It has been a tumultuous summer for the legal education market. One of the top two postgraduate vocational course providers has been sold for the second time in three years, and the third institution closed at the end of August.
Yet perhaps the biggest existential issue came from the combined forces of the government and a legal profession regulator. Ministers have given the nod to an apprenticeship scheme that means school-leavers could qualify as lawyers without crossing a university threshold or completing the historically mandatory two-year training contract.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority is still weighing up the proposal, but many expect it to get the green light , not least because of current high training costs.
On the face of it, the decision by Kaplan Law — which had a joint venture with Nottingham Trent University — to throw in the towel is good news for the two big providers. The University of Law and BPP Law School will fight over the dozen exclusive deals Kaplan had with law firms to provide the legal practice course (LPC) to their trainees.
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But ULaw and BPP have problems of their own. London-based Montagu Private Equity flogged the former for an undisclosed sum — after having asset-stripped some of its property portfolio in the three years since buying the then College of Law for £200 million.
The new owner is controversial. Netherlands-based Global University Systems is run by Aaron Etingen, a thirty-something Russian businessman raised in Israel. Also in his portfolio are the London School of Business and Finance and London College of Contemporary Arts. Last month, the Home Office prohibited the business school from sponsoring new students or workers from outside the EU. And as one legal-watcher says: “The University of Law’s new parent has no pedigree in legal education.” It is not alone in having a potentially embarrassing parent. Shares in BPP’s US umbrella company, Apollo Education Group, tumbled by nearly 9.5 per cent in July as regulators began to investigate allegations of unfair advertising and marketing. “There is no doubt that the market has experienced a period of correction and difficulty over the past few years,” acknowledges Professor Andrea Nollent, ULaw’s provost and chief academic officer.
Her counterpart at BPP, dean and chief executive Peter Crisp, agrees the market is in a state of flux, but is not discouraged. Kaplan “closed because its business model was unworkable,” says Crisp, who maintains his institution and ULaw are better placed, with bigger student bodies plus degree-awarding powers that Kaplan crucially lacked. “Kaplan tried the small is beautiful modelbut found students didn’t like it because there was no opportunity to network. It also had significant problems with fixed-cost overheads”. Kaplan acknowledges its law school (it runs other vocational courses) bled money in the last three years. But such cogitating on the LPC market could be academic if the government’s apprenticeship scheme takes off. The route will require some academic study and a final exam but those elements will potentially not be nearly as profitable to the providers as the LPC.
The new scheme has heavy-weight backing. “Apprenticeships are a unique opportunity to raise standards,” says Nigel Savage, ULaw’s former chief executive, now an education consultant. “They’re an opportunity to move away from the process-driven LPC and inject more intellectual rigour into pre-qualification. The providers won’t be able just to prepare students to pass their own exams but will have to invest more in preparing students who are really competent for practice, in much the same way as the medics do.”
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Lincoln’s Inn plans?
It is seven years since the Inns of Court sold their law school to City University London — but speculation is rife that the collegiate heart of the Bar wants to get back into legal education, writes Jonathan Ames. Fanning the rumours are elaborate plans at Lincoln’s Inn for a state-of-the-art subterranean 150-seat lecture theatre, library and admin block.
Officially, the hierarchy at Lincoln’s and the inns are keeping their powder dry. But Bar sources suggest that senior figures are increasingly uneasy over the expense and quality of the Bar professional training course (BPTC). The University of Law and BPP Law School charge about £18,500 for the one year. City University is £1000 less but still costly and there is no guarantee of pupillage.
Bar leaders feel vulnerable to criticisms that they allow private providers to exploit the system at the expense of students never likely to qualify. Indeed, the Bar Council’s position is that the BPTC must be reformed. It favours a two-stage course: the first online and much cheaper. Students would then have to pass a rigorous exam to progress to the finishing stage, weeding out weaker candidates. Will this be offered by a new Inns’ law school? Either way, reform is certain.
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