Lawyer2B has a piece today detailing the employment rates of the biggest Legal Practice Course (LPC) providers. For some reason, BPP Law School, the University of Law and City Law School have provided figures only for the percentage of their students who have found “legal work” six months after graduation, declining to reveal how many obtained actual training contracts (although the University of Law says that “around two thirds of those LPC graduates who had secured legal employment had a training contract”).
As it happens, we know the full breakdown of the BPP figures. Hopefully, revealing it will encourage the other law schools to come forward and tell people exactly how many of their LPC graduates bagged training contracts…
First, some brief background. In May BPP published some “research” claiming that 89% of its LPC graduates had gained training contracts or other legal work within three months of graduating. As you can see from the relevant section of the Legal Week article reporting the news, BPP was rather coy about providing any further details.
But then BPP made the mistake of posting a tweet which incorrectly claimed that the full 89% of its LPC graduates got training contracts (TCs), neglecting to mention the bit about “other legal work”.
When alerted to the tweet last week by Legal Cheek, BPP Law School chief Peter Crisp decided to reveal a breakdown of the employability statistics — which were gleaned from a survey that BPP conducted itself. “To clarify,” Crisp told us by email, “89% had a training contract or other legal work; 85% had a training contract. So the tweet was 4% out.”
Which doesn’t seem so bad. So why the previous secrecy?
Now, come on City and the University of Law, tell us precisely how many of your graduates got training contracts too! Or, better still, somebody commission some independent research into employability rates conducted by the same methods across all the law schools.