Kaplan adds FFW to LPC client list

Field Fisher Waterhouse has reportedly become the latest law firm to strike a deal with Kaplan, the London arm of Nottingham Law School, to provide a bespoke LPC as well as the Graduate Diploma in Law to all of its trainee solicitors. Meanwhile, Midlands firm Mills & Reeve has signed a deal to send its future trainees who want to study the LPC in London to enrol with Kaplan.

The news comes after the school, which is based in London’s trendy Borough Market, announced it had added Penningtons to its LPC roster back in June and secured validation from the Bar Standards Board to run the Bar vocational Course from September 2010.

Kaplan’s LPC client list now boasts nine firms comprising Bates Wells & Braithwaite, Bird & Bird, Field Fisher Waterhouse, Manches, Mayer Brown, Mills & Reeve, Nabarro, Penningtons and Trowers & Hamlins.

Meanwhile, legal education providers across the City have started to jostle for supremacy.  Recently College of Law (CoL) announced surprise plans to launch a new £1.2m Bristol base in 2010 and will be welcoming the first cohort of students to its brand new Manchester branch later this month (September).

Elsewhere BPP Holdings, the owner of CoL’s arch rival BPP Law School, has been taken over by US-based Apollo Global, a joint venture formed in 2007 between Apollo Group and private equity house The Carlyle Group for £305m.

BPP has also extended its regional focus by announcing plans to launch a Bristol centre.

Kaplan declined to comment.