In December, the Government confirmed £40m of funding for 20,000 Higher Apprenticeships in the next two years. Jason Holt, a former solicitor and now the Government's apprenticeship ambassador for small businesses, outlines how law firms are using these Higher Apprenticeships

In an increasingly demanding market, more and more law firms are structuring their businesses so that work previously handled by lawyers alone can be done by paralegals and legal administrators. And so it was welcome news, when in 2013, a Higher Apprenticeship in Legal Services was launched, heralding an opportunity for firms to save even more time and to grow expertise by training apprentices at a higher level to meet their specific needs.

The Higher Apprenticeship is equivalent to a first year of a degree and currently covers practice areas including commercial litigation, debt recovery/insolvency and personal injury. It heads up a family of existing apprenticeships in the legal sector, which allow staff to develop in various roles and at different levels. This includes Legal Advice at Intermediate and Advanced (Levels 2 & 3) and Legal Services at Advanced Level (Level 3).

In particular, the introduction of the Higher Apprenticeship (Level 4) marks an important change in a profession that has often been reserved for academia or for those with experience. And further change is expected, with a Higher Apprenticeship at Level 6 or 7 expected to be launched. This will enable an apprentice to achieve qualified solicitor status, and means having a degree will no longer be of paramount importance.

Indeed, it was the university path that I took when I qualified as a solicitor more than a decade ago. Alternative routes in at the age of 18 were limited. You either did a law degree, then the Law Practice Exam followed by two years of work-based learning, or, if you did a non-law degree you spent an additional year doing the law conversion course. Although there was the legal executive route, this was relatively uncommon and tended to be followed by more mature entrants to the profession.

However, what these routes had in common is that they all involved real workplace learning and resulted in recognised qualifications and continued professional development. In essence they were apprenticeships in all but name – but instead of being open to all, the necessity for a degree or experience was excluding many people who wanted to enter the legal profession.

Now with the addition of the Higher Apprenticeship pathway into the professions, the recruitment net has been cast wide open. But what do apprentices bring to the party and why should any law firm, big or small, be thinking about taking one on?

In an industry which is based around creating strong, unique working cultures in each firm, the opportunity to grow your own talent through apprenticeships should be embraced. To create the culture, you need raw talent and the right people. Apprenticeships give you these young people from a wide variety of backgrounds to mould into your company culture.

Gordons, a law firm recently named Newcomer of the Year at the National Apprenticeship Awards, is putting this concept into practice. The firm, which has offices in Bradford, Leeds and London, started offering Higher Apprenticeships to enable young people from the area to embark on a legal career without going to university. It now employs ten apprentices, who will, over five years, train as chartered legal executive lawyers. As a result, Gordons is not only achieving greater diversity in its organisation, but is also now able to deliver client work at a more competitive cost than would otherwise be the case. Its investment in apprentices is also paying dividends, with fee income generated through the apprentices' work totalling more than £300,000.

Apprenticeships are also proven to increase business productivity. A case in point for this is UK top 50 firm Weightmans, the first organisation in the country to take on a legal services higher apprentice. After just a couple of months its apprentice became involved in fee-earning activity – contributing directly to the firm's productivity. Moreover, the apprentice is able to handle a range of tasks, such as preparing documents for hearings and assisting with drafting witness statements, which frees up associate time for fee-earning activity. Convinced of the benefits, Weightmans has since taken on a second apprentice.

The legal sector has a powerful role to play with apprenticeships – not only by attracting and recruiting a wider pool of young people as apprentices in both fee-earning and business support roles, but also by championing apprenticeships more widely to the clients they advise.

As I set out in my Government review in 2012, we are keen for more law firms to act as trusted advisers on apprenticeships. SMEs tend to listen more to legal advisers when making business decisions and that is why, since the review, we have been working with the Law Society to raise the profile of apprenticeships amongst its members, so they consequently encourage the recruitment of apprentices to clients.

Apprenticeships have the potential to transform the diversity of the legal profession, and they offer a route for apprentices to be fee-earning, valued members of a law firm. And if lawyers play their role as trusted advisers, the profession could also be instrumental in helping combat youth unemployment and in creating new and exciting opportunities for people to flourish.

Jason Holt is CEO of Holts Group of Companies and a former banking and insolvency solicitor at Eversheds. He is the apprenticeship ambassador for smaller businesses and led the Government's 2012 review 'Making Apprenticeships more accessible to SMEs'.