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BPP has competitive advantage in offering a holistic business law education, I feel
A lot of my education latterly has been at Masters level in business and in the law.
We can argue til the cows come home about the relative merits of the Graduate Diploma in Law in offering a necessary and sufficient education in law for non-law graduates like me. This will, I have no doubt, rumble on in the next few years, against a complex backdrop of private vs public education, tuition fees, the Legal Education and Training Review, whether we need a ‘law curriculum’ and if so what should be in it.
We can also argue relentlessly about the Legal Practice Course. I personally feel that it strikes a right balance in its core subjects, civil and criminal litigation, business law and practice, and property law and practice. We also receive an education in accounts and professional conduct (in comparison to the undergraduate assessment requirements of the General Medical Council, to my knowledge), practical legal research, advocacy, interviewing and assessing.
Latterly, however, I did an excellent Masters course at the College of Law, which I’m well known to be fond of. I thought that the way in which their programme is delivered through distance learning is extremely well organised, and gave me a brilliant education in practical training as well as academic perspectives of specialised domains of international commercial law (such as equity finance, share acquisitions or intellectual property).
I am currently studying at BPP Law School, having trained thus far virtually completely at Cambridge (apart from 30 months at the College of Law). I would say that the pastoral care which I have received is second-to-none. For example, I unexpectedly went into a six week coma (due to acute meningitis) during my GDL. Fiona (the Learning Support Officer) and my late father, while I was on a life support machine, communicated endlessly – so I was told by my father – to ensure I could stay on the course. I did complete this course in September 2008, even ‘upgrading’ to a LLB(Hons). I have some friends from the weekends when I attended for classes, with my father. I was in a wheelchair at the time, and Michelle and Gill (from BPP at Waterloo reception and the common room at Holborn respectively) offer reminisce about this period in my life with me.
That however is not where I think the source of the competitive advantage of BPP is. I think, fundamentally, it would be very hard for the College of Law to build up a formidable reputation in finance, accountancy, tax, business and marketing overnight. These happily co-exist in the BPP Business Schools, with BPP achieving every year some of the best CIMA professional accountancy exam results in the country. I cannot even begin to explain how the MBA which I completed earlier this year for a two-week overlap with my LPC has fundamentally improved my understanding of management accounting, markets and marketing, organisations and leadership, international marketing, strategy and operations management, advanced strategy implementation, and innovation. I have the opportunity to pass this on with new and old friends of mine at the BPP Legal Awareness Society, a society based in Holborn, but which is open and inclusive for all BPP students of all disciplines.
I look forward to seeing BPP excel in a very harsh international competitive climate. I feel BPP is second-to-none in terms of offering a holistic business law education, though people who know me will know I am also extremely loyal to Cambridge and the College of Law where I also trained.
BPP Careers Fair – Thursday 29 March 2012
Thank you to the BPP Careers Team for organising the BPP Annual Law Careers Fair 2012 this Thursday 29 March 2012. It was great to meet Saira Iqbal for the first time, and Eric Migliaccio whom I know well from Holborn.
All students of BPP were invited. We met up in the lower ground floor of the Waterloo campus of BPP Law School between 3 pm and 7 pm.
Legal training providers/City firms attending the event included Addleshaw Goddard, Boodle Hatfield, Charles Russell, Clyde & Co., CMS Cameron McKenna, Dundas and Wilson, Eversheds, Fox Williams, Government Legal Service, Jones Day, Kennedy, Macfarlanes, Orling, Herrington & Sutcliffe, Osborne Clarke, Reed Smith, Sidney Austin, Squire, Sanders and Hammonds, Stephenson Harwood, and Withers.
I went along there on completion of my second SGS on professional conduct and regulation at BPP Law School, Holborn. We had been studying financial promotions and mainstream/incidental activities as a solicitor (as indicated by the FMSA and SRA conduct rules).
I must say that I had a really enjoyable time. In fact, soon afterwards, I came to the decision that I would not apply for a training contract until after I had completed (and passed) the Legal Practice Course. I am not in an overwhelming hurry to do the training contract, as I am 37, and I have already experienced much in my life.
That’s what made my afternoon all the more enjoyable. I happened to speak to Alex, Emma, Izzy, Jonathan, Lorraine, Simon, Sarah amongst a few others (whose names I should have jotted down to be honest) at Addleshaw Goddard, Boodle Hatfield, CMS Cameron McKenna, DMH Stallard, Government Legal Service, Eversheds, Macfarlanes, and Stephenson Harwood. Having done numerous unsuccessful applications for training contract and vacation placements in the past, I must admit I had become rather jaded about the whole experience. It was therefore really refreshing for me to actually that these representatives of legal entities were all very nice people, all personable, extremely knowledgeable about the firms they worked for, and the legal sector in general.
