Cheating or taking professional advice?

There has been a fair bit of coverage in the blogosphere and the press recently about the services offered by Oxbridge Training Contracts - a controversial company which provides model essays for university students.

As Legal Week reported yesterday (24 March), the company has recently broadened its services to help prospective lawyers complete training contract and pupillage applications, a move that prompted the Bar Council to place a warning on the Pupillage Portal site advising applicants that it is "likely to be detrimental to their applications to use any service containing customised model entries". 

I talked to John Foster, spokesman for Oxbridge Training Contracts about the legality of his service, his view of the ethics and exactly what Oxbridge Training Contracts is actually offering to students who wish to use their services.  We also talked about the provision of model answers, tailored to specific questions put by the student client, and the problems that could arise if a student submits these model answers as their own work for coursework assessment.

I am a firm believer in the old adage that there are two sides to every story. I asked John Foster some difficult and direct questions and told him in advance of the podcast about the warning placed on the Bar Council OLPAS site this afternoon. Listen to his answers, make your own mind up, and if you wish to comment - please do so in the comments section below.

Click here to listen to the interview with Oxbridge Training Contracts spokesman John Foster (the file may take a few seconds to download).

Mike Semple Piggot, who blogs under the pseudonym of Charon QC, is the founder of Insite Law magazine.