Failing the LPC

I feel that, with exam results looming and due on 15 May, I am most likely tempting fate by writing this blog as it is all about failing the LPC. 

Ask any current student on any Legal Practice Course and they will all know of at least one failure related horror story. Mine is this: a girl in the year ahead of me managed to secure a training contract with a decent firm in her first year of the part time LPC. Having gained distinctions and competents in all of her exams thus far, she was horrified to find she had failed Civil Litigation. Even though she retook the exam, passed, and retained her 70% distinction average (even with the 50% cap on Civil Litigation), she could be awarded no more than a pass, as university rules state that to fail a core exam limits the student to an overall pass mark on the LPC. Do not pass Go, do not collect £200. As if the poor girl's situation could not seem any more devastating, upon informing her firm of her fail they hastily withdrew her training contract, as per the terms of said contract. The student who was once averaging a distinction and had a promising future in the bag lost it all by one failed exam. 

I did a little research and this type of situation is, unfortunately, not uncommon. And even worse is the cut throat attitude of other law students commenting on this type of situation. One pleasant chap was so outraged by the fact that anyone could fail an LPC exam that he stated that a person who fails an LPC exam was clearly not worthy of a training contract in the first place. It got me thinking, are the the LPC exams really that difficult to fail? And if a person does fail does that mean that they are henceforth irredeemable as a lawyer? 

Having studied on the part time course I have had the opportunity to meet people from a variety of different backgrounds. We all have careers outside of law school. Many have families and other commitments outside of law school. Basically, for some people, the world simply cannot revolve around law school. And this can lead to the dreaded fail. 

During the previous exam period I had my exams sandwiched between work days. I could not afford to take more than the actual days of the exams off. Has this affected my performance? We will see. But does this make me any less of a lawyer compared to a person who is fortunate enough to be able to study full time and without having to work? I am not so sure. 

If the legal world doesn't look any further into a person's circumstances before rejecting their application based on a fail (or worse, withdrawing a training contract) I have to wonder whether the profession genuinely does want to move towards representing a wider section of the community. The kind of student who has to work to fund their LPC is the same student typically from poorer backgrounds. In this way, the barrier to these students still holds. These students generally cannot get time off from work for work experience and certainly cannot afford to undertake the common place unpaid work experience. They cram their study in to ever busy working weeks and struggle to keep their heads above water. And on top of all this, one bad day, one hectic week at work, or one poorly child the night before an exam, could mean their whole LPC is rendered worthless. 

So to that extremely closed minded man who sought to make the author of the forum question feel totally worthless, open your eyes and see that, yes, failing a module on the LPC may be down to one's laziness and lack of motivation. But it could also be due to a whole host of other reasons that do not make that person any less of a fantastic lawyer.