Johannesburg - The SA Law Deans' Association (Salda) on Thursday said it was concerned by a Law Society of SA (LSSA) statement that law graduates lacked essential skills.
The LSSA sent out a press release earlier this week about the Council on Higher Education's (CHE) report, which reviewed the four-year university LLB curriculum.
"Contrary to the LSSA statements, the report does not find that a substantial number of law graduates are lacking in essential skills, such as research, computer work, literacy and numeracy," said Salda president Professor Vivienne Lawack-Davids.
"For the LSSA to draw such a conclusion is unfounded, at best anecdotal, and a gross generalisation."
LSSA co-chairs Max Boqwana and Peter Horn said on Monday that the law society welcomed the findings of the CHE report. However, they were concerned that a substantial number of law graduates were lacking in a number of essential skills.
"Graduates who lack basic skills - which they should already be equipped with when they enter the profession - place a great burden on the attorneys' profession to provide training in these skills instead of using the time and funding to strengthen the legal transactional skills required in the attorneys' profession," they were quoted as saying.
"Clients in legal matters are placed at risk if new legal practitioners are not properly equipped to assist them."
Lawack-Davids said Salda first approached the CHE in November 2008 to conduct a review of the LLB curriculum.
A resolution was adopted at the November 2008 national legal education liaison committee (NLELC) meeting.
The NLELC consisted of representatives of all stakeholders in legal education in South Africa.
It was further resolved that the universities would primarily be responsible for formative legal education, and that the professions would be responsible for vocational training of law graduates entering the different branches of the profession, she said.
A small Salda reference group assisted the CHE in drafting the research proposal, which was subsequently adopted by the NLELC at its meeting in November 2009.
The CHE conducted the review and presented the final draft report on November 4 2010.
Lawack-Davids said that a curriculum was only one of the building blocks ensuring a quality education.
"The assertion that 'it appears that, in general, law graduates are not adequately equipped for the practice of law' is similarly without a basis in the report."
She said Salda continued to strive to achieve the objective of ensuring that universities produced well-rounded law graduates that were "able to serve the legal profession and society, and we believe that we continue to be largely successful in this endeavour despite the fact that we have to overcome severe challenges in doing so".
LSSA was not immediately available for comment.