Legal Practice Course (LPC) - full-time The University of Law Postgraduate Programmes

If you have a law degree or GDL and wish to train as a solicitor, we offer three options including an LPC MSc in Law, Business and Management to make you business ready.

• Qualify with an LPC, with the option to gain an MSc or LLM at no extra cost
• Develop your commercial awareness, critical thinking and the necessary professional skills to prepare you for the challenges of being a solicitor
• Tailor your course to your specialist areas of interest through a wide choice of elective subjects
• Study your LPC with a Masters and you could be eligible for a postgraduate student loan

With a clear focus on your future employability, we are more confident than ever in your success and offer our LPC Employment Promise. Get a job in nine months, or we’ll give you 100% of your fees back: 50% of your fees as cashback plus 50% of your fees as credit towards any further courses.

95% of our 2017/18 full-time, UK, LPC graduates have secured work or further study within fifteen months of successfully completing this course, based on Graduate Outcomes data.

Legal Practice Course (LPC) - full-time

The LPC is the final vocational stage of training to become a qualified solicitor. You study the LPC after successful completion of a qualifying law degree or other recognised qualifications. With our LPC you have the choice to study full-time to best suit your personal needs. This route is designed to offer you the best possible preparation to practise law. We focus on the skills that employers are most interested in so that you can enhance your academic knowledge while preparing for the realities of life in legal practice.

Employment Promise

• Our LPC Employment Promise: Secure a job within 9 months of successfully completing your course or your fees back.

Add a Free Master's

• Rather than enrolling on the core LPC, you may choose to study our MSc in Law, Business and Management or LLM in Professional Legal Practice at no extra cost.

95% Employment

• 95% of our full-time, UK, LPC students in employment were in Highly Skills Occupations fifteen months after graduating. (2018/19 Graduate Outcomes data). Contains HESA Data © HESA 2021.

Course Requirements

To be eligible to take up your place on our LPC, you must comply with the requirements for commencing a Legal Practice Course (LPC) set out by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) – see below. Failure to comply with these eligibility requirements means that the University will have no option but to cancel your place on the course.

If you are a non-EEA student you will also require a visa covering the full duration of your course – see Visa requirements below.

University of Law LPC selection criteria

• Academic profile and achievement, generally a minimum of an actual or predicted second class honours law degree or GDL/CPE/MA Law*
• A sufficient command of the English language to successfully complete the course - see English language requirements below
• Any special circumstances revealed in your application

Academic or other references

*This requirement is met by either: A) The award of a Qualifying Law Degree. Your law degree must meet certain academic standards in order to qualify. This must include having adequately passed assessments in the seven Foundations of Legal Knowledge – Public Law, Obligations I (Contract), Obligations II (Tort), Criminal Law, Land Law, Equity & Trusts and Law of the European Union. Further guidance on what is a Qualifying Law Degree; or B) Passing a Common Professional Examination (CPE)/Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL)/MA Law and being awarded a Graduate Diploma in Law, MA Law, or similar such as CILEX.

The University of Law fully complies with equal opportunities legislation and actively encourages diversity within the legal profession. Our admissions process acts fairly and aims to enable students to make the best use of their talents. You are encouraged to tell us about any special requirements at the earliest opportunity. This will allow us to discuss how we may go about meeting your requirements.

You must fulfil all eligibility requirements by the start of the course – failure to do so may result in you being prevented from joining the course. If you think that this may be a problem (for example, if you have late assessment results), please contact Admissions as soon as possible.

Future trainee Solicitors

The SRA has recently consulted on a number of proposed changes to its regulations, including removing the requirement for students to apply for student enrolment and approval of their academic stage of training prior to commencing the LPC.

If you have been offered a training contract, you need to make sure the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has checked your "character and suitability" to be a solicitor.

This may take at least six months to complete if you have:

• Committed certain criminal offences
• Been found guilty of an academic offence
• Had serious financial issues (such as bankruptcy, Individual Voluntary Arrangements or County Court Judgments)
• Been subject to adverse regulatory findings
• Demonstrated any other behaviour that we would not expect of a solicitor (for example behaviour that was dishonest, violent or discriminatory)

Please take a look at the SRA Suitability Test 2011 for more information and fill in the eligibility application if you need to tell them about any issues.

If you have nothing to tell the SRA, you can inform them of this when you and your employer let them know your training is due to start.

Should the SRA’s decision not be confirmed prior to the LPC start date, you can continue with the course but do so at your own financial risk. If you have any concerns about a character and suitability issue, please contact the SRA.

Accreditation of prior learning

If you have previously studied a BVC or BPTC, you may be exempt from certain elements of the LPC. For more information, please visit the SRA website and contact our Admissions team.

English language requirements

If you have completed a degree outside the UK and you do not come from a ‘majority English speaking country’, please provide a certified copy of one of the approved English Language Tests.

