The Legal Cheek View
Home to over 60,000 students, Birmingham is a young city. Filled with art galleries, theatres and exhibitions, the city offers more than just a colourful nightlife. Amid the grind of the LPC, ULaw is also in on the fun, arranging theatre trips, a staff versus students pub quiz, and a winter masquerade ball.
Your experience of the LPC at the Birmingham campus may fit the course’s stereotype: quick and efficient, but far less memorable than those undergraduate days. It gets the LPC job done.
The Birmingham campus offers all the standard ULaw electives. Banking and debt finance, merger and acquisitions, competition law and intellectual property are all on the menu. One LPC-er we heard from was disappointed with the choice since there’s “limited social welfare” electives. It’s true that commercial topics heavily dominate the options, and there’s a real focus on business law across the core modules as well. But there is advanced criminal practice, personal injury, immigration and family law to choose from too. If you’re interested in public law, get involved with pro bono work instead.
We are told that the Birmingham campus has an “excellent” careers service, which is useful as some students “still have very little idea of what [they’ll] actually be doing in practice”. Speed networking is a hit. The centre also has close connections with local and national firms and there are events to go to if you look out for them.
Beyond the campus, there’s plenty of law firms: Pinsent Masons, DLA Piper, and Eversheds Sutherland all have offices nearby. If you’re on the hunt for vacation schemes and ultimately training contracts, you won’t have to go far to find them. There’s also two libraries, so you’re more likely to find a study space during busy exam times.
A quick tip for Birmingham LPC students: for £15, you can sign up to the Birmingham Trainee Solicitors’ Society as a student member, and brush shoulders with trainees, newly qualified solicitors and paralegals. The society organises networking opportunities that range from social to sporting events. We all know how important contacts can be when you’re trying to get your foot into the legal profession, so this could be a smart way to be part of a local legal community.
Scholarships
Law First Scholarship
The Lord Blunkett Widening Access Award
The Daniel Turnbull Memorial Scholarship
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Key Info
ULaw offers a total of 4,750 full-time LPC places and 2,000 part-time LPC places across its centres nationally; part-time fees are per year. Under its ‘Employment Promise’, ULaw offers to refund the course fees for any of its LPC graduates who fail to get a job within nine months of completing the course. The refund is made up of 50% cashback plus 50% credit towards further courses. All prices include the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) registration fee of £15.