So another cohort at @BPPLawSchool has just started, I think doing the “accelerated LPC”. LPC means “Legal Practice Course”.

This is where law students cover all the material of the standard LPC at a faster rate, but students have to prove the same level of competence in the final assessment.

The “BLP” module is one of the core practice areas of the Legal Practice Course.  Like litigation (civil and criminal) and property it is pivotal for completion of ‘Stage 1′ of the LPC.

Having witnesses various diets of this course, and chatting with students who’ve done the final assessment, you can see that BLP does require more work than litigation and property. It has substantially more small group sessions (SGSs).

It’s likely that all of the ‘zones’ will be covered somehow. The 1 hour multiple-choice paper is not to be dismissed, as the marks can be very helpful in determining whether someone achieves 50%, 60% or 70% or above. Looking at informal feedback of this assessment over the last year, I think it’s more likely the questions involve the following:

• procedure plan (this can be in the region of 20-30 marks; might not even be incredibly complicated like a ‘buyback’, but could be allotting shares or appointing a director)
• corporate insolvency (e.g. transactions at an undervalue, wrongful trading)
• corporate taxation (particularly relief for corporate taxation)
• drafting (this is necessary for the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and will be stated clearly as “the drafting question”): it is well worth looking at examiners’ reports to see what the examiners are looking for. Normally, half of the ten marks will go towards spotting typos, spelling errors, badly numbered clauses, missing definitions, etc., and half of the ten marks may be to suggest something in line with your client’s general purpose or instructions.
• business accounts (normally no more than a few marks; possibly involving a template e.g. for accruals, bad debts, prepayments, doubtful debts, etc., which will be given to you anyway)
• conduct (this is a requirement of the Solicitors Regulation Authority to be assessed pervasively in all the core modules; could be something like financial assistance in acquisitions, or FMSA issue – be mindful that there is unlikely to be overlap with the separate examination in professional conduct and professional regulation which is a standalone paper)
• difference between debt and equity finance

Best of luck! At the end of the day, I’m afraid, you have to know everything quite well.

I have consulted a few people – but this is a totally independent blogpost.