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Starting life as a Polytechnic, changing to a University in the early 1990’s, the Law School sets it apart. It has a reputation for providing an excellent start to a career in the Law and, in particular, its LPC course is well renowned.

Indeed, it has been given top marks by the Quality Assurance Agency and is one of only a number of a select few Law Schools to achieve the highest standard of “Excellent” awarded by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

We are proud to have one of the highest rated courses nationally, having been awarded an “Excellent” rating by The Solicitors Regulation Authority (then the Law Society) under the former grading system, and the highest grades of “Commendable Practice” for all six assessed areas under the new grading system, these being teaching and learning, assessment, student support, learning resources, leadership and management and quality assurance.

We will be providing the “new” LPC as from September 2009. Our commitment to our students is to provide a first class service in a supportive and caring environment.

Much was invested in the Law School, reported to be around £3 million, which is housed separately from the other courses on the Leek Road, Campus. The purpose built facility has as its centre piece a large law library, providing many of the required legal texts, free access to online publications and quiet study areas.

The Accommodation for the Legal Practice Course is located within the Law School building, a purpose-built Law School designed specifically around the needs of LPC students. There are five Practice Offices for the exclusive use of LPC students (where all workshops and small group teaching takes place) and which are designed to simulate solicitors’ offices. The Practice Offices are used for all small-group workshops and are available for private study for the LPC students at any time during the library opening hours except when the rooms is being used for teaching purposes. In each practice office there are full data projector facilities, which are used in all workshop sessions as well as six state-of-the-art PCs personal computers served by a laser printer for the exclusive use of students assigned to that office.

The Microsoft Office suite of programmes is available on the Practice Office computers along with “Laserforms”. Access to the internet, email facilities, and a comprehensive range of “practitioner” CD Roms including the Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents is available from all the computers.

The Courtrooms, one of which is a genuine copy of a local courtroom, provide a realistic environment in which you can develop your advocacy and presentational skills.

Course lectures normally take place in the Ashley Building, adjacent to the Law School. These lecture theatres seat up to 200 students each and are equipped with the latest audio visual and computer technology. Many of the lectures for the elective subjects take place in Courtroom 2, a smaller, tiered lecture room, on the first floor of the Law School building.

All lecture theatres utilised for the course are also fully equipped with data projector facilities and hearing loop systems. Frequent use is made of Starboard and also of the Visualisers both of which are available in all the Practice Offices. These are excellent teaching tools and are utilised by all teaching staff in many workshops where appropriate. One of the main uses is to project, for example, items of work completed by students during workshops or other material onto the screens provided in the practice offices.

We have designed our course to provide as much flexibility as possible as we appreciate that many students need to combine study with work and family lives. We have therefore developed various modes of full-time and part-time study. In a nutshell, the full time course can be studied over two full days a week, one day and 2 evenings a week, or four days, The part-time course can be studied on one day a week or two evenings a week over two years.

As with all other providers, the Staffordshire LPC focuses on the three compulsory subjects; business law and practice, property law and practice and litigation & advocacy. With regard to electives, Staffordshire offers litigation, commercial law, commercial property, corporate finance, employment, family, immigration, personal injury, private client and advanced criminal litigation.

The course begins with a foundation course that introduces the various legal skills and core areas. From there, you're straight in at the deep end! All of our reports from past students of the Staffordshire LPC said the teaching in particular was exceptional on the course. A thumbs up from us then!

The Law School is situated at the Stoke-on-Trent campus, within walking distance of the small town of Stoke and the train station, with a main line running to Derby one way and Manchester the other. The area around the University is largely made up of small terraced housing which is ideal for cheap student accommodation.

There are small convenience shops along Leek Road, next to the University, as well as a number of decent sized pubs. Further into Stoke itself, and also within walking distance of the University, are larger pubs and shops, selling everything from clothes to food.

Stoke is a small one way system in terms of driving and certainly cannot be described as a bustling metropolis. The larger, more useful area is Hanley. This is the largest town close by, and includes many more name pubs, such as Wetherspoons, and nightclubs, along with a modern indoor shopping centre, known as the Potteries.

There is also a theatre staging popular productions, sometimes before they reach the West End. Further out of Town, within 10 minutes drive, is Festival Park. This out of town facility houses, amongst other things, large supermarkets, a cinema, a pool hall, bowling alley, indoor water park and a dry ski slope.

Course fees for stages 1 and 2 of the Staffordshire LPC are £8,300 for the full-time option and the same for the part-time option, but this is payable over 2 years. This cost is not inclusive of the compulsory fee to the Law Society prior to commencing the LPC.

For those students who wish to use the student accommodation at the university, prices will vary depending on what level of accommodation you choose. The University has an on campus accommodation for undergraduate students and also provides off campus accommodation for post graduate students.

The University accommodation starts from about £60 per week, providing a very competitive price compared with other universities.

For university supplied events, there are many of them. The on-campus students union provides entertainment every night ranging from curry club, to Gobble on a Wednesday night and even super Friday which is a dress up night.

The law society also provides for specialist events such as guest speakers, and every year provides trips to Alton towers and has its annual trip to London to visit the courts. Many other events include debating and mooting which are excellent if you wish to improve upon these necessary areas of achieving a law degree.

For those students who also like to enjoy a bit of exercise, the on campus sports facilities offers many activities ranging from football to their own specialised gym.

The careers support from the LPC designated careers tutor, enhanced by the excellent Student/Practitioner Mentoring Scheme, is of the highest standard and has been praised by students and the SRA assessors for many years. We recognise the crucial importance of this support.

Throughout the year we offer a programme of lectures and workshops, including titles such as “Creative Job-hunting” and “Enhancing your CV”. Our careers tutor also provides interactive workshops as well as drop in sessions so that you can discuss your interview technique, CVs, approach to job hunting, practise interviews and many others aspects of careers support. We also arrange for representatives from legal firms to deliver lectures on CV drafting and covering letters.

Our mentoring system remains one of our most important and successful initiatives whereby students are attached to a practitioner for the duration of their time on the LPC, and meet with their mentors regularly throughout the year.

We pay for all our students to become members of the local Junior Lawyers Division who arrange numerous social activities as well as careers advice and opportunities.

We also encourage out students to develop their confidence and ability in key legal skills by entering for national interviewing and Negotiating competitions within the University and nationally, in which we frequently achieve great success.

Finally, our LLM in Legal Practice has been designed to meet the needs of our LPC students, while studying the LPC with us you acquire 120 of the 180 credits required to secure this masters qualification.