It’s all change in the law. There’ll be broadcasts from the Supreme Court on the telly. You’ll be able to get a quickie divorce courtesy of a supermarket chain thanks to the Legal Services Act 2007. Even the way lawyers qualify is being changed because of new regulations covering the Legal Practice Course (LPC).

The LPC is a rite of passage. Taking one year (full-time) or two years (part-time), the LPC has faced criticism that its rigours exclude the less well-off, the women returners and the midlife career changers. So over the next 12 months all providers of the course will be switching to a new model — the LPC3 — which, in essence chops the programme into Stages 1 and 2.

Stage 1 includes the generic compulsory core practice areas, key skills and professional conduct while Stage 2 focuses on the electives, the more specialised areas of law in which the student normally wishes to concentrate later in their career.

As a result it will now be permissible for students to switch to a different provider —– or indeed several providers — for Stage 2. Alternatively he or she could take time out, get a job (for example as a paralegal) and then resume.

The signs are that these changes will initially have no perceptible impact. According to Amanda Fancourt, who is in charge of the LPC at the City Law School, City University, London: “The response of the firms has been that they are not concerned about the changes but simply want the students to complete the programme.”

Nonetheless, Fancourt says, many colleges have taken the opportunity to review their courses and have updated or tightened up in some areas. Moreover, at the most radical end, some colleges have moved to reduce the length of the LPC so that rather than doing Stages 1 and Stage 2 sequentially students would be permitted to do them concurrently. The effect would be to reduce the LPC to six months in what might be described as a full time-plus course.

Nigel Savage, of the College of Law, is concerned that the quality of LPCs may start to slip as a result of these developments. Changes in the way that quality is controlled on courses could give rise to the emergence of a hierarchy in LPCs and that they will no longer share a common consistency.

Instead, Professor Savage’s view is that the smartest way to open up access to the profession would be to award the professional qualification on completion of Stage 2 (as happens to barristers after the Bar Vocational Course) rather than requiring a further period of (increasingly hard to find) practical training.

It may well be that this latest change is by no means the end of the story.

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