Law schools have become an increasingly contradictory part of the ecology of the profession in recent years. On one hand, research and anecdotal feedback from law firms indicates that educational standards have gone up. In addition, the doom-mongering unleashed with the original City LPC in 2001 has evaporated with the major providers widely regarded to have raised their game in terms of servicing key law firm clients. Indeed, it was the City LPC that appears to have unleashed the forces that kept the providers on their toes and led to the College of Law and BPP sweeping all before them.
And yet law schools have attracted a growing rumble of discontent from students and university law departments less enthused than City partners. The growing resentment of LPC providers was illustrated recently when BPP’s success in winning degree-awarding powers, the first commercial body to gain that distinction, acted as a focal point to bash the sector.
