BPP Law School

With branches across the country and new locations opening up in Bristol and Birmingham in 2010, BPP is going from strength to strength in spite of the recent doom and gloom in the legal profession. The past year has been a time of considerable change for the company due to investment by US education provider Apollo. BPP hopes that this will have a positive impact on the student experience. For example, BPP aims to learn from some of Apollo’s US-based education providers (eg the University of Phoenix), not least with regard to back office functions. Apollo’s investment has given BPP access to a wealth of new ideas for its online teaching resources, which will undoubtedly supplement its already established remote-teaching programme. What won’t change is the businesslike environment that is characteristic of all BPP’s locations. Students describe these as “slick, shiny and crammed full of hi-tech kit,” if “a tad soulless.” Unfortunately this kind of set-up comes at a premium and BPP is the most expensive of the LPC providers.

BPP has done well to establish itself as one of the leaders among those providers offering firm-specific LPCs, and an increasing number of firms require their future trainees to go there. These include Macfarlanes, Simmons & Simmons, Freshfields, Norton Rose, Slaughter and May, Herbert Smith and Lovells. As this list suggests, the emphasis is very much on commercial and City practice, and it is rare to come across a student at BPP in London who yearns for a career in public legal services or at a high-street firm. The student body at each of the regional branches is noticeably more diverse when it comes to career aspirations.

The LPC3 has introduced several changes to the way the course is taught. Students heading for certain firms will now take an accelerated seven-month long course, which will run from August to February and from March to September to fit in with their firms’ March and September training contract start dates. The remaining full-time students will continue to take the course over a full academic year but will be able to opt to timetable classes on two, three or four days a week. Full-time BPP students will not be able to divorce Stage 1 from Stage 2 of the LPC3, and so if you start the course you will have to pay for both stages. Part-time students will be able to divorce the two stages if needed. The other key change to note is that the Business Law & Practice element of the compulsories will be even more City-focused than previously. Furthermore, after a successful pilot in 2008/09, it will now be possible to study the LPC at BPP entirely remotely. In such cases, students from across the UK – and perhaps beyond – will join real-time small-group sessions led online by a tutor sat at their desk at BPP. Online learning is also being rolled out to a greater extent, although it will be up to students how much they want to take advantage of it and face-to-face teaching will not be superseded. The buzzwords at BPP are ‘blended learning’.

When it comes to exams, BPP is very much in the minority of providers: it uses closed rather than open-book assessments. Some query whether this accurately reflects practice or is more of a memory test, however it certainly makes students focus on the course from day one.

The careers service is praised by students who attended each of the BPP locations. Said one: “There are weekly e-mails about jobs and regular workshops on interviews and assessment. People are also encouraged to get involved in the pro bono schemes on offer.” Careers staff offer students individual appointments to review their CVs and prepare them for the application process with mock interviews. For those who haven’t had enough by the end of the course, BPP has run an LLM programme since 2008. The programme can be taken either full-time over the summer or part-time over a longer period.

BPP Law School, Birmingham

Open from 2010 

BPP Law School, Bristol

Open from 2010 

BPP Law School, Leeds

Numbers of places: 454 full-time equivalents 

Past students were full of praise for the facilities at BPP Leeds. One said: “It is a lovely size and the facilities were a lot better and newer than at my university.” This branch is ideally located five minutes’ walk from the train station, making it accessible to students who need to commute in from a distance. The teaching is felt to be strong, with comments from recent graduates suggesting that “tutors are young and enthusiastic, and generally they haven’t been out of practice that long, so they can give you a good idea of what working as a solicitor is going to be like.” BPP’s Leeds centre runs many pro bono activities and boasts the North’s only IP Centre of Excellence, through which students can help local businesses and individuals protect their intellectual property rights. While there is “a good mix of electives for different types of practice,” students are under no illusion that “other local providers are aimed more at general practice and smaller types of firms.”  

BPP Law School, London

Number of places: Holborn full-time 1,588, part-time 302; Waterloo full-time 265, part-time 57

BPP is based in two locations in London, and most LPC students will study at the Holborn headquarters, although late applicants are often placed at the Waterloo branch. The facilities are impressive and visitors could be forgiven for thinking that they had walked into the offices of a City firm rather than an education provider. Students rather like studying in BPP’s swanky environment, not least because they can see what their money is buying. This must be reassuring because, while all BPP's branches are expensive, the London fees trump them all. This led a few of our sources to suggest some of BPP’s practices are a bit tight; for example: “Free printing runs out pretty quickly and it is 5p a sheet afterwards which I got bit pissed off about.”   

The teaching is praised by students who tell us: “The tutors are really keen and they want you to do well, not just alright,” although the course materials are often found to be a touch uninspiring. In the view of one past student, “a lot of it is really dry so it’s amazing that the teachers can stay enthusiastic.” Another highlighted “the systematic nature if the course, which felt too much like a conveyor belt at the time.” There is also no doubting the type of student BPP London attracts and, for some people, “at times it can seem quite overbearingly corporate” and “there are loads of very driven and competitive City types… to the exclusion of others.” Whatever their career goals, students can get involved with a host of pro bono opportunities including an environmental law clinic and projects enabling students with foreign language skills to provide legal translation services.

BPP Law School, Manchester

Number of places: 378 full-time, 118 part-time 

The past year has not been kind to BPP’s Manchester operation and it was forced to make staff redundancies. A dip in student applications is no doubt the result of more than one factor, namely the opening of the College of Law (COL) in the city and the economic downturn. Interestingly, it seems that Manchester’s other provider (Manchester Metropolitan University) is faring somewhat better than expected in the face of added competition, which is perhaps illustrative of the fact that the ‘professional providers’ often attract different students to the universities. 

The focus of the course is very much on preparing students to work in sizeable commercial firms, even so the range of students is broader here in Manchester than elsewhere and past students report that “a lot of people were going to smaller regionals as well as bigger firms.” The recent dip in applications is certainly nothing to do with either the teaching or the facilities, both of which are deemed excellent. In all likelihood, BPP’s higher price is the key deciding factor for Manchester-bound LPCers. At least some feel they are getting value for their money: “Other providers feel more like schools or colleges, but BPP is very nicely done up and has the feel of an office, which is great.” And as one student pointed out, “they push you quite hard to get the best grade that you’re capable of, but in a really supportive way.”