Law schools are predicting a recruitment boom as the credit crunch prompts more students to choose a “safe” profession in times of financial turmoil.

Some providers have reported a surge in late enrolments, picking up students who once would have gone into banking and finance.

BPP Law School says that recruitment has spiked in recent months, particularly on its Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL), while Manchester Metropolitan University says that its GDL is oversubscribed. “Students see law as a safe haven in difficult times,” Peter Crisp, chief executive of BPP, says. “A legal qualification is internationally recognised and opens many career doors.”

With experts predicting an increase in insolvency, restructuring, litigation and new kinds of financing deals, law schools quickly point out that they offer relevant masters courses, including international commercial and international business law and dispute resolution.

The City Law School says that its new LLM in international dispute resolution has been “designed in reaction to the current economic climate”, while the University of Oxford’s faculty of law is working with the Oxford Saïd Business School to develop a masters in law and finance.

“It is crucial for law schools to make a contribution to understanding the challenges of regulating markets in ways that allow commerce to thrive without allowing unmanaged risks to escalate into disasters,” Timothy Endicott, Dean of Law at Oxford, says. “We have an important role in research and in training lawyers at the graduate level in law and finance.”

Lecturers’ tips for recession-proof areas include competition, sports, private client and employment law — but their overwhelming message is that students must master the basics and be flexible.

“The lawyer who will be able to deal with whatever the fallout is over the next two, three, ten years, will not be the lawyer who picks insolvency as an option in his or her undergraduate course instead of corporate finance, it will be the student who gets a really good, sound, deep training in the lawyer’s tools,” Endicott says. “Frankly, that means a BA in law is better than a one-year conversion course.”

Clare Harris, associate director of legal resourcing at Lovells, advises students aiming for a big City firm to choose the most academically rigorous options. “Get the best grades you can — that’s the thing that will reassure employers more than anything.”

As yet, law schools say there is no evidence that firms are cutting back on recruitment. But Emma Seagreaves, director of legal and professional studies at the University of Huddersfield, says that fewer small to medium-sized firms are sponsoring students.

Providers are conscious, too, that the credit crunch is likely to focus students’ minds on course costs. Private providers can charge £11,550 for the Legal Practice Course (LPC) and £14,150 for the Bar Vocational Course (BVC).

However, more universities now offer exempting degrees, four-year courses that combine three years of undergraduate study with the one-year LPC, with fees of £3,000 throughout. Changes to the LPC should mean also that there will soon be more flexible and online provision, making the combination of study and part-time paid work easier.

After the decision by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to be less prescriptive about the number of face-to-face teaching hours, law schools are awaiting validation of new LPC programmes, the first of which will start in September next year.

The University of the West of England is teaming up with Central Law Training to offer the LPC at weekends, while Huddersfield has developed a course based around a “virtual” solicitors’ firm.

Alan Riley, of City University, says that if you cannot find a job, think positively and creatively. “Law firms are going to be impressed if, in a recession, you go to Guatemala and learn Spanish for a year, or work with an NGO. These are things that will help you later on.”

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