The Junior Lawyers Division has angrily rejected College of Law claims that there will soon be more training contract vacancies than Legal Practice Course graduates to fill them.

The college has been accused of ‘spinning’ the figures to make it appear that securing a training contract is likely to become easier and that students taking the LPC need not fear running up hefty debts to no purpose. It is ‘grossly unfair’ to mislead students in this way, the JLD alleges, because new graduates will be competing with graduates from previous years who are still without a training contract.

The college’s claims derive from the Law Society’s LPC enrolment figures, which suggest that the number of traineeships registered in 2011-12 will exceed the number of new LPC graduates in that same year by 13.7%, or 550.

They are also based on full-time LPC employment figures from the Central Applications Board and part-time enrolment numbers from the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The CoL predicts that, in 2013-14, the annual registration of trainees will exceed the number of new LPC graduates by 2.5% or 105, and in 2014-15 by 12.5% or 450.

JLD chair Judith Perkins said these figures ignored the ‘backlog’ of LPC graduates from previous years who are still seeking training contracts. ‘Any extra vacancies for trainees will quickly be snapped up,’ she said.

‘Undergraduates trust CoL and don’t expect spun figures. Students should be able to go into the LPC with their eyes open, aware of the challenges and disappointments that might lie ahead. They could end up with huge debts, but no career in the law. Not everybody can get a £40,000-a-year training contract with a magic circle firm.’

CoL chief executive Nigel Savage rejected the JLD’s claims. He said: ‘The number of enroled LPC students nationally continues to fall at a faster rate than the reduction in training contracts, and we have always taken into account how many LPC graduates were without contracts.’

‘Our professional bodies (including the JLD) should stop talking down the profession. Students are being put off law at a time when the 6.2% unemployment rate for law graduates is lower than for any other professional sector.’