City Law School awarded top marks

The City Law School's Legal Practice Course (LPC) has won top marks following its recent Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) assessment.

The course won the SRAs highest 'commendable' grade on all six assessment areas: teaching, learning and the curriculum; assessment; students and their support; learning resources; leadership and management; and quality assurance and enhancement.

LPC course director at City Law School Melissa Hardee, a former partner at CMS Cameron McKenna, was praised in the report as a strong and committed course director.

Hardee singled out the courses teaching staff and sense of intimacy for praise, saying: Other tutors on the course are former City lawyers too, and we have a breadth and depth of experience between us.

Its a small course and its a nice environment and atmosphere - its very personal. People come here because they dont want to be a nameless face.

The SRA took responsibility for monitoring legal education when it was created to split regulation of the profession away from the Law Society in 2006.

It carries out LPC inspections on a three-year cycle, with the pastoral visit that The City Law School has just completed the second stage of a two-stage inspection process, followed by a third, rest year for LPC providers.

Assessors were impressed with the progress made by the LPC team even though the full grading visit only took place in March 2007 - more recently than the year normally allowed by the SRA between the two stages.

As reported on Lawyer2B.com (16 January 2008), Nottingham at Kaplan Law School's LPC also recently scooped top marks from the SRA.