The purpose of a law school is to teach its students the art of litigation. It should hardly come as a surprise when some decide to try out their skills on the institution that taught them. Nonetheless, with a competitive job market, do the risks of bringing a case outweigh the potential benefits of having your day in court?

This dilemma was well illustrated recently by Alice Clarke. In 2005 she decided to stand up against the decision of Cardiff University not to reassess her results on the Bar Vocational Course. She received low marks because of a disagreement with her tutors, and argued that they should be reassessed. The resulting legal battle lasted four years, with Clarke battling against Cardiff in the High Court during eight separate hearings before she eventually won her case in August.

While it is fortunate that the court agreed with Clarke, the risks of taking on such an action are huge. Between them, each side ran up costs of about £400,000 and the court has yet to decide how these should be apportioned. Even a generous settlement is likely to leave both sides having to write a cheque that would dwarf most student debts. Then there are the years of potential lost earnings as well as the stress of being involved in such litigation.

On top of these problems, there are a range of tricky legal issues that arise when bringing an action against a law school or university law department. As consumers of a service, students have a range of private law rights that they can enforce through an action for breach of contract. In 2002, Mike Austen, 54, a former airline pilot studying for a law degree, took the University of Wolverhampton to court because it had misrepresented the quality of the qualification. After three court hearings he was awarded £30,000 in an out-of-court settlement.

In other cases, it may be possible for students to argue that their public law rights have been breached, and it will be open for them to bring an action for a judicial review of the law school or university in question. This will not usually be available to scrutinise individual academic marks. However, where the academic body is making a decision that concerns the grant or refusal of a qualification that is relevant to the entry into the legal profession, as a solicitor or barrister, then it may well be possible to challenge their decision in court.

This route was taken in 1994 by a group of students, including Nicholas Toms and Andrew Latimer, who sued the Council of Legal Education, which had refused them entry to the BVC on the basis of their poor A-level grades. After their application for judicial review, they have gone on to have successful careers at the Bar. Toms practises in employment law and discrimination from Doughty Street Chambers, and Latimer has a commercial and chancery practice at Kings Chambers in Manchester.

Mike Semple Piggot was one of the founders of BPP Law School in the early 1990s, and since leaving in 1998 has written the popular Charon QC legal blog. He is positive about the idea of students standing up for themselves. “For too long, the public sector has been cocooned within a delusional idea that they are above accountability. Alice Clarke’s case shows they are not and I would happily encourage law students to be more forceful, not less, in ensuring that the contracted standard is met.”

The increase in the number of law school places has undoubtedly led to a process of commercialisation and commoditisation of legal education. With students spending thousands on course fees, law schools are coming under increasing pressure to live up to the expectations presented by their glossy brochures. But a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and the decision to bring legal action against your law school should be made only after proper consultation with qualified lawyers, and not following the advice of friends after a night in the student bar.

The author is a pupil barrister at Hardwicke Building

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