Editors' Blog

Notts secures City landing

Posted 14/11/2006 by legalweekblogs.com SU

So Nottingham Law School has finally entered the race to run bespoke Legal Practice Courses (LPC) for leading City firms.

On Monday (13 November), it secured its first customer in the shape of US firm Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw’s not insubstantial London office (see story). Nottingham was once at the forefront of the leading City firms' drive to improve the quality of the LPC by drawing up tailor-made courses. But it lost ground due to its reluctance to open an office in London, where the bulk of the leading firms want their students to be based. This left the way open for the College of Law and BPP to make all the running.

Nottingham’s managing director, Phil Knott, says financial constraints meant it could not simply walk into London. “We did not want to respond in a knee-jerk way,” he says. “We also knew that we needed to plan our move into London carefully and that we needed a partner for the long term.”

The new London office is a joint venture with US-based education provider Kaplan, with whom Mayer Brown’s US arm is closely linked. It is known, somewhat prosaically, as Nottingham at Kaplan Law School in London. Actually, this is not the first time Nottingham has launched a joint venture in London. Back in the 1990s it forged a partnership with BPP, before BPP subsequently broke out on its own. Knott insists that Nottingham has learned from the experience.

After all, lightning doesn’t strike twice...does it?