Lord Woolf criticises City law firms for launching 'elite' training consortiumThe Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, last week launched an attack on the top eight City firms that have formed an 'elite' training consortium.Speaking at the annual Upjohn lecture, Lord Woolf said he was 'concerned' about new City legal practice course (LPC), which is being devised by a consortium of law firms and LPC providers, and warned it would 'distort' the market.

Lord Woolf said: 'The same City firms already recruit from the most able graduates of the universities.

Their recruits are an elite.

For the elite to go to a small percentage of the provider colleges is bound to adversely influence the other providers.'Slaughter and May partner Melvyn Hughes denied that the firms were creating an elite by selecting able trainees and sending them on the best courses: 'We find this sort of attack on our initiative to be rather disappointing.

It is quite interesting that Lord Woolf is the first person to acknowledge the need for an improved course.' Lord Woolf said the top City firms should have used their influence on all LPC providers to improve standards across the board, rather than singling out Nottingham Law School, the Oxford Institute and BPP law school.

Mr Hughes responded: 'We hope that what we are doing will have that result.' 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'.'The City firms depend on recruiting the brightest lawyers to maintain their competitiveness within a global legal community.

However, with candidates of the quality they attract, it should be possible to provide any enhanced training which they require after an LPC which is common to the profession as a whole...

It is important the lawyers emerging into practice regard themselves as one profession,' he said.

Anne Mizzi