‘Livingstone, I presume?’
One of the UK’s largest independent law tutoring firms has gone bust owing over £300,000.
Bloomsbury Tutors was founded by former City Law School fellow Angus Livingstone in 2009 and catered to students at top universities including Oxford, KCL, UCL, Cambridge, QMU and LSE.
It assisted bar course students and provided SQE tuition, and firms also used it to provide a ‘top up’ service to future trainees who found themselves struggling with elements of the SQE course at their official provider.
Livingstone blamed AI, exam changes and COVID for Bloomsbury Tutors’ collapse, claiming that the pandemic led to a drop in student numbers which never recovered after it gave up its London premises and went fully remote in 2020.
“Covid closed the Covent Garden centre, which at its peak hosted up to eighty lessons a day, and moved us online”, he told ROF.
“During the pandemic, law schools replaced three-hour closed-book exams with open-book assessments taken at home over twenty-four hours. The change stuck, and with it went most of the demand for sustained tuition — the thing we did.”
“AI met what was left”, he saiud, as students opted to replace human tutors with ChatGPT.
HMRC presented a winding up petition in July 2026 which stated that it was owed £315,000, and the company ceased trading in August.
Other creditors include the company’s sole employee who is owed more than £10,000, and its team of tutors and two unlucky students (who bought lessons in advance), who together are owed a total of £11,000.
The business went bust with £61 in the bank, although sources close to the fallout highlighted the directors loan account, which was overdrawn by £215,000.
Livingstone, the company’s sole director, told ROF that he took the £215k out of the business during the profitable years, and that, when tutors began being paid late as the business started to struggle, his drawings effectively ceased.
“The debts the company carried into the downturn proved insurmountable once the revenue had gone”, said Livingstone.
“What is owed to the taxpayer and to tutors is now the subject of the creditors’ voluntary liquidation”, he said. “It’s early in that process, but I hope that creditors will achieve a satisfactory result.”
He added, “Bloomsbury was mine for seventeen years. It failed on my watch. I am profoundly sorry.”
Livingstone is now setting up a new business: an online, AI-powered legal tutoring service called ‘Quava’. ROF understands that some former Bloomsbury tutors have declined invitations to check the responses it produces.