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has prescribed detailed guidelines and principles for ensuring the quality and integrity of the analysis, which I have attempted to apply (Åkerlind, 2002). Another significant cautionary observation made in the literature is the need to clarify the context-specific nature of the outcomes of such research, and to exercise caution in generalising the findings beyond the context within which they were derived, which I believe that I have done (Pratt, Kelly, &
Wong, 1999).
The observations made above about phenomenographic methodology establish the basis for selecting this approach for the second section of the study, in preference to the phenomenological approach which better suited the data related to the lived experience of curriculum change. Phenomenography is well suited to studies related to students’
experience of learning in higher education and was thus considered to be both appropriate and original in ascertaining the perspective of graduates, as well as their employers regarding the law curriculum.
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uniformity. For purposes of convenience and accessibility, I had to limit the sample to graduates working in the greater Durban area, as this would also affect the location of the fourth data set of employers. The total number of graduates in 2004 who had completed in the minimum time period was 79 students,63 so the sample size of six graduates, although small, was a realistic representative number.
The demographic composition for the entire Law Faculty in 2004 in percentages is shown in Table 4.
Table 4 Race and gender composition of registered Law students in 2004
Race Female Male Total
African 15.00% 19.98% 34.98%
Coloured 2.76% 1.31% 4.08%
Indian 33.03% 13.09% 46.13%
White 7.84% 6.98% 14.82%
Total 58.63% 41.37% 100.00%
The race and gender breakdown of graduates who completed the degree in four years, ending in 2004, is shown in Table 5.
Table 5 2004 LLB Graduates who completed their degree in 4 years
Race Male Female Total Percentage
of total
African 8 7 15 18.98%
Indian 7 40 47 59.49%
White 4 9 13 16.45%
Coloured 1 3 4 5.06%
Total 20 59 79 100%
Table 6 presents a comparison of the overall demographic table (Table 4) with the table of students who pass in the minimum time period (Table 5).
63 Data provided by Department of Management Information. 03/02/2008.
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Table 6 Demographics for the Faculty and for LLB graduation within minimum time
Race % of total LLB student registration in 2004
% of 2001 cohort who graduated in 4 years
African 34.98% 18.98%
Indian 46.13% 59.49%
White 14.82% 16.45%
Coloured 4.08% 5.06%
The list of graduates who had completed the LLB degree in four years was cross-referenced against the list of admitted attorneys in the same province,64 who had completed two years of articles (2005-2006), passed their attorneys’ admission examination and successfully applied to be admitted as an attorney during the year 2007. This narrowed the list of possible participants down to 16 graduates. The total number of graduates who were admitted attorneys, and who matched the criteria in the Durban area could be disaggregated according to race and gender as set out in Table 7.
64 Obtained from the Home page of the Law Society of the relevant province: Retrieved on 03/02/2008 from http://www.lawsoc.co.za/default.asp?id=1468.
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Table 7 Demographics of graduate-attorneys admitted in 2007 according to sample criteria
Race and Gender Number of
graduate attorneys (minimum time period taken)
Indian Female 8
Indian Male 2
African Female 1
African Male 1
White Female 4
White Male 1
Coloured Female 0
Coloured Male 0
Thus the sample size of 16 graduate-attorneys reflected the overall demographics of the Law student registrations quite closely. I decided to approach two Indian females, (the largest demographic group in terms of law student registrations), one Indian male, one white female, one African female, and one white male to form the sample. No coloured students who had completed their LLB degree in four years had been admitted as attorneys in KwaZulu-Natal within two years of graduating. Only one African male fulfilled my pre- determined criteria, and after trying to locate him, I was advised by his previous employer that he had re-located to a large Johannesburg law firm.
I then set about trying to contact graduates according to the contact details which I had obtained from the university data base. I was successful in making telephonic contact with the six participants listed below (Table 8), and obtained their e-mail addresses. I sent a letter explaining the purpose of the interview I would like to conduct with them, a copy of my information sheet (Appendix 3) and the consent form (Appendix 6) to each of the six graduates. I also asked each of them to suggest a convenient time when I might interview him or her at his or her office, and requesting that they provide me with the name and
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contact details of a senior employer whom they would be comfortable for me to interview about them. The graduates all responded positively and referred me to an employer.
The sample consisted of an African female, (Busi) (isiZulu speaker) who had attended a former white “Model C” high school in an urban area; two Indian females, one of whom had attended a former “Indian” school in a local suburban area (Fazila), the other a school in a farming community where there had been scholars of various races (Rani); one white female who had attended a former white, now integrated, “Model C” urban girls’ high school (Maria); one Indian male from a low income formerly “Indian” school (Sandesh); one white male from a formerly white (“Model C”) high school in a country area (David).65 The sample selected met the criteria suggested in the literature.
The sample should capture as broad a range of relevant population characteristics as possible (e.g. background, prior experience, gender, age). These characteristics should be representative of the group under investigation, as well as of other similar groups in different educational settings (Stamouli & Huggard, 2007).
Table 8 sets out biographic information relating to the participants, their employer, and the type of law firm or organisation where they had completed articles of clerkship, whilst working for the employer whom I would interview.
