LPC Skills Online (Blackstone Legal Practice Course Guide) Book

LPC Skills Online is an interactive online product which helps students get to grips with the skills they need to master in order to achieve success on the Legal Practice Course. The web site is divided into distinct areas dedicated to each of the skills on which students are assessed: Legal Writing and Drafting; Interviewing and Advising; Practical Legal Research; and Advocacy. Making full use of video and audio material, students are guided through 60 interactive exercises, which give them the opportunity to actively practice the skills. A further area of the site brings all of the skills together in a case study, enabling students to put each of the skills into action in a realistic and practical scenario. Accompanied by a short text which outlines the key principles behind the skills and gives examples from practice, this all-in-one resource offers students an intensely practical and interactive environment in which to develop their skills. Reviewed by the Law Society and LPC tutors throughout its development, this resource is ideal for any LPC student or LPC lecturer who wants to provide their students with an innovative and engaging way to develop their skills.

www.oxfordinteract.com/lpcskills

What's available online?

Coverage of all the necessary skills
The dedicated skill areas can be accessed in any order and at any time, making this resource compatible with the structure of any LPC. Each skill area begins with a videoed introduction by the author, who explains what will be covered; this is followed by a short filmed interview with an experienced practitioner who explains how the skill would be used in a training contract or in the first few years of practice.

Interactive exercises
Following the video introduction, students are led through a series of interactive exercises. These may involve watching a video and answering multiple choice questions, building up a letter to a client by choosing the most appropriate paragraph from a selection, or listening to an audio file and drafting an attendance note from what has been heard. Exercises are set in a variety of legal contexts, from conveyancing through to commercial law, ensuring that a students develop their skills which are genuinely transferable. The student is offered comprehensive feedback at the end of each exercise, enabling students to make full use of the resource at home, or away from campus, making it particularly suitable for students studying by distance or block learning. Students can log out at any time and the online resource will record their scores in an individual 'Your scores' page which can be used to identify areas where more work is needed. When students re-visit the site, they will be given the option of continuing where they left off, or starting somewhere new.

Supplementary exercises
The online resource can also cater for different levels of ability. Many of the exercises have 'sub-exercises'. Students who score less than 50% in the initial exercise will be directed towards these sub-exercises in order to shore up their knowledge in this area before moving on to develop the skill further.

Reflective diary
Students are encouraged to reflect on their learning through the use of a reflective diary. This diary is in the form of a Word document which includes various headings which prompt students to consider what they have learnt and how they might be able to improve. Students are then able to save their reflective diary documents wherever they choose, making this part of the resource compatible with any personal development record system already in place within the institution.

What's available in the text?

The short text is structured to mirror the online resource and includes important background information, including key principles and examples. Students are also given important advice on how to use the Reflective Diary effectively. For Practical Legal Research, the text is used to set out research problems; the online resource then includes exercises testing the rigor of the research the student has completed. Skills are the most practical element of the LPC, and in recognition of this, the authors have placed the emphasis of this product on the online component as it offers the student a more interactive experience. The key attraction of this resource is that it encourages students to actively practice the skills required on the LPC, rather than simply read about them passively.

This approach also ensures that the product complements lecturers' own teaching styles and any materials they may already provide for their students. The resource is not intended to replace teaching, but to offer a means for students to practice the skills they need to master prior to their assessments.

How do students access LPC Skills Online?

LPC institutions buy the accompanying text for their students as normal. Inside each text, a unique access code enables the student to log on and register with the web site. They will be able to then choose their own username and password for use everytime they log on subsequently. Each unique access code can only be used once and is not transferable, ensuring that students' results and scores are securely stored and not accessible to other students. The students' account will be active for two years from the use of the unique access code; after this time the student's account will expire.