BPP fights off rivals to retain key City LPC role

BPP Law School has held off competition from rivals including The College of Law to retain its trophy client - the City Legal Practice Course (LPC) consortium.

The five-firm consortium - comprising Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Herbert Smith, Lovells, Norton Rose and Slaughter and May - this week informed the four providers that they had chosen BPP.

Their decision - made after detailed presentations by The College of Law, Nottingham at Kaplan and the Bristol Institute of Legal Practice in association with Central Law Training, as well as BPP - means BPP will develop a new LPC expected to come into effect in September 2009.

BPP has run an exclusive MBA-style City LPC for the firms' students since September 2006, but in February the consortium announced it was putting the contract out to tender because of changes to the LPC proposed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Dominic Stuttaford, the Norton Rose partner who has been closely involved in developing the consortium's LPC, told Legal Week: "All of the providers did very good presentations and everyone recognised that things will change with the new regulations, but we were impressed with BPP and decided to go with them.

The mandate will be seen as a significant win for BPP despite its existing relationship with the consortium. Bristol was willing to open a centre in London if it had won the bid, while an appointment to the College of Law would have made it the exclusive provider to nearly three-quarters of all major firms that have such deals.

Legal Week Student