Herbert Smith puts up cash to back call for better undergraduate legal education.UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION: Government urged to follow firm's lead to improve legal training.City firm Herbert Smith has launched a campaign to improve undergraduate legal education - and called for the government to follow suit.Herbert Smith's executive partner, Tim Parkes, said: 'Universities are under-funded.

Successful City firms have a moral responsibility to help support the training of their lawyers.

We all want to be doing more.

It is possible to put pressure on the government to provide more funding.

I would like to see the purse strings being loosened'.Herbert Smith has launched a programme to support universities teaching law.

It has cut a deal with University College London (UCL) to sponsor a chair in international commercial law, but is in talks with three more - Cambridge, Oxford and Bristol - with a view to entering into ground-breaking partnerships.

Mr Parkes said his firm is targeting up to five universities with which it has connections.

It has set up auniversity funding grant of 150,000, which is separate from the recruitment budget.Herbert Smith has a particularly strong connection with Kings College, London, although it decided to go with UCL for its London partner.

Mr Parkes admitted the five-year chair sponsorship was a traditional approach but said he hopes to try something else with the other partnerships.

He explained: 'That was what UCL wanted.

We are hoping to be a bit more creative and inventive about what we will do.

We are very open-minded about how we will provide this help'.Mr Parkes conceded that by singling out individual universities for funding, his firm - already under fire for its involvement in plans for a City legal practice course - may be criticised for elitism.

He admitted: 'I don't know the answer to [charges of elitism] because resources are finite.

We do have to make some choices.

The issue for us was on what basis we do make these choices.

We do recruit from a wide number of universities, but at the moment we are not in a position where we can support all of them.' Anne Mizzi