City LPC plan under threat again

TRAINING: breakaway legal practice course hit by criticism from Law Society representative

The proposed City legal practice course (LPC) came under renewed fire last week from a senior Law Society representative, indicating that the regulator might not allow the scheme.Addressing a Law Society conference in London on the future of the LPC, Cyril Glasser, the Society's Council member for education and training and visiting professor of law at University College London, questioned the need for a City LPC.He said: 'Surely the complaints are against some (but surely not all) university law faculties rather than the LPC - and specifically in respect to Oxbridge, from which the big firms heavily recruit.' He was concerned that the City LPC would stop non-City LPC graduates from obtaining work in the City at a later stage in their careers, and vice versa.

He urged the breakaway firms to 'consider carefully' the criticisms of the City LPC made by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, last week (see [2000] Gazette, 22 June, 4).

Lord Woolf said that by implicitly restricting intake to students promised training contracts at Slaughter and May, Clifford Chance, Freshfields, Linklaters & Alliance, Allen & Overy, Herbert Smith, Norton Rose and Lovells, the proposals would 'inevitably result in two standards'.It is thought that the Society would like to maintain the integrity of the LPC as a single qualification for all students.

As yet, the eight City firms - which are working with Nottingham Law School, BPP Law School and the Oxford Institute - have not applied to the Law Society for approval of the course.Tony King, the partner responsible for education at Clifford Chance, said the firms were seeking a course more stimulating and rigorous for their students; a course 'not interested only in rules but also in content'.

He said the last thing any of the eight firms wanted was to increase discrimination among law students.

Joining the criticism of degree courses, CMS Cameron McKenna partner Melissa Hardee, chair of the Legal Education and Training Group, said: 'It is hard to see why students do law degrees any more.' She said it might be best to scrap the degree course and make it a post-graduate course.Professor Alan Paterson, chairman of the heads of UK university law schools, acknowledged some failings on the part of universities in legal method.

But he warned that a 'coverage mentality' - teaching students simply to memorise and regurgitate knowledge - led to a superficial and non-reflective legal education.

Jeremy Fleming