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Law School streamlines LPC

New course from September 2009

MMU is launching a new streamlined Legal Practice Course which will shave six months off the existing part-time course.

Students will be able to complete stage 1, the compulsory element, in one academic year, and Stage 2 - the electives – in a further three-month term, allowing a much faster route to qualification.

The streamlined Legal Practice Course is in line with the new requirements of the Solicitors Regulation Authority(SRA).

Course Director David Amos said: "In designing this new course we have built on the strengths of our existing course and taken a more focussed approach to the way we deliver it.

Virtual law firm

"All our face to face teaching will take the form of small group sessions or workshops. These will allow the students to get more individual attention from their tutors and will more closely replicate the sort of office environment that we are preparing students to work in."

Face to face sessions are supplemented by online lectures and exercises that will be delivered through the ‘virtual firm’ that students work for whilst they are studying the course. This has proved to be an effective method of delivery and has been praised as innovative practice by the SRA and Law Society.

David Amos added: "We expect this streamlined course to be attractive to a whole range of different groups. Our existing part time students are generally more mature and have experience of working in a firm of solicitors.

"This course will offer them a faster route to qualification. At the same time, it offers an opportunity for students who have to work whilst studying to do so without unduly delaying their entrance to the profession."

Training contracts

The course has been accepted by the SRA subject to the SRA confirming that conditions have been satisfactorily fulfilled. This confirmation takes place in March.

Meanwhile, the SRA have confirmed that law firms are not cutting back on training contracts. Many were bitten in the last economic downturn when they found themselves short of lawyers as the climate improved.

Simon Bullock, of the SRA, says that in the year to July 2008, 6,303 training contracts were registered, 300 more than the year before.

"There is no evidence of fewer being offered this year. So students stand a good chance of getting a contract," he says. In July last year 5,921 passed the legal practice course (LPC).

For further information on the new course and the LPC more generally please contact David Amos on 0161 247 6441.

Published Tuesday, 20th January 2009