Legal Education Foundation
The Legal Education Foundation is an independent grant-making foundation operating across the UK to build a society that fosters the principles of justice and fairness, where people understand and use law to bring about positive change and to prevent harm, and where public systems and structures uphold the rule of law. It was founded in 1962 as The College of Law and constituted in its present form in 2012.
History
The charity began in 1962 when the Law Society's own law college merged with the tutorial firm Gibson and Weldon to form the College of Law with branches in London and Guildford. The College of Law was a private teaching institution which operated as a charity. It was incorporated by royal charter in 1975 and officially registered as a charity in 1976 "to promote the advancement of legal education and the study of law in all its branches". It never received Higher Education Funding Council funds and was dependent solely on its own resources to operate the college and finance its growth. In 2006, the college was granted degree-awarding powers and began a collaboration with the Sutton Trust to fund the trust's Pathways to Law program which encourages and supports disadvantaged secondary school students who wish to study law. Until 2012, the College of Law was in the top 100 of UK charities ranked by expenditure.In 2012, the College Of Law underwent a major restructuring which split off the educational institution from its parent charity. College of Law Ltd. was created as a limited company to take on its educational and training business on a for-profit basis. The parent charity changed its name to The Legal Education Foundation and remained under the royal charter. In November of that year the college was granted university status. Shortly thereafter it was sold to Montagu Private Equity for £200 million. The proceeds of the sale went to The Legal Education Foundation, while the £177 million debt incurred by Montagu for the purchase was transferred to the college itself. The college subsequently changed its name to the University of Law.