The consortium of eight leading firms that set up the controversial City legal practice course (LPC) in 2001 split in two last week.

Five of the firms - Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Herbert Smith, Lovells, Norton Rose and Slaughter and May - have chosen BPP as their exclusive course provider from June 2006, when current arrangements come to an end.

The other members of the consortium, Linklaters, Allen & Overy and Clifford Chance, have meanwhile opted to link up with the College of Law for firm-specific courses.

Nottingham Law School and the Oxford Institute of Legal Practice, which provide the existing City LPC alongside BPP, both miss out.

Simon Firth, Linklaters' trainee partner, told the Gazette the City LPC had 'done its job', but suggested it had its limitations and the proposed firm-specific course was therefore a logical move.

He said: 'Training should not be something that is done in completely separate blocks - it should all be done in a homogeneous way.

We wanted to get people to feel they are part of the firm as soon as they start the course.'

Allen & Overy training partner Alison Beardsley said her firm had been looking at the feasibility of setting up its own course for the past ten years.

'We discussed with the Law Society whether it was possible, but at the time they told us, quite properly, that it was not,' she said.

She added that the idea of a tailored course was given impetus by the Society's ongoing training framework review, which anticipates that there could be a number of different pathways to qualification.

Ms Beardsley said one of the main advantages of a firm-specific course was that prospective trainees would use the firm's standard form documentation as part of the course.

She insisted that the aim of the new course was not to make students work harder but was a way that the firm could get value for money for its investment.

Allen & Overy currently takes on 120 trainees each year.

Peter Crisp, chief executive of BPP, said that although the course provider would be taking all of the prospective trainees from the group of five firms, more than 50% of its places would still be available for trainees from other practices as well as students without a training contract.

'It is a myth that we only do the City LPC,' he said.

BPP is opening two more law schools in Leeds and London this summer.

Philip Hoult