The course is offered at institutions across the country and takes one year (full time) or two years (part-time).

Currently, LPC courses are broken down into five broad areas: core, compulsory, pervasive, skills and elective. Core covers ethics, basic skills, taxation, the European ‘context' and probate/administration of estates. Compulsory consists of litigation and advocacy, business law and practice, and property law and practice.

Pervasive areas are those that should be considered in the context of the other areas of the course. They comprise professional conduct and client care, European Union law, revenue law, accounts and the Human Rights Act. Skills includes practical legal research, writing and drafting, interviewing and advising, and advocacy. Elective requires that three subjects are studied from a range of corporate and private client topics.

A new Legal Practice Course has been announced by the Solicitors' Regulation Authority (SRA). It will be available from September 2009, and mandatory from September 2011 as part of their new education and training framework. The changes aim to give flexibility to students and a real opportunity for all firms to influence the shape of LPC courses.

The current LPC is delivered full-time in a single block over one academic year and part-time over two academic years. Students must study three compulsory subjects (stage one) and three elective subjects (stage two) from a range offered by each provider. The new structure allows students flexibility over when the elective subjects can be completed. They will be able to undertake the vocational electives during or after some work experience in the training contract or work-based learning (WBL) and pursue practice-specific electives.

Providers will also get considerable freedom to design courses for particular students and areas of legal practice. We expect this to lead to some providers offering several different tailored forms of the LPC. Practitioners can influence the legal topics, the emphasis given to different compulsory modules, the context for the course and the stage two electives offered by a provider.

2008 Top marks for London law schools Following on from BPP Law School both The City Law School’s and Nottingham Law at Kaplan Law School's Legal Practice Course (LPC) won top marks across the board from the Law Society. The Society awarded both LPCs its highest 'commendable' grade on all six assessment areas: teaching, learning and the curriculum; assessment; students and their support; learning resources; leadership and management; and quality assurance and enhancement.

Law Society assessments are made after a three-day visit to the provider by Law Society assessors; they include details of the provider's current offerings, its strengths and weaknesses, and a list of recommendations made by the Law Society to the provider and the current grade or rating assigned to the provider by the assessors. These reports provide you with an impartial assessment of each law school and are a good start to your research into courses.

Applications for full-time courses are made online: www.lawcabs.ac.uk Application forms (for full-time courses) are available from September until 1 December in the year prior to you requiring a place with offers announced in the following February. For example, to start the course in September 2009 you must make your application by December 2008 (first round). Applications for places on part-time Legal Practice Courses must be made direct to the providing Institutions and are subject to alternative deadlines.

Interested in qualfying in the UK? To find out which course you need to take and when visit our online guide to qualifying as a lawyer in the UK