To wonder how smart do you actually have to be for some professions?

I am a financial services lawyer and I think the answer is a bit of both depending on the level you want to work at.

If you want to be involved in complex high value deal advisory work you need to be clever enough to understand convoluted multi jurisdictional structures, be able to plough through 100s or 1000s of pages of documentation and make sure they are aligned and whilst managing not to swear at the client who keeps changing their mind when you’ve been up all night working.

You need to be able to grasp things quickly and offer pragmatic solutions.

However, this sort of high intensity pressured work won’t suit everyone so there will be other lawyers who don’t work as hard and aren’t as smart but are still providing a valuable service in conveyancing, duty solicitor work, wills and probate etc.

Like everything, it’s a bell curve. On the whole people in the professions are probably a bit more academically able but some will not be and others will be scarily smart.

Being intelligent won't get you very far in some professions if you are lazy. That's why Boris Johnson didn't go in for law or medicine. You can't wing them.

However if you work hard and are not academic, you'll hit a ceiling. I've had friends who worked much harder than me and they've been successful in their careers, but they wouldn't have been able to do most degrees, for example. For example, they've gone into retail management because they are good with people and have a lot of practical intelligence and that coupled with hard work has got them a long way.

I do not think there is one type of intelligence. Those who do very well at tests, exams may not have any creativity or entrepreneur type skills.
Compare it to 'sorts fitness' so many different types of fitness also. Usain Bolt type fitness may not be comparable to a power weight lifter, rugby player, snooker player, golfer .....
Hard slog to be a Dr it not necessarily they all the most intelligent people however they driven, good at exams, memory and recall.
Often find many students do not like the day to day work involved when get to it and those who just scrape in preform better at those who were top class when get to doing job.

It’s quite strange that you keep talking about how intelligent your PA is. If that is so, do you consider them lacking in drive or other skills that would allow them to forge a successful and highly paid career?
You’ve subsequently stated that your barrister friends do not possess the logic and critical thinking skills of your PA. Odd to even think you’re in a position to assess this, having presumably not watched them all at work. What do you do for a living?

To get on the degree courses you need to have the relevant qualifications, so they are clearly not thick as mince ,
You may not agree with the sentences some criminals reccive but the judges have to work within the sentencing guidelines
Also I'm not sure what you mean about Doctors thinking it's OK to use Nurses cloak room ,when I was a nurse there was one changing room with toilets in for all staff to use.

That's quite tautological reasoning, though - "the top of law" as you define "the top" in that statement literally means the top earners. The most intelligent guy on my law cohort, by miles, went into academia and was a full professor by 40. He'll be earning about £75-80k. On the other hand, his legal advice around torture has been globally praised and has literally saved lives.

Obviously some jobs require high level qualifications (doctorate, medical degrees, the bar) that need a certain level of ability and intelligence. Having said that, this doesn’t necessarily equate to genius or even interpersonal competence and I have met doctors and lawyers who were not particularly smart on the surface though I admit they must be intelligent to some level.

People keep talking about six figure salaries - people at the top of law, accountancy, industry, successful business owners, are earning more than £500k nowadays.

Many of those people know how to work smart as well as being smart though - I believe that's the big difference. Realising that at a young age will give you a huge wealth advantage over the course of your earning lifetime.

‘Barristers who ‘see the logic’ in freeing rapists’

🙄 there’s no logic in this comment

I‘m a (trial) attorney (not in the UK, btw).
School / academics came fairly easy for me.

University/law school (and the bar….) were not, those were definitely more of a „grind“.

It was a combination of hard work, perseverance (or stubbornness…), luck, privilege, natural aptitude and (academic) intelligence in my case.

I do occasionally feel like the odd one out simply because I (/my family) don’t own multiple (or any!) holiday homes in fancy locations…

@roses2 we had that dynamic between my sister and I.
She has a city and guilds job as does her DH. My DH and I both went to university.
Same parents, same sink schools as our siblings but our children are graduates.

I am currently mentoring my niece as my sister couldn't be arsed to do it. She has recently diagnosed ADHD which my sister saw as mental illness. We had a ND mother.
My sister was and still is a 'party girl'.

oooh! A chance to share an unