Within a decade, training for major law firms has switched to exclusive provider deals. Alex Aldridge asks how much further the revolution is set to run

The last few years have seen the College of Law, BPP Law School and, to a lesser extent, Kaplan Law School jostle with each other to secure tie-ups with the top law firms. In the main, firms have been receptive to their advances, with the result being that the vast majority of UK top 20 law firms – and many top 50 firms and US firms with London offices – now have arrangements in place to send their future trainees to study the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) and Legal Practice Course (LPC) exclusively with a certain course provider.

It is a very different picture to the situation 10 years ago when the first law school-law firm tie-up was initiated between eight City firms (known as the 'City consortium') and BPP, Nottingham Law School and the Oxford Institute of Legal Practice. Under the agreement, students with training contracts with the firms involved – Slaughter and May, Clifford Chance (CC), Linklaters, Allen & Overy (A&O), Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Herbert Smith, Lovells and Norton Rose – were taught a revamped, more commercially-focused LPC in groups alongside other future City consortium trainees at whichever of the three law schools was most convenient to them. Outside of the consortium, there were no other agreements between firms and course providers.