing the law and being ready to practice it.
From Knowing the Law to Knowing How to Practice
The idea that legal education should prepare students for professional practice is not new. An enduring question asks what the regulators of the profession (law societies) should require of candidates before allowing them to independently practice.
The American Bar Association (ABA)’s MacCrate Report was an early and influential articulation of an answer in 1992.[1] The ABA’s Task Force on Law School and the Profession identified fundamental lawyering skills and professional values and argued that preparation for practice should extend beyond the law degree, which do well in teaching substantive law.[2]
Fifteen years later, the 2007 Carnegie Report offered an equally influential critique of the fragmentation of legal education.[3] Sullivan et al. visited sixteen law schools and observed that students were taught doctrine with a lack of attention to practice.[4] Their Report describes three “apprenticeships” necessary for professional formation: legal knowledge and reasoning; practical skills; and professional identity and ethical judgment.[5]
The question is no longer simply: What law should a law student know? It becomes: What must a new lawyer be able to do, and what educational experiences will enable them to do it competently? That question unsettles one of the legal profession’s persistent assumptions that demonstrated academic mastery is a sufficiently reliable measure for professional readiness.
The expansion of experiential education in law schools begins to address these concerns. In-house legal clinics, externships, pro bono programs, and other practical courses begin to bridge the gap between substantive and practical legal education.
Shultz and Zedeck’s 2011 research involving more than 3,000 law graduates identified professional effectiveness as a multidimensional construct extending beyond conventional academic indicators.[6] The Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS)’s 2016 “Foundations for Practice” project reached a similar conclusion on a much larger scale: more than 24,000 lawyers identified a broad range of legal skills, professional competencies, and characteristics necessary for new lawyers.[7]
Hamilton and Bilionis take this development further through the framework of professional formation in their 2022 book.[8] Competency-based education begins not with the curriculum a student happens to encounter, but with the competencies that clients, employers, and the profession require, and then works backward to learning experiences, assessment, feedback, and developmental milestones.[9] This is a subtle but consequential change in educational logic.
The research consistently suggests caution in placing too much emphasis on substantive legal knowledge at the expense of broader lawyering skills competencies.
Competence-Based Education in Law
Competency-based education (CBE) is sometimes criticized as though it represents a retreat from rigorous legal education—a preference for “soft skills” over substantive law. That is a false dichotomy. The better way to understand CBE is as a question of integration. Legal knowledge matters precisely because lawyers must use it. Whereas traditional models ask whether a candidate knows the law and can recite legal doctrine, the competency question asks whether a candidate can take that knowledge and deploy it effectively, ethically, and appropriately in the circumstances provided.
CBE is increasingly reflected in professional standards. The Federation of Law Societies of Canada’s National Requirement identifies problem-solving, legal research, and oral and written legal communication alongside substantive legal knowledge.[10] Its 2024 review also emphasized the importance of professional communication, client relationship skills, and practice and file management.[11]
Ontario’s licensing framework, revised 2022, similarly defines entry-level competence through both knowledge and performance.[12] The Law Society of Ontario’s barrister and solicitor competencies encompass substantive legal knowledge alongside information gathering, analysis and planning, client communication, negotiation, advocacy, fulfilling the retainer, and practice management.[13]
Law societies from British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia validated their Competencies for Entry to Legal Practice (CELP; formerly the WCCP) in 2024.[14] The CELP Competency Domains include communication, professional relationship management, critical thinking and analysis, advice and advocacy, and practice management and wellbeing, to name a few.
Here, structure matters. These frameworks do not ask candidates to choose between knowing and doing. Rather, knowing the law is made meaningful through a candidate’s ability to act.
Licensing literature has reached the same conclusion. IAALS’s Building a Better Bar project used 50 focus groups across 12 states, primarily involving new lawyers and their supervisors, to identify the knowledge, skills, and judgment required for minimum competence.[15] In their 2020 study, Merritt and Cornett argued that licensing should be grounded more explicitly in an empirically informed understanding of what minimally competent lawyers actually do.[16]
The U.S. National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE)’s practice analysis adopted the same starting point.[17] Rather than beginning with the content of an existing examination, its Testing Task Force studied the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics required of newly licensed lawyers. Its recommendations for the next generation of the bar examination consequently place greater emphasis on foundational lawyering skills and realistic activities performed in entry-level practice.[18] As a result, the NextGen Unified Bar Examination (UBE), which launched in the U.S. in July 2026, does not abandon legal knowledge; it seeks to assess the legal knowledge and foundational skills candidates need to apply in realistic practice contexts.[19]
Across legal education, empirical research, and licensing policy, the same proposition keeps emerging: minimum competence cannot be inferred reliably from substantive knowledge alone.
Why the Bar Admission Period Matters
A logical next question asks why competency-based education is being adopted into the licensing process at such a distinct position in the education continuum.
Law schools serve important purposes: they develop legal reasoning, substantive knowledge, research and writing skills, and increasingly, practical experience. But the law school experience is not uniform. One student may graduate having conducted dozens of client interviews, drafted pleadings, negotiated settlements, and appeared before tribunals; another may have spent most of their education reading appellate decisions and writing academic essays. The variation can be even greater among internationally educated lawyers entering the Canadian licensing process, whose education and professional experience may span different legal systems and practice contexts. A common standard of practice readiness therefore becomes essential.
This educational diversity is one of the strengths of university education. It is also a challenge for professional regulation. A competency-based licensing system can identify expected competencies explicitly rather than assuming that a prior credential or degree demonstrates them. Therefore, the bar admission process offers a regulatory opportunity to establish a common foundation of professional competence before independent practice begins.
There is also a temporal advantage, because competence is developmental. Hamilton and Bilionis emphasize professional formation as a continuum rather than something completed at a single educational moment.[20] The period immediately preceding licensure is therefore not merely the final administrative step before becoming a lawyer, but also an opportunity to integrate doctrine, skills, judgment, and professional identity before those capacities are exercised independently.
PREP and the Structure of CBE
CPLED’s Practice Readiness Education Program (PREP) operationalizes CBE. PREP was piloted in 2019 and launched in 2020 as a competency-based bar admission program, combining interactive learning, transactional exercises, simulations, and assessment. Since launching, PREP has become the official bar admission training program for the law societies of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, and Saskatchewan.[21]
Effective May 2026, CPLED adopted the Competencies for Entry to Legal Practice (CELP, formerly the WCCP),[22] identifying seven domains and eighty-six performance indicators describing what newly called lawyers need to know and do at entry to practice.[23] The domains include ethics and professional responsibilities; communication; Truth and Reconciliation; professional relationship management; critical thinking and analysis; advice and advocacy; and practice management and well-being.[24]
This is CBE in its clearest form: the competency is identified first; learning is designed to develop it; assessment asks whether the candidate can demonstrate it.
Over the course of PREP—33 weeks (part-time) or 11 weeks (full-time)—the program equips candidates with practical skills over four phases, each building on the previous phase. That structure becomes particularly important in PREP’s Virtual Law Firm and Capstone Evaluation. Candidates are not simply asked whether they remember a rule. They must use legal knowledge within professional scenarios and produce the kinds of work and professional responses that lawyers produce in practice.
This aligns with contemporary approaches to assessment validity. If licensing exists to determine whether a candidate is minimally competent to practice, assessments should sample the knowledge, skills, and judgment associated with competent practice. The closer the assessment is to the construct it purports to measure, the stronger its validity argument.
PREP reflects a broader international shift toward competency-based models of legal licensing. In England and Wales, the Solicitors Qualifying Examination assesses candidates against a framework encompassing legal knowledge, ethics, judgment, communication, and professional skills.[25] Similarly, the U.S. NextGen UBE emphasizes foundational lawyering skills alongside legal knowledge.[26] By using defined competencies and practice-based assessment, PREP aligns with the growing emphasis on preparing candidates for entry-level practice and assessing professional competence.
PREP’s CELP framework also demonstrates that a competency model can remain substantive. Legal research and analysis are not displaced by client-centred practice; they become components. Advice and advocacy require legal knowledge. Ethical practice requires legal and professional knowledge. Effective communication requires understanding the law sufficiently to explain its implications accurately. Practice management requires recognizing the limits of one’s own competence and knowing when assistance is necessary. Competency-based education does not make legal education less doctrinally rigorous; but instead makes the meaning of rigour more closely resemble the work lawyers perform.
What PREP Offers the Legal Profession
The case for PREP is not that it eliminates every weakness in lawyer licensing. No educational program can do that. Rather, the stronger claim is that PREP addresses a problem that a doctrinal licensing model cannot solve: the gap between knowing about legal practice and demonstrating the capacity to perform it.
For candidates, PREP creates opportunities to practice before the consequences of independent practice are real. They can draft, advise, negotiate, communicate, manage files, confront ethical problems, receive feedback, and try again.
