Training: new course set up by BPP Law School to combine elements of City LPC

Five City firms showed their confidence in the future of the legal practice course (LPC) this week by revealing plans for an MBA-style LPC to be launched in September 2006 - despite a Law Society training framework review (TFR) that could make the LPC no longer compulsory from 2008.


The course, which has been set up by BPP Law School on behalf of five firms - Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Herbert Smith, Lovells, Norton Rose and Slaughter and May - will combine elements of the current 'City LPC' with more business-focused training provided by BPP's accountancy and finance trainers.


Lovells partner John Trotter said: 'Our course complies with the existing rules, and whatever the TFR comes out with, it will be more liberal. A lot of students will still want to do the LPC with an exam at the end.'


The course will not be exclusive to trainees from the five firms. BPP chief executive Peter Crisp said what is presently the compulsory element of the course will be available to other students, while the MBA-style element may be made available 'depending on how attractive it is to our students'. He added that the course would involve an increase in fee, but that this would not be significant.



Deborah Dalgleish, head of graduate recruitment at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, said: 'We recruit most trainees before they have done the LPC course, but also some people who have qualified in another jurisdiction, have qualified as barristers or who have already done the LPC. We will not turn them away on the basis that they have not done the new course. The course is not elitist, because we recruit people at university, long before they actually do the LPC.'


The new course follows the decision of three other City firms - Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance and Linklaters - to break away from the consortium that set up the City LPC and run their own individual LPC courses.


Mr Trotter said: 'There was a consortium of eight firms for five years, and now three of those firms have decided they wanted their own individual courses. The five other firms prefer the idea that students should not just be with people from their own firm, but get the benefit of being with those from other firms.


'We have improved the course by making it even more business focused, and case studies will make it more like life in the office.'