Duration

9.5 months

Course structure

Stage 1

• Introduction to Professional Practice (Professional conduct within this module carries 15 credits)
• Business Law and Practice Knowledge and Skills (30 credits)
• Dispute Resolution Knowledge and Skills, including Criminal Litigation (30 credits)
• Real Estate Knowledge and Skills (30 credits)

Stage 2

Choose three*:

• Advanced Criminal
• Advanced Real Estate
• Banking and Debt Finance
• Commercial Dispute Resolution
• Commercial Law
• Competition Law
• Employment Law
• Family Law
• Immigration
• Insurance
• Intellectual Property
• Mergers and Acquisitions
• Personal Injury and Clinical Negligence
• Private Client
• Public Companies

*Availability subject to demand, timetabling and location

Course Details

Legal Practice Course (LPC)

Our LPC offers you the best possible preparation to practise law. As one of the longest providers of the LPC in the UK, we have finely tuned the course to meet the expectations of those in the legal profession and currently work with over 90 of the top 100 law firms. Our aim is to prepare you fully for life as a trainee solicitor.

With a clear focus on your future employability, we’ve designed our LPC to help you improve your career prospects by learning the essential professional skills that legal employers are looking for. You’ll study in small group workshops, taught by qualified lawyers who have extensive practice experience, and through online learning resources that allow you to access your study materials anytime from anywhere.

Our career-focused course helps you to develop commercial awareness, critical thinking and the professional skills that legal employers are looking for. This is why we have a 95% employment rate for full-time LPC students*. And with a wide range of elective modules to choose from, you can truly tailor your course to your specialist areas of interest.

When you study the LPC with us you will receive:

• A career-focused approach to learning, developing commercial awareness, critical thinking and the professional skills that legal employers are looking for
• An MSc in Law, Business and Management or LLM in Professional Legal Practice at no extra cost and you could be eligible for a postgraduate student loan
• Tailored course options to suit your specialist areas of interest through a wide choice of elective subjects
• Flexible study – choose to study at one of our locations nationwide with the choice of full-time, part-time, day, evening and weekend courses, as well as online course options
• Access to award-winning careers support to help you with your training contract applications with over 3,000 pro bono opportunities as soon as you accept your place

There are two stages to studying the LPC. The first involves completing four compulsory modules; the second allows you to make a selection of focused modules, depending on your interest areas and which version of the course you’re studying.

Course Information

Assessment

Assessed through a range of assessments. Including oral assessments in Interviewing and Advocacy, open book and closed book exams.

If you choose to study your LPC with a Master’s you will also be assessed with a written report and an oral style assessment.

Structure

Each of our LPC study options has its own structure, with different assessments to suit.

EU Law Standalone Module

If your underlying law degree did not include the EU Law module you will need to study an extra module before the LPC.

This standalone online module provides the additional training that you’ll need to qualify to complete the LPC and gives you the necessary skills and knowledge that you’ll need to study the LPC.

The LPC route to qualify as a solicitor

Can I still study the LPC?

You can still continue with the LPC route to qualify as a solicitor if you completed, started, accepted an offer, or paid a non-refundable deposit for one of the following by 31 August 2021:

• A Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) / the Common Professional Examination
• Our MA Law
• The Legal Practice Course (LPC)
• A period of recognised training (also known as a training contract)

For a qualifying law degree (QLD) and exempting law degree (ELD), such as our LLB, you must have completed, started, accepted an offer or paid a non-refundable deposit by 21 September 2021.

In most cases, for the QLD, ELD and CPE, the relevant course must have started at the latest on or before 31 December 2021.

If you have already started a qualifying law degree, GDL or training contract there are transition arrangements in place until 31 December 2032 to qualify as a solicitor under the current routes, as long as courses still remain available.

Add a Free Master's

Rather than enrolling on the core LPC, you may prefer to enrol on one of the following Master’s Degree qualifications which are available to you at no extra cost.

LPC MSc in Law, Business and Management

If you want to work for a law firm or an employer with a corporate/commercial focus or if you are interested in understanding business from both the commercial as well as legal perspective, our LPC MSc will equip you with the key legal knowledge and skills required to work successfully in legal practice and will provide a pronounced business focus which will enable you to better understand your clients' business practices.

The two additional MSc modules are:

1. Law and Business

A taught module encompassing the following topics:

• The economy, business environment and globalisation
• The functioning of the City
• Management
• Financial analysis
• Corporate finance
• Business Development
• Strategy

Please note that Law and Business involves a lot of calculations and therefore a basic level of maths is required.

2. Case Study Project

A business based Case Study project, which is a self-study research module based on some of the themes and topics covered in Law and Business.

LPC LLM in Professional Legal Practice

Alternatively, if you would like the opportunity to gain a deeper interest in a specialist area of the law and to keep your options open, our LLM will suit your needs. Successfully complete your LPC with either an extra elective of your choice or a Law and Business module and a Professional Practice Research Report and you will receive an LPC LLM in Professional Legal Practice.

If you want to study only the LPC

If you choose not to undertake either the MSc or LLM you can still enrol on the LPC without a Masters award. You will be issued with a Postgraduate Diploma in Professional Legal Practice and will still have completed the vocational stage of training requirements.

Important Information

Progression for full-time GDL and MA Law students

If you started our full-time Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) or Master of Arts in Law (MA Law) in September 2021, you should be eligible to commence the Bar Practice Course (BPC) or Legal Practice Course (LPC) in September 2022 on successful completion of your course.

Please note: If you require a visa to study in the UK and wish to progress on to one of our on-campus vocational courses, please refer to our UK visa requirements page for information about applying for a Student Route visa.

How to Apply

• Applications for this course are now open.
• If you’d like to study full-time you can apply through the Central Applications Board (CAB).