For law societies, competency-based education provides a more transparent connection between the public-protection mandate of licensing and the competencies expected of newly called lawyers. Rather than assuming that credentials, examinations, and articling produce competence, regulators can identify the competencies they expect and create structured opportunities for candidates to demonstrate them.
For articling principals and employers, PREP provides a common foundation on which workplace experience can build. It cannot replace articling or supervised practice, nor should it. Professional formation continues in the workplace. But PREP can make the transition more deliberate by ensuring that candidates encounter foundational profession-wide skills before they begin practicing area-specific tasks under supervision.
The benefits to candidates, law societies, and employers are important and all in service of the public interest. PREP should not be expected to make a new lawyer fully formed—it should make the transition into practice more deliberate, transparent, and defensible.
Conclusion on What “Practice-Ready” Means
The most important contribution of competency-based education may be conceptual: it asks the legal profession to reconsider what it means to be ready to practice.
Educational credentials and legal knowledge remain valuable, but they do not reliably demonstrate for professional readiness. They tell us what a candidate has learned, not necessarily whether they can translate that knowledge into competent action. Can they identify a client’s problem, find the law they do not know, distinguish significant facts from irrelevant information, communicate advice clearly, recognize ethical issues, exercise judgment, and know when to seek help? These are not peripheral questions about becoming a lawyer. They are central questions.
The future of lawyer licensing should not ask only whether candidates know enough law. It should ask whether they can use what they know—with judgment, skill, professionalism, and care—to serve those who entrust their legal problems to them. Competency frameworks continue to evolve through evidence, validation, and feedback, all alongside the broader continuum of legal education, bar admission, articling, and professional development.
PREP embodies this shift: the measure of readiness is not simply what a lawyer knows, but what they can do with what they know.
[1] American Bar Association, “Legal Education and Professional Development – An Educational Continuum” (1992) Report of the Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession: Narrowing the Gap. [MacCrate Report]
[2] Ibid at p. 236.
[3] William M. Sullivan, Anne Colby, Judith Welch Wegner, Lloyd Bond, & Lee S. Shulman, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 2007). [Carnegie Report]
[4] Ibid at p. 6.
[5] Ibid at p. 8.
[6] Marjorie M. Shultz, & Sheldon Zedeck, “Predicting Lawyer Effectiveness: Broadening the Basis for Law School Admissions Decisions.” (2011) 36:2 Law & Social Inquiry pp. 620–661.
[7] Alli Gerkman & Logan Cornett, Foundations for Practice: The Whole Lawyer and the Character Quotient (Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, 2016).
[8] Neil W. Hamilton and Louis D. Bilionis, Law School Professional Development and Formation: Bridging Law School, Student, and Employer Goals (Cambridge University Press 2022).
[9] Ibid, see especially Chapter 4 “Ten Principles to Inform Curriculum Development” pp. 64–98.
[10] Federation of Law Societies of Canada. National Requirement. Approved 2024; coming into effect 2029.
[11] Federation of Law Societies of Canada, National Requirement Review: Final Report and Recommendations (2024).
[12] Law Society of Ontario, Entry-Level Barrister Competencies and Entry-Level Solicitor Competencies (online).
[13] Law Society of Ontario, Experiential Training Competencies (online).
[14] Law Society of Alberta, Law Society of British Columbia, Law Society of Manitoba and Law Society of Saskatchewan, Competencies for Entry to Legal Practice (2024). [CELP Competency Profile]
[15] Deborah Jones Merritt & Logan Cornett, The Twelve Building Blocks of Minimum Competence Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, 2020).
[16] Ibid at p. 6.
[17] NCBE Testing Task Force, Final Report of the Testing Task Force (National Conference of Bar Examiners, 2021).
[18] Ibid. See Table 7 “Skills Recommendations by BDC” at p. 16.
[19] See the NCBE “NextGen UBE Blueprint” (2025).
[20] Hamilton & Bilionis, supra note 4, at pp. 67–70.
[21] See CPLED “PREP: Your Bar Admission Training Program” (online).
[22] CELP Competency Profile, supra note 14.
[23] See CPLED “Competency Framework” (online).
[24] CELP Competency Profile supra note 14 at pp. 4–10.
[25] Solicitors Regulation Authority, Statement of Solicitor Competence (online, 2022);SQE1 Assessment Specifications (online, 2025).
[26] NCBE supra note 17.