In brief: Students to face freeze on LPC places

A three-year restriction on granting additional places on Legal Practice Courses has been imposed by the Law Society, although it has stressed that it is not seeking to limit entry into the profession. Training committee member and society deputy vice-president Michael Mathews said just under 7,000 of the 8,000 LPC places had been taken up. The aim of putting a freeze on granting further places to approved educational institutions, announced at last Thursday's council meeting, was to prevent empty classrooms. He insisted it was not a move "to regulate the number of people coming into the profession". But Professor Nigel Savage, of the College of Law, described the move as "the behaviour of a trade union and not of an informed and responsible regulator".