Academic lawyers fear professional bodies will seek to shut under-resourced law departments rather than try to help them win more funds.

The Law Society and the Bar Council have produced a new framework for quality assurance in qualifying law degrees. Responses to the framework have to be in by the end of this month.

The framework says: "We believe that the case for us to prepare guidance to you on the resources that we consider should be provided to support a qualifying law degree has acquired added weight as a result of the government's white paper."

Nigel Bastin, head of education and training at the Bar Council, said: "We believe that the time has come to issue guidance on the resources necessary to meet the outcomes of the degree."

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The guidance would not be prescriptive, he said, but a law department that could not meet them could lose its accreditation from the professional bodies.

This would in effect shut a department because it would not be able to offer a qualifying law degree. "We hope it would not come to that," Mr Bastin said.

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Anthony Smith, professor of criminal and public laws at Cambridge University and chair of the Committee of Heads of University Law Schools, said: "Law is in the Higher Education Funding Council for England's lowest funding band. We want to move up a band. The increasing use of electronic resources means we are not a cheap subject to teach."

Professor Smith said that any concerns the professional bodies had about standards should be addressed in a spirit of partnership between the law schools and the professional bodies rather than through "an attritional and confrontational process".

The framework, Quality Assurance and Qualifying Law Degrees: The Way Forward, builds on a joint statement on the regulatory framework recently drawn up by the professional bodies and universities.

There were fears that the professional bodies would redraft the statement.

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But new guidance on the curriculum, as well as resourcing, is also proposed.