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Law is not just about compliance for businesses. It's about creating value.
Law is not just about compliance for businesses. It’s about creating value. It’s also about creating ‘competitive advantage’.
This is what I strongly believe should be at the heart of the business strategy. Unsurprisingly, it’s why I feel parts of Society may need lawyers.
A company in the UK will be make offerings to the general public for a product or service. People who have watched the careers of Lord Alan Sugar and Sir Richard Branson saw them progress in ‘business media’ from ultimately a sole trader to the company in English law. Lord Sugar tends to excel at products, Sir Richard Branson tends to excel at services.
The debate in economics is not just about delivering a low cost product. There are two critical aspects to creating value. Firstly, there is inherent worth in the offering you’re producing (this could be ‘eco-friendly’ washing powder, or a legal education which has a strong passion for social justice). Also, it’s creating shared value between the company and the customer.
That’s where the strategy comes in. Businesses need to position themselves ahead of their competitors, and this involves an understanding of their ‘competitive advantage’. A number of factors can act here such as market entry for what you’re producing, and the bargaining power of suppliers and customers, but fundamentally the ‘competitive landscape’ plays a part. Enmeshed in this competitive landscape might be political, social, economic, technological, environmental factors, but above law, law and regulatory factors.
Our student society at BPP has at its roots a balanced discussion of how businesses deliver value and competitive advantage. We also discuss key aspects of compliance with the law (e.g. not hacking to selling a multi-million paper, not accepting bribes to further our business), and we argue that compliance with the law is important. However, to create a successful environment for the clients of business lawyers it’s fundamental to understand value and competitive advantage at the heart of business.
Irrespective of students’ ultimate ‘success’ in finding City training contracts, we feel strongly that an education and unfettered discussion of this, at student level too, is what their high-profile clients want.
BPP Students Association
The BPP Students Association is a thriving community at BPP, including future lawyers, accountants, marketing and business professionals. We are lucky in that the range of our student societies reflects a much wider range of interests.
Across all sites, BPP students can get involved in any capacity they wish. Of course, the courses are demanding, but many attend meetings and events, as well as help to run the societies as extra-curricular activities in positions of responsibility.
Here’s a video of the fun which we had at the recent BPP Students Fair, held at BPP Waterloo (London.)
The BPP Legal Awareness Society (click here for details) is an unique Society, run by current students at BPP, and exists to promote the importance of both complying with and cultivating a culture of competitive advantage from the law and regulation to improve the corporate strategy to clients and their stakeholders, from a client’s perspective. Any current, past, or future student at BPP, across any of the campuses, may attend our meetings. It is one of very many societies:
Cultural
Employability
Political
Ethical
Click here to see what events are happening at your campus of BPP.
BPP student societies podcast: legal aid and access to justice
It was with massive pleasure that, after a morning looking at the corporate strategy of Tesco as part of my MBA, I managed to make it to go to the BPP Law School at Holborn. There, I managed to bump into, by accident, Ray Stewart who has made a massive, beneficial impact on me personally as Learning Support Officer for BPP. His role at our University College is enormous, and it never fails to amaze me how much he gets done on behalf of all of us.
Our team of six podcasters (aside from me) was meticulously prepared, and knew their subjects backwards. We appeared to enjoy recording them, so much so we’ll be doing some more shortly, we hope. The podcasters are all students at BPP, and happen to be doing either the Graduate Diploma in Law or the Legal Practice Course prior to their training contracts.
In this final podcast, for the time-being, we discuss whether the legal aid cuts are a big deal or not, but in a wide-ranging discussion we go onto discuss whether it’s possible to be a self-litigant these days and what the point of a solicitor is. We hope you enjoy listening to the podcast as much as we enjoyed making them.
The podcasts are a joint initiative between the BPP student societies, the BPP Commercial Awareness Society and the Legal Awareness Society. The views expressed in this podcast are personal views of the student contributors, and cannot be taken to be legal advice of any description. They do not represent any official views of BPP.
Have a nice weekend. Please follow @legalaware on Twitter, the official Twitter thread of the Legal Awareness Society, one of the student societies at BPP. You can find details about the Legal Awareness Society and the Commercial Awareness Society on the official BPP students website here.
A new podcasting initiative from BPP Legal Awareness and Commercial Awareness Student Societies
Harry Walker, President of the Commercial Awareness Society at BPP, and I have decided to launch immediately a series of podcasts.
These podcasts will be recorded by me using mobile apparatus (a MacBook Air and Yeti microphone).
The podcasts will cover issues interesting to members of our BPP student societies which are complementary. The BPP Legal Awareness Society promotes the importance of law to business, and the BPP Commercial Awareness Society promotes the importance of business to law.
The podcasts will therefore be considering topical issues of importance to our members, such as the Legal Services Act, anti-bribery legislation and ringfencing in financial regulation.
The podcasts are wholly a project of the aforementioned student societies, and BPP has no involvement. Any views or opinions in the podcasts are personal to the authors, and will be the responsibility of the BPP Legal Awareness Society and the BPP Commercial Awareness Society.
This podcast is a great way to demonstrate on training contract or vacation placement application forms that you have an ability to work in teams and that you are developing commercial awareness, which is a very important competence for trainee corporate lawyers.
Harry and I are recruiting for a team of BPP students without delay, with a view to an immediate start in recruitment for the podcast and its recording. Selection will be done on a first-come basis. You don’t have to be at BPP to participate, but priority will be given to members of BPP.
No prior experience or in-depth knowledge of law/business is necessary.
To express an interest, please email as soon as possible to correspondence@lasmeetings.org putting ‘podcasts’ in the subject line.
An open message to BPP students to join the BPP Legal Awareness Society, launching 4 April 2011
If you’re hoping to go into business, or if you are a trainee lawyer wishing to meet and think about the law and business in real life, this Society will be for you! It also should provide you with further evidence for your future employers that you have a strong awareness of how the legal and commercial worlds interact.
What?
The “BPP Legal Awareness Society” (LAS) is a brand-new informal group for all students wishing to learn about commercial law topics. The Society is run entirely by students. You don’t need to know anything about the law already to benefit from our discussions!
The LAS will especially be relevant to LPC law students with an interest in commercial law, GDL law students wishing to demonstrate commercial awareness for training contract applications, and business Masters students wishing to explore a wide range of commercial law issues such as corporate finance.
The LAS officially launches on 4th April 2011, although you can join now.
Who can join?
Any member of BPP can join, including BPP students of business, law, finance and accounting.
How to join
It takes seconds to join through the VLE. Here are the steps which take a few seconds:
- Log in to BPP VLE Blackboard.
- Go to the Community tab.
- In the furthest right tab, press ‘Browse Organisation Catalogue’.
- Search the catalogue for our society whose name contains ‘Legal Awareness Society’.
- Join.
What do I get from joining through the VLE?
Your Community tab for the LAS will now show announcements, giving complete details of our meetings.
We will also be uploading presentations from our meetings.
There’ll also be a timetable for our meetings which we’re in the process of finalizing.
Finally, we will be producing regular newsletters. You’ll be sent these newsletters through e-mail.
When?
Our physical meetings will be every fortnight at BPP Business School, very close to the Gherkin, at 2 St Mary Axe.
The location is shown on this map : http://bit.ly/hPJoWn
The Society has a website available all the time http://legal-aware.org which currently contains free videos and information pages on arbitration, competition, corporate social responsibility, debt finance, e-commerce, intellectual property, IPOs and right issues, joint ventures and share acquisitions.
We hope to include employment and pensions as well as tax soon.
You can follow the Society on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Legal-Aware/132118340190157
as well as Twitter
*** However, it’s essential to join through the VLE. ***
How can I get involved?
We would particularly like to hear from you if you should wish to be involved in the running of our Society, and to become an official part of our team. We aim the emphasis of our society to be friendly but professional.
Who to contact?
If you e-mail our Society (bpplas@gmail.com), you will get a reply from one of our team members virtually immediately.
We should be especially happy to answer any inquiries about what we’ll be doing or how you can get involved, as well as to receive any suggestions about topics we should cover.
A final note
You should note that BPP also has a very active ‘Commercial Awareness Society’, which is also available from the organisation catalogue.
Our aims are very similar, but the groups are intended primarily for students of different professional backgrounds.
