BPP big wigs silent as failed students are reported sacked from training contracts

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By Jonathan Ames on

Accelerated course disaster for seven wannabes — but law school won’t comment

BPP Law School officials maintained a veil of silence in response to reports that a group of accelerated Legal Practice Course (LPC) students lost training contracts after failing several modules at the first time of asking.

A spokeswoman for the law school told Legal Cheek:

We cannot comment on individuals’ results.

However, according to a report on the weekly partners’ chat forum, Roll on Friday, seven students that failed a combination of the business, law and practice and the drafting courses have been given the bullet by their firms.

The chat forum quoted a source close to the students as suggesting the Solicitors Regulation Authority should intervene to assess whether the unnamed City of London firms have behaved fairly towards the students by saying sayonara before they have had a chance to resit.

While the specific firms involved with the seven students are unknown, it is a matter of record that only five City giants have signed up to the BPP accelerated course: Anglo-German magic circle player Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, English-Aussie combo Herbert Smith Freehills, Transatlantic dynamos Hogan Lovells and Norton Rose Fulbright and blueblood magic circle outfit Slaughter and May.

BPP’s course, launched in 2009, was the first super-fast LPC to hit the market — or at least the first to be dubbed “accelerated”. The law school says the course — which shaves 10 weeks off the standard 10-month LPC — is “designed exclusively for students joining the … five [consortium] firms”.

According to the law school:

The partnership between BPP and the consortium of five firms provides students with unrivalled links between their education and future legal careers.

Unless they fail a module or two, of course.

Confusingly, BPP also offers a “fast-track” LPC, which is effectively the same course, but just not for students lucky enough to have bagged training contracts with that group of five law firms.