This of course should be no surprise, but they do include one or two firms which have rejected my previous applications (I’ve never been interviewed by any of them). In some cases, it was really nice to meet the person behind the Twitter account, although I did accidentally find myself screening myself the law firms by an innocent question on their approach to social media. Of course, it was brilliant to meet @legaltrainee – Eversheds have been remarkably successful in treating recruitment as a two-way dialogue, where both parties can find out more about each other’s identity and culture in a mutually beneficial way; they also offer a number of excellent opportunities including the combined study training contract programme, for example. Likewise, it was lovely to meet the team behind @DMHSRecruitment, who IRL were as positive about the work of their firm as they are on Twitter daily; they also confirmed that the biggest gripe of a legal recruiter, aside from application forms with poor spelling and grammar, was an inability by the candidate to answer the question asked. Finally, I met members of our own society there, the BPP Legal Awareness Society (the official BPP students website, blog, twitter, Facebook) and members of the excellent BPP Commercial Awareness Society there too.
Legal entities either fielded graduate recruitment advisors, managers or administrators, and/or current trainees (including mostly BPP graduates). I had the pleasure of discussing the legal doctrine of proportionality, innovation, the relative importance of corporate social responsibility, and expansion of legal services into Eastern Europe with the Government Legal Service, Eversheds, Addleshaw Goddard and CMS Cameron McKenna, with current trainees respectively. For some firms, applying would be awkward in a sense that I don’t wish to fall out if I ultimately have rejection (it’s a highly competitive market out there), but something I’ve learned that the whole process is not personal in the sense until it comes to interview. I personally liked all the people I met on Thursday.
Without naming names, I would like to thank the legal entities for a fresh supply of pens, praline chocolates, a frisbee, a memory stick, hemp bags, company literature and highlighter pens. It’s the thought that counts, but actually all are very useful to me! What I especially found very reassuring was how the law firms have such a high regard for BPP – and the feeling is entirely mutual, I assure them…
Thank you for all giving up your time to attend, and, despite it being a hot day, I hope that the legal entities enjoyed meeting the current students of BPP.
Is the modern book dead?
Paradoxically, I love using my #ipad2 in BPP Law School library, Holborn.
I use my #ipad2 during my LPC, and I latterly used to use it in my MBA. The future of knowledge changing and sharing is changing. Edmund Hewson recently discussed the presentation of media for students like me on the BPP blog:
I chair our university’s publishing company. I worry as much as any manufacturer about the cost of print (a ‘non-strategic cost’), which includes holding stock, returns policies, stock write-offs, the ecological impact of paper, carbon footprints (or whatever we print people photocopy when they sit on the copier), recycling, forest stewardship, fire, glue, chiropractic or osteopathic bills (as students carry weighty tomes around on their backs) and ‘just-in-time’ production.
In fact, our company has digitised its workflow to create a seamless link between print and the type of interactive content we have been providing for some time. All our books can be bought as eBooks. With eBooks, students can create links to other digital content. They can access their entire library from anywhere near a wireless network connection. A shared eBook library can encourage collaborative learning: students can share their mark-ups and create, together, a modern palimpsest. (see Wikipedia’s definition of palimpsest, in case you don’t know what this means.)Amazon announced volume sales of ebooks exceeded paperbacks and hardbacks combined…though I suspect this referred to fiction not academic titles.
Moreover, I work for a university that is committed to:
- blended learning, with a full use of digital media
- supplying ebooks
- fully using for learning what technology has to offer.
William Rankin, Director of Educational Innovation and Associate Professor of English, Abilene Christian University presents at the LWF Festival of Learning & Technology discussing the campus wide deployment of iPads and mobile devices within the university. London, January 10th 2011. What are we to do with the modern book? Is this a technology which has outlived his shelf life? What will ‘disruptive technologies’ like ebook do for modern education.
Rankin argues that ‘digitising a text is not the same as producing a digital book’. Anyone who has ever used the Morris app for the #ipad2will definitely know that. Today, apparently, Apple is to announce a platform that might ‘destroy’ book publishing. It’s very interesting to see some preliminary thoughts on this:
Technology-in-education expert Dr. William Rankin also believes digital books will expand with tools that will enable social interactions among textbook users. Rankin, who serves as Director of Educational Innovation of Abilene Christian University and has extensively researched the use of mobile devices in the classroom, was one of three authors of a white paper on the effects of digital convergence on learning titled “Code/X,” published in 2009.
“What we really believe is important is the role of social networking in a converged learning environment,” Rankin told Ars. “We’re already seeing that in Inkling’s platform, and Kno‘s journaling feature. Future digital texts should allow students to layer all kind of other data, such as pictures, and notes, and then share that with the class or, ideally, anyone.”
Exactly how what Apple announces on Thursday will impact digital publishing isn’t certain, however.
“Think about how meaningful simply authoring and publishing to an iPad will be for K-12,” MacInnis said. “However, it might not be great for molecular biology.”
MacInnis sees Apple as possibly up-ending the traditional print publishing model for the low-end, where basic information has for many years remained locked behind high textbook prices. Apple can “kick up dust with the education market,” which could then create visibility for platforms like Inkling. This could then serve as a sort of professional Logic-type tool for interactive textbook creation complement to Apple’s “GarageBand for e-books.”
I am a huge fan of e-books, but I like the physical feel of books. It’s really exciting going to BPP Law School library where you don’t have to carry huge volumes of books, and you can just go on a pleasurable learning journey on a ‘bppstudents’ broadband connection. I think the future for law students, writing their own professional material in a spirit of collaboration, is also a good way, and very sociable in fact.
