by Rachel Falconer, West London Law Society Junior Lawyers Division committee member and solicitor with Hodders Law

In October 2010, BPP announced the decision to open three new branches nationwide, namely in Cambridge, Newcastle and Liverpool. This announcement sparked a heated debate and provoked passionate challenges to the decision that will lead to successful candidates paying fees (currently £8,995 a year and £12,500 in London) to embark on the LPC, when the number of training contract places is widely reported to be in rapid decline.

Articles in the Gazette, following the decision, highlighted the difficulty in identifying the extent of this problem from the statistical information available (Rachel Rothwell ‘How should oversupply of LPC graduates be tackled’ and David Dixon ‘Future LPC students need to be better informed about career prospects’).

This is a legitimate concern of the committee of the West London Law Society Junior Lawyers Division (WLLS JLD), which represents the interests of its members who are students, trainees and junior lawyers. The diversity of age, qualification, experience and opinion of the individuals within this pool of membership, however, dictates that there is no simple answer to this debate accurately reflecting the interests of all.

For some, an additional choice of locations will be beneficial and could reduce living and travel costs. Yet there is a significant risk that candidates will embark on a course that will consume a considerable amount of their time and money, without being fully aware of the prospects of securing a training contract.

BPP College of Professional Studies, the umbrella under which BPP Law School sits, is a commercial entity which, by nature, will seek to enhance its services and maximise its profits for the benefit of its members. It cannot be expected to self-regulate its own expansion, or the number of places it offers to candidates, due to some moral conscience regarding the buoyancy of the legal market and the future opportunities those candidates may have.

Nor does the SRA have the relevant authority to intervene to regulate this expansion (although the Law Society’s education and training committee is considering alternatives, such as an aptitude test for LPC candidates).

There is no doubt that, if the demand is there, the expansion of LPC providers will continue and there is validity in the argument that diversity of choice of LPC providers creates free market competition, directly impacting on pricing policy and quality of service.

As a committee, the WLLS JLD has concluded that there is a need to focus on practical solutions to address the problem of over-subscription without becoming embroiled in a protracted debate. The emphasis should be on providing prospective candidates with comprehensive, objective information to equip them to make their own informed decisions.

In the light of this, the WLLS JLD has decided to utilise the experience of its committee members to assist law students who are facing key decisions about their futures. The committee, with the assistance of experts from alternative fields, will be working with universities to develop a series of seminars aimed not at discouraging students from joining the profession, but at giving them access to the information necessary to make informed choices about their future careers.

If our members are fully informed about the realities of joining the profession and the range of career options available to them, then we should credit them with the acumen to make the right decision on an individual basis.

Rachel Falconer, West London Law Society Junior Lawyers’ Division committee member and solicitor with Hodders Law