Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC)

Paul Stevenson
“For me the main attraction of coming to The City Law School is that it is the first law school to ever bring barristers into the world, so if you’re considering a career as a barrister, following in the footsteps of Gandhi, Blair and Thatcher is quite an attraction. ”
Paul Stevenson

Tenant
Tanfield Chambers
BVC (now BPTC) Alumni


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    • Content   Teaching   Assessment   Opportunities   Futures 

    Overview

    Our well-established and world renowned barrister training has been designed to meet every demand of the modern Bar. By ensuring that you are fully prepared for professional life, our course provides you with transferable skills which can be applied in a variety of contexts.


    We are extremely proud of our reputation, the strength of our links with the Bar, the quality of our training, the expert support we provide to help students secure pupillages and the work done by our Pro Bono Advice unit. On successful completion of the course, you will receive the City University London Postgraduate Diploma in Professional Legal Skills which will enable you to be called to the Bar and take your first steps into practice successfully.

      

    The course can be studied full-time over one year or part-time over two years. Our part-time BPTC embodies exactly the same ethos as the full-time course using the same teaching methods and materials and is taught by the same staff as the full-time course.

     

    Why the City BPTC?

    Our world renowned, skills-focused BPTC will ensure you:

    • Meet the demands of practice at the Bar
    • Acquire the knowledge and skills you’ll need day to day in practice
    • Develop high standards of client service and professional delivery
    • Gain solid life-long learning patterns and effective working habits
    • Can make an immediate contribution to your Chambers by being ready for practise

        
    Content 

    The BPTC consists of a number of core and option subjects, each developed to deliver the relevant legal skills/knowledge that all young barristers need or the detailed knowledge required for your chosen specialist areas/subjects.


    Core subjects:
    • Case Preparation and Analysis
    • Civil Advocacy
    • Criminal Advocacy
    • Criminal Litigation and Sentencing
    • Drafting Skills
    • Evidence
    • Conference Skills
    • Legal Research, Electronic and Paper Based
    • Opinion Writing Skills
    • Professional Ethics
    • Resolution of Disputes Out of Court


    Other important areas covered within the context of the main subjects:

    • Costs
    • Human Rights
    • Remedies
    • Risk Analysis


    Option subjects:

    • Advanced Civil Advocacy
    • Advanced Civil – Professional Negligence
    • Advanced Crime
    • Commercial Law
    • Company Law
    • Domestic Violence
    • Employment Law
    • Family Law
    • Fraud
    • Free Representation Unit work
    • Landlord and Tenant


    Teaching    

    The course is skills-based and replicates the demands and disciplines of practice through realistic exercises. You will receive training materials which reflect the work you will do in pupillage and the early years of practice which are made available to you both in hard copy and online.


    You will also receive:

    • Practitioner books in Criminal and Civil Practice
    • The City Law School Manuals (published by OUP) on all the skills and knowledge areas


    You will be given regular feedback on your performances, primarily from your tutors but also by peer-review. Regular practice together with guidance through feedback ensures that students on the course develop their skills to the full potential.


    In order to make sure that our feedback is useful to you, we ensure that:

    • All of our staff are fully trained in giving effective feedback
    • The criteria for all skills modules are highlighted for students in the introductory stages
    • All skills-based small group sessions focus on one or more assessment criteria

     

    Feedback, including self-assessment and peer assessment, is central to the development of your legal skills, and your own professional development. During the course, you will be taught by professionally qualified experts who bring a range of experience and specialist knowledge to the course.


    Our expert teaching staff are:

    • Directly involved in practice - A number of staff also sit or have sat in a part-time judicial capacity
    • Many maintain door tenancies
    • Accredited Advocacy Training Committee (ATC) trainers
    • Leading authors of both practitioner and student texts
    • At the forefront of professional legal skills training
    • Regular contributors to the ongoing development of effective legal skills training

      

    Our unique Practical Training Exercise programme is:

    • Practically focused
    • Comprised of a series of sets of instructions and briefs based on realistic cases
    • Written and developed in consultation with practitioners

     

    Our teaching is practical and has an emphasis on learning by doing:

    • Advocacy is taught in a courtroom setting, in groups of six
    • Small group sessions are held with groups of no more than twelve
    • Interactive large group sessions are also held frequently


    The BTPC marks the start of your legal career, so you are expected to attend and work as you would if you were in practice. However, with optional early evening practitioner sessions and an exclusive series of forensic science lectures, we build in as much added value as possible for our students.


    Full-time BPTC timetable

    • Four days teaching each week (equating to around 12-14 hours class contact time)
    • One day for preparation, professional development and research each week
    • A recommended twenty plus hours of private study and preparation work each week

     

    Part-time BPTC timetable


    The majority of the course is taught in term-time on weekday with classes lasting around three hours. Some daytime attendance will occassionally be required however we will notifiy you of this in advance.

    Assessment    

    There are nine skills assessments and three multiple choice/short answer question tests. The assessments are a combination of 'unseen' and 'take away' papers. All assessments are based on realistic exercises reproducing the demands of practice and reflecting the work done on the course.

    This includes: oral skills assessments which are recorded on DVD with actors playing the role of client and/or witness and written skills assessments that require you to write an opinion or prepare a piece of drafting.

     

    Multiple choice tests/short answer questions will also be used to assess your competence level in Criminal Litigation, Sentencing and Evidence and Civil Litigation, Civil Evidence and Remedies and Professional Legal Ethics.

     

    Developing your skills
    We believe feedback is central your professional and personal development. All members of our staff are fully trained in providing effective feedback and throughout the course you are encouraged to assess your own development as well as your peers. Advocacy is the flagship subject on the BPTC, and you will get one-to-one advice on how to improve at various points in the year as well as your regular feedback in you advocacy classes.

     

       

    Opportunities

    City Law School bar students regularly participate in the National and  International Client Interviewing, Mock Trial and Negotiation competitions. Our students have won the National Mock trial competition three times in the last four years.

     

    The course and careers teams are dedicated to assisting you with the development of your career. We provide a wide range of career-focused support for all students, whether or not they intend to go into private practice.

    Services offered include:


    There are a number of activities incorporated into the course which we regard as an essential part of learning how to become an effective advocate.

       

    Futures

    Whether you choose our BPTC full-time or part-time, on successful completion of the course you will receive City University London’s respected Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice.

     

    Our BPTC students also have the opportunity to apply to undertake a dissertation as a follow-on from their BPTC for the award of an LLM in Professional Legal Skills.

     

    On passing the course you will also be ready to start pupillage. The City Law School, like the rest of the Bar, wants to ensure that you are aware of the relevant statistics before you apply for the course. The Bar is intensely meritocratic, as might be expected given it operates within an adversarial legal system where all parties to disputes want to win.

     

    To ensure you have the information you need to make a reasoned choice for your career, please take a look at Pupillage Facts and Figures 09-10 which gives essential information on the number of places available in chambers, and the Bar Council Pupillage and Tenancy Statistics which gives the raw data from 2000 to date.