How to be a law unto yourself

Nicola Howell worked for 10 years in industry, had a child, and then decided on a change of career. Law had always appealed, and as her first degree was not in law but English and classics, she enrolled on the one year graduate diploma in law at De Montfort University, Leicester.

"I've already earned a big salary, had the company car and the credit card – and I have no desire to do it again," she says. "I'd like to do something more worthwhile. In industry, you are measured in terms of quite impersonal targets – what you can produce – and it's not terribly people friendly. I'd really like to work in local practice, with law and children."

Nicola soon found the pressure of combining full-time study with looking after a young child too much. But she was able to transfer to the two year distance learning graduate diploma at De Montfort, run in association with Ilex Tutorial College near Bedford, producing regular written assignments and going in to the university once every three months.

Having covered the academic material equivalent to a law degree, Nicola Howell is now in her first year of the Legal Practice Certificate (LPC), essential for all those wishing to work as solicitors. She is taking a two year open learning course, administered by Ilex Tutorial College and taught by De Montfort, which involves a good deal of home study and one long weekend a month at the university.

"I spend about three days a week on course work while my little boy is at kindergarten," she says. "The lecturers are very good and very approachable, and I think they recognise some of the difficulties of being a distance learner."

Although the LPC is less academically demanding than the diploma, Nicola Howell is finding its more practical challenges can be hard to get to grips with on her own at home. "If you were doing the open learning course while working in a law practice, I think that would be easier because you would have the legal structure there. It can be quite difficult doing it in complete isolation."

Other providers offer part-time LPC courses which require more frequent contact between students and lecturers. The College of Law caters for 50 per cent of the LPC market at five centres in London, Guildford, Birmingham, Chester and York, and has 1,000 part-time students (as well as 3,000 full-timers) who attend a centre two evenings a week over two years.

"Because the LPC is essentially a practical course, it's not possible to do it entirely by distance learning," says Nigel Savage, director of the College of Law. "Our students have lectures and small group sessions, in which they carry out drafting and advocacy exercises, and we try to replicate practice as much as possible in the classroom. In Birmingham, Chester and London, they also get the chance to offer free legal advice, under supervision, to the public."

Many students, like Nicola, are unprepared for the substantial difference in style between a law degree (or graduate diploma) and the LPC which often follows. Professor Andy Boon, head of the school of law at Westminster University, believes law students need better advice, both during and after their first degree. People who loved the academic side of law sometimes have a rude awakening when they move into legal practice, he says.

"It can be quite stressful working in an office as a solicitor, dealing with people every day, especially in our consumer culture where people have high expectations and make demands. Some newly-qualified solicitors find that quite intimidating."

For the more academically-minded, good law departments offer a variety of alternative courses of study, which could in some cases lead to a university teaching post, or to a legal job with a public or international organisation. At Westminster, for instance, in addition to the LPC, there are seven different master's degrees in law on offer (including specialisms such as international law, international commercial law, dispute resolution, crime and human rights), and nearly 30 students taking research degrees.