65 For reference purposes the graduates shall be referred to by pseudonyms.
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Table 8 Biographic Profiles of Participants in Data Sets 4 & 5: Graduates and their Employers
Graduate participants
Race Gender Location and type of practice Employer’s race and gender
Sandesh Indian Male Justice Centre Indian Male
(Vishan) Fazila Indian Female Chatsworth; small practice Indian Male
(Colin) David White Male Suburban city sole practitioner Indian Male
(Kavish) Busi African Female Central Business District, major
corporate law firm
White Male (Peter) Maria White Female Suburban city, small medium-size
commercial law practice
White Male (Greg)
Rani Indian Female Campus Law Clinic African Female
(Maureen)
To confirm that the race and gender composition of the sample was consistently appropriate I compared it to current enrolments according to race and gender in the same Law faculty in 2009. This data is set out in Table 9: Race and Gender Composition of registered LLB students: 2009.
Table 9 Race and gender composition of registered LLB students: 2009
Race Male Female Total Percentage
of Total
African 156 269 425 35.71%
Coloured 15 32 47 3.94%
Indian 133 433 566 47.56%
White 78 74 152 12.77%
Total 382 808 1190 100%
This most recent data indicates that registrations for white and coloured students have dropped over the past four years, from 14.82% to 12.77% for whites, and from 4.82% to
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3.96% for coloureds. The percentage of registered Indian Law students has increased slightly from 46.13% in 2004, to 47.56% in 2009. African student registrations have also increased slightly from 34.98% in 2004 to 35.71% in 2009. This data does not reflect a significant change in the composition of the Law student body, and thus the representative sample used in the study remains acceptable.
Although phenomenographic studies normally use a larger sample (at least ten), to identify qualitative variation amongst the participants, the size of the potential sample who matched the pre-determined criteria in the study was only 16 in total. Thus six representative graduates were considered to be an adequate number based on the very context-specific nature of the study, and the fact that I would be required to interview an employer of each graduate to enhance the credibility of the study. The time-consuming nature of phenomenographic analysis also added a restriction on the number of interviews that could be managed. Trigwell (1999, p. 69) suggest that a reasonable limitation on the number of interviews be set in order to ensure that data can be assimilated simultaneously, because the process of analysis requires intensive concentration and exertion of concentrated intellectual focus to “keep a lot of ideas active at the same time”.
A copy of my interview outline (Appendix 7) was sent to each participant in the two data sets a week in advance of the interviews in order to allow them to reflect on the themes in advance of the discussion
4.14.2 [Data Set 5] Employers
Sampling here took the form of “snowballing”, as I relied upon the selected graduates to refer me to a senior attorney within their firm or organisation who had supervised them during their articles of clerkship, and who was likely to agree to be interviewed, thereby opening up entry for me to other participants (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1983). It was important that the graduates were comfortable with the choice of the employer to be interviewed as some of them will continue in a working relationship with that person after my research has been conducted.
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Of the six employers, two are partners in medium to large “white collar” urban practices66 whose work entailed mainly commercial and domestic legal matters. Another two of the employers run their own small suburban practices, one as a sole practitioner,67 the other68 in a small firm of his own, employing three qualified professional assistants who deal with criminal, commercial and civil law matters. The final two employers are engaged in public sector legal training of articled clerks: one as the supervising attorney at a university law clinic,69 the other as a supervising attorney at a government Justice Centre70. This apparently random cross-section of employers who were engaged in a variety of practice contexts added richness to the data because they added a dimension of representivity across the employer sector that was unanticipated. The resulting identification of the graduate attorneys’ employers was beyond my control since it was entirely dependent on where each of the graduates had been able to secure articles of clerkship.
The sample of employers and the location and type of practice in which each one involved is set out in Table 8 (Biographic Profiles of Participants in Data Sets 4 and 5: Graduates and their Employers). The size of the firm and its location within the context of urban geography is often indicative of the type of legal work and the financial success of law firms. Large urban law firms tend to carry out complex commercial and maritime or insurance-type legal work, and litigation for corporate and wealthy private clients, whereas a sole practitioner seldom has the support base and resources to engage in such work. Such practitioners would more typically carry out personal family law and small business legal work for private individuals. The cost of renting office space is an obvious indicator of the size of the overheads that a firm can support, and thus the physical location of a legal office may suggest the positioning of the law firm in the hierarchy of professional practice. It is unlikely
66 Peter and Greg are pseudonyms adopted for the purposes of this study.
67 Kavish is the pseudonym adopted for this participant.
68 Colin is the pseudonym adopted for this participant.
69 Maureen is the pseudonym adopted for this participant.
70 Vishan is the pseudonym adopted for this participant.
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that the two graduates who completed their articles of clerkship in public sector organisations would have chosen to do so had they been able to obtain a position within a private sector law firm, as it is well known that there is a significant salary differential between articled clerks working in private law practices, and those employed in public sector positions. The same could be said about the earning capacity of the employers, between the public sector and the private sector, between suburban sole practitioners and partners in large urban law firms.
I was able to contact the six employers and discuss the purpose of my study with each of them over the telephone. Thereafter I sent an e-mail with a copy of my information sheet, (Appendix 3), the consent form (Appendix 6), and a brief explanation of the purpose of the interview, requesting a convenient time when I might visit them for that purpose at their offices. It was quite difficult to find a time to meet with the employers, as they are all busy professionals who have to be flexible about their schedules when an urgent legal matter arises. Several of them postponed the appointment a few times, and I had to send several follow-up letters before being able to conclude all six interviews. Once again, a copy of the interview topics (Appendix 8) was sent to each participant in advance of the interview, in order to facilitate in-depth thoughtful discussion rather than to elicit spontaneous and less reflective responses.