The College of Law Culture
Our heritage
Our brand values
Why we are unique
Our heritage
The College’s roots go back to 1876. We are an educational charity and are incorporated by Royal Charter. With centres in Birmingham, Bristol, Chester, Guildford, London, Manchester and York, the college offers a wide range of courses to those wishing to train as lawyers and those already qualified. We offer the four postgraduate training courses recognised by the Law society and the Bar Council:
- Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL)
- Bar Vocational Course (BVC)
- Legal Practice Course (LPC)
- Professional Skills Course (PSC)
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Our brand values
The College of Law brand is well known throughout the legal profession both in the UK and internationally. The following brand values underpin this reputation and provide an insight into what working life at the College is all about.
- Leadership. The way the College acts as a leader for the entire legal education sector in the UK and beyond. Constantly striving to find new and better ways to train the lawyers of tomorrow, we seek to inspire, motivate and guide our customers. We are pioneers and where we lead, others follow.
- Expertise. The clear statement that the College does nothing else apart from legal training. It is a legal specialist unlike most of the competition. This value lets people know that the College is a central part of the legal profession. It stands proudly alongside other symbolic legal brands. It has the credibility, pedigree and integrity to provide the highest quality education and training to students from anywhere in the world.
- Empowerment. The College is all about empowering its customers to have successful legal careers. It is the essence of what we sell. By virtue of our leadership and our expertise we are best placed to provide our students and our customers with the practical, vocational and professional skills they will need throughout their careers in the legal marketplace of today and tomorrow.
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Why we are unique
The College is committed to ensuring the profession meets the changing needs of society and our Chief Executive, Nigel Savage, actively champions the development of legal education across the board to meet the ongoing needs of law students and practising lawyers. We are proud to be leaders in the field of legal education.
The College is consistently ranked as one of the country’s best law schools and offers an unrivalled learning experience. We constantly strive to offer variety and flexibility and we have more courses in more locations than any other provider.
Recent accolades include:
- winner of the Bar Vocational Trial competition in 2005 for the second year running
- 2005 College student won National Independent Essay Prize (worth more than £8,000)
- 2005 College student won Woolf Scholarship (worth £5,000)
- 2005 College student won the Graham Turnbull Essay Competition
- 2006 College student won the British Academy of Forensic Sciences Legal Prize
- College of Law Chief Executive won a top accolade at The Lawyer Awards 2006 – the Editor’s Award for Outstanding Achievement
- Birmingham Legal Advice Project won a top award from the Law Society’s Young Solicitors Group (YSG) In 2006
- The College became the first private institution to get power to award degrees. All College centres received the Law Society’s ‘commendable practice’ grade, its highest rating in all six assessment areas for the College’s LPC.
- In 2007 the College’s LPC was voted ‘the best’ by two out of three senior lawyers.
- 2007 College student won first place in a national Graduate of the Year competition (worth £7,000)
Other things you probably didn’t know about The College of Law:
- we’re the only genuine national law school - law is our sole focus
- over half the practising lawyers in England and Wales trained at the College
- over 300 firms and organisations have sponsored students on our courses this year (2007/08), including some 255 government departments, corporates and charities
- in addition, we offer students: careers support; diversity programmes; a wide range of workshops; a vacancies database; inside information on firms
- the best commendation is word of mouth, with over 80% of our students saying they would recommend us
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