The good news is that law firms are not cutting back on training contracts. Many were bitten in the last economic downturn when they found themselves short of lawyers as the climate improved.
Simon Bullock, education and training policy executive at the Solicitors Regulation Authority, says that in the year to July 2008, 6,303 training contracts were registered, 300 more than the year before. There is no evidence of fewer being offered this year.
So students stand a good chance of getting a contract: in July last year 5,921 passed the legal practice course (LPC). But, Bullock cautions, there are also many LPC graduates from previous years competing for traineeships.
Law is still popular — 9,947 students enrolled on full and part-time LPC courses for 2007-08, up from 9,486 the previous year and 9,171 the year before.
Deborah Dalgleish, head of UK trainee recruitment at Freshfields, says: “We’re interviewing students now for 2011-12, so, to cut traineeships, we’d need to be saying we will need fewer lawyers in 2013-14. If we have a knee-jerk reaction now, we might get stung badly, as people did in the Nineties.”
The number of applicants is rising, she adds, as students turn to law from banking and the City. “Our job is then to sort out those who genuinely want to come into law or who see it as a stop-gap until they can go to the City in a few years’ time.”
A new-look LPC is launched this autumn and about half of all providers have been approved to offer it, including BPP, the College of Law and Nottingham Law School. The new-style course is more flexible, allowing students to study vocational topics and thus move more quickly into the job market.
Manchester Metropolitan University, for instance, will offer a slimmed-down, part-time LPC, cutting its course by six months. City Law School is also offering a new part-time LPC, while students with contracts at Freshfields, Herbert Smith, Lovells, Norton Rose and Slaughter and May will take a shorter, seven-and- a-half-month course (down from the present ten).
There has been a drop in registrations for the Bar Vocational Course — perhaps because of the introduction of an entry test. There were 2,540 applications in 2008-09, compared with 2,864 in 2007-08. The number of pupillages stands at 550.
Simon Bullock, education and training policy executive at the Solicitors Regulation Authority, says that in the year to July 2008, 6,303 training contracts were registered, 300 more than the year before. There is no evidence of fewer being offered this year.
So students stand a good chance of getting a contract: in July last year 5,921 passed the legal practice course (LPC). But, Bullock cautions, there are also many LPC graduates from previous years competing for traineeships.
Law is still popular — 9,947 students enrolled on full and part-time LPC courses for 2007-08, up from 9,486 the previous year and 9,171 the year before.
Deborah Dalgleish, head of UK trainee recruitment at Freshfields, says: “We’re interviewing students now for 2011-12, so, to cut traineeships, we’d need to be saying we will need fewer lawyers in 2013-14. If we have a knee-jerk reaction now, we might get stung badly, as people did in the Nineties.”
The number of applicants is rising, she adds, as students turn to law from banking and the City. “Our job is then to sort out those who genuinely want to come into law or who see it as a stop-gap until they can go to the City in a few years’ time.”
A new-look LPC is launched this autumn and about half of all providers have been approved to offer it, including BPP, the College of Law and Nottingham Law School. The new-style course is more flexible, allowing students to study vocational topics and thus move more quickly into the job market.
Manchester Metropolitan University, for instance, will offer a slimmed-down, part-time LPC, cutting its course by six months. City Law School is also offering a new part-time LPC, while students with contracts at Freshfields, Herbert Smith, Lovells, Norton Rose and Slaughter and May will take a shorter, seven-and- a-half-month course (down from the present ten).
There has been a drop in registrations for the Bar Vocational Course — perhaps because of the introduction of an entry test. There were 2,540 applications in 2008-09, compared with 2,864 in 2007-08. The number of pupillages stands at 550.
Frances Gibb, Legal Editor
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