The City generation

We kick off our education focus - which also considers the future of training contracts and law degrees - with Anne Mizzi's review of the first year of the controversial City legal practice course

Trainee solicitors starting their contracts at leading City law firms this year are the first batch in the latest experiment in legal education - the City legal practice course (LPC).

The LPC year, which is sandwiched between the law degree or law conversion course (CPE) and the two-year training contract, is designed to bridge the gap between the academic and the on-the-job stages of legal training.

It is the modern equivalent of the Law Society finals.

Peter Jones, dean and chief executive of Nottingham Law School, says the LPC has changed and continues to change 'significantly'.

The original LPC marked a shift towards transactions and procedure, and assumed an existing knowledge of the law and analytical skills, which had been the focus of the Society finals, he explains.

'With the benefit of hindsight the pendulum swung too far in that direction.

Because the firms got together and because they've put in an enormous amount of resources, the course is moving more quickly than it otherwise would have.

It's a nice balance to strike,' said Mr Jones.

But it is not just cash that the firms have invested in the City LPC.

They have also contributed their know-how, putting aside traditional rivalries for the benefit of all.

The provider/law firm relationship is the key to the City LPC, which has been developed by eight City firms: Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Herbert Smith, Linklaters, Lovells, Norton Rose, and Slaughter and May.

These firms in cahoots with three LPC providers established the course - BPP, Nottingham Law School and the Oxford Institute of Legal Practice - together called the consortium.

All three still cater for firms outside the eight.

The main reason given for the collaboration was to raise standards.

Firms wanted to make sure they were getting the best return on their 12,000 per student investment in the LPC year (made up of course fees and maintenance grants).

They said trainees would arrive on their doorstep knowing little about black-letter law and whingeing about having not been worked hard enough over the year.

Obviously, something had to be done.

However, the consortium's plan to overhaul the LPC came to light before the Society had been adequately consulted.

Then the Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf branded the course 'elitist' while educational elitism was getting headline coverage in the national press.

So the consortium hired outside public relations consultants to handle the matter and pressed ahead with the course.

The foundation of the City LPC caused shockwaves in the world of legal education, and ill-feeling from certain quarters.

The College of Law, snubbed by the consortium, hit back by opening a new school in Birmingham and increasing its dialogue with larger corporate firms as well as an enhanced business law centre.

This year's trainees are the first batch to complete the new course.

The consortium's agreement is for five years, but the changes have been front-loaded so that most occurred in the first year.

John Herrmann, marketing director at BPP, says the course has gone down well with students.

'This year has gone exceptionally well and we are extremely pleased.

Students seem to be pleased with the new course as well,' he says.

And Nick Johnson, director at the Oxford Institute, says: 'Overall, the City LPC is regarded by the firms and providers as a success.'

However, there have been some difficulties.

Julie Brannan, deputy course director at the Oxford Institute - which maintained its 'very good' rating by the Society this year - met students a week before the final elective exams in June, in a last-ditch attempt to work out what could be done about some 'bad feeling' that she said had already been evident in the first term.

The meeting came soon after a student-led petition to tutors which highlighted some of the students' worries about the exam-marking scheme.

Although the City LPC appears to be a uniform course, there are differences between the providers.

For example, Oxford prides itself on its closed-book exams with a ban on annotation of permitted core materials.

But students at BPP and Nottingham are allowed to bring annotated books into their exams.

All three courses follow the same structure, which is not dissimilar from the original LPC.

Students taking the City LPC must still take the Society compulsory subjects.

These include business law and practice, criminal and civil litigation, property, solicitors' and business accounts, and the skills of advocacy, interviewing, research, writing and drafting.

Professional conduct is pervasive throughout.

The business law and practice course was the principal target area for the consortium, but other subjects have also been tinkered with to reflect the new emphasis on City work.

For example, the property case studies were commercial conveyancings.

BPP was the only consortium provider able to overhaul the entire business law and practice course before its launch.

Mr Herrmann explains: 'BPP had a commercial slant anyway, and that made things much easier for us.'

But next year the course will be slightly different.

The Society is reducing the number of assessments during the year from 18 to 14 because providers and practitioners were concerned that the LPC had become assessment-driven and that students perceived the course as a series of hurdles to be jumped.

LPC students going to any of the eight City practices also need to be aware that tutors are required to provide regular feedback on students and their grades to their firms.

This could be an important factor at some firms which require students to get a commendation, rather than a straightforward pass.

The 'Big Brother' arrangement is reciprocal.

During the first year of the course, students completed two detailed questionnaires, grading each subject and giving comments on the quality of teaching and materials, and naming teachers where relevant.

Some firms also organised focus groups of trainees.

The results of these information-gathering exercises remain unpublished.

Mr Jones says that feedback to firms has now been 'systemised, centrally pooled and sourced'.

He adds: 'Firms have always had feedback mechanisms, the difference is in the degree.'

But the main area of change so far has been the introduction of 'City electives', or modules in debt finance, equity finance and private acquisitions.

These are taken in the final term, at which point the year effectively splits between 'City' and 'non-City' students at the course provider.

However, non-City students are free to choose a City elective.

Julius Brookman, a student representative at the Oxford Institute last year, is joining his family firm, but took the private finance elective.

Mr Brookman says: 'There was a vocal student body and a fair amount of frustration from non-City students that they weren't being well looked after.

However, I personally felt that the best teaching still lies in the non-City elective, and the practical skills teaching was very good.'

And the consortium providers, keen to emphasise their non-elitist credentials, say the guaranteed revenue from the City trainees is allowing them to expand the non-City part of their course.

Mr Herrmann says: 'We have worked in consultation with many other firms as well because we are not an exclusive provider.

We still run all the non-commercial options, although they are subject to take-up.'

The advantage in taking the City electives, which are also offered by the College of Law's equivalent City course, lies in the opportunity to become familiar with sources such as the listing rules and commercial agreements, reflecting the practice areas that the trainees will encounter at their firms.

Asami Nonomiya, who will join Linklaters in 2003 after taking an LLM in international law, says her view completely changed after taking the debt finance elective: 'When I attended a Linklaters compulsory class, I thought debt finance was never going to be for me.

I didn't know anything about equity finance but now I know that I'm never going to do it.

Now I'm really looking forward to doing debt or project finance and I feel much more comfortable about it.'

Luscinia Brown-Hovelt started her training contract with a banking seat at Lovells after completing the City LPC at Oxford.

She says: 'Lovells is very interested in what we have done on the course.

It already seems that the course that we have done will be far more useful to us in practice because we've been learning skills that will be directly relevant.'

The excellent academic backgrounds of the majority of the intake at the three course providers means that the pass rate is expected to hover around the 90% mark - significantly higher than the 75% for the LPC as a whole.

Mr Jones contends that a 10% failure rate is too high given the postgraduate nature of the course and the calibre of students.

He says: 'The LPC comes at the end of a pre-practice sequence and ought not to be putting up barriers, but some people will fail or the whole system will be discredited.

There will inevitably be problems with a new course, but generally we are pretty pleased and we are also pleased to have retained our "excellent" rating by the Society.'

But Herbert Smith trainee Emily Tetley-Jones is philosophical about the overall experience.

She says: 'We were a guinea pig year, and there were obviously going to be teething difficulties, but through doing the electives we do have a fairly good idea of what's going to be expected of us in practice.'

Whether the experiment was a success still remains to be seen.

Stephen Wilkinson, graduate recruitment partner at Herbert Smith, says it is too early to give a definitive verdict.

He says: 'The proof of the pudding will be in the eating - when the trainees turn up in September.'

Anne Mizzi is a freelance journalist and a recent graduate of Oxford's City course