Departments

Careers

The College of Law has the largest and best-resourced careers service in legal education, dedicated to helping students secure a training contract or pupillage.  Each College centre has at least two Careers Consultants and one Careers Assistant. Careers Consultants provide careers guidance and advice, and may also draw on previous backgrounds that range from solicitors in legal practice to graduate and legal recruitment.  Careers Assistants manage the Consultants' diaries, help students locate vacancies, and use the resources in the careers library and on the internet.

Finance

The Finance department provides a broad range of services to the College, its two subsidiaries, and to staff.  Business advice includes the preparation and review of costings for new products, financial analysis, purchasing projects, monthly results, quarterly forecasts and an annual budget. Financial data is also provided for decision-making purposes.  Services provided for staff include the operation of employee, temporary staff and visiting staff payrolls, administration of the College pension schemes and reimbursement of expenses. The department also maintains the Financial Regulations with which all staff must comply.  The Finance department is responsible for all areas of statutory financial reporting. It also ensures that customer invoices are issued and  supplier invoices paid, and that income is collected and financial assets protected.

Human Resources

Centrally located in Guildford, the Human Resources (HR) team is responsible for all aspects of staff management at the College. They deliver a range of services including advice to managers and staff, recruitment, performance management, training and development, the development and implementation of College policies and procedures, as well as staff benefits.  The team is firmly integrated across all sites to ensure the College has the right resources to meet the demands of the business.

IT

The College’s IT department consists of four teams - Networks, Desktop Support, Software Development and Business Systems.  All are based in Guildford, although the Desktop Support team has staff in all centres.  The department manages and supports over 1,500 PCs, laptops and servers, telephony systems and all application support for third party and bespoke software for approximately 800 staff and more than 5,000 students.

Knowledge Services

Knowledge Services is responsible College-wide for managing information and knowledge assets in support of the College’s activities.  This involves providing infrastructure support (systems and processes), setting standards and policies, and quality assurance.  KS activities include; information architecture and taxonomies, ELITE virtual learning environment, intranet, copyright, library materials acquisitions and budgets, and CPD for the College’s information professionals.  In addition KS supports centres in their provision of library services.

Pro Bono teams

The College’s Law in Action programme gives students a chance to prepare for their legal career by getting hands-on legal experience.  A key element of this programme is pro bono, where students provide free legal advice to the local community.   Pro bono comprises Streetlaw, Legal Advice Centres, Placements and the Tribunal Representation Service.   Each centre has a pro bono team to manage the pro bono activity there.

Professional Development Division

The College of Law’s Professional Development Division is the leading provider of post-qualification legal training solutions for qualified lawyers and trainees. Through face-to-face courses, distance learning and multimedia DVD-based training, it delivers high-quality training allowing clients to meet required mandatory and additional training needs to gain knowledge and skills to further their legal career and professional development.  In the last five years alone, the division has trained over 50,000 lawyers from within the UK and overseas; from the top 100 law firms through to high street practitioners.  The team includes academics, sales, marketing and client services professionals and an experienced television production crew.

Marketing

The Marketing department provides research, communication and account management services to meet programme target needs. The department consists of:

  • The Admissions team - follows external customers (students) throughout the application to enrolment cycle.
  • The Print and Design team - produces and delivers all student and non-student materials, implementing best practice in terms of design and corporate guidelines.
  • The Research and Customer Information team - delivers student feedback information, account management information for the top 100 customers, and a variety of market research and analysis.
  • The Marketing Communications team - develops the College’s brand and marketing messages, ensuring an ongoing synergy and consistency, and supporting the College’s business strategy; delivers promotional material in terms of web, brochures, advertising, direct mail and events.

Multimedia Unit

The Multimedia Unit is responsible for delivering the multimedia requirements of the College’s programmes (including Professional Development, Legal Network Television, LPC, GDL and Open University) and advising the Programme Directors on  developments in e-learning and technological developments in multimedia production. The unit is comprised of multimedia professionals who specialise in the production and development of multimedia products such as DVD, streaming media, interactive and e-learning.

Open University

The College of Law collaborates with the Open University (OU) to produce a Qualifying Law Degree (LLB), and this department is responsible for managing the College’s side of the collaboration.The College supplies all the materials (both paper and electronic) that are needed to run the courses which make up the degree, including assessment materials. The department ensures that all materials are prepared and submitted to the OU in accordance with their requirements and deadlines. The College also provides a number of support services (including academic support) to the OU Law Programme, its tutors and students, and the department ensures that these services are provided appropriately.

Administration Services

Each centre operates its own programme and site support teams, aimed at providing a high quality service to both internal and external customers.  These teams perform a wide variety of roles including;  providing the main point of customer contact for students, administering all students through their time at the College, organising and running the assessments, examinations and results service, providing classroom and IT set up and support, and managing buildings and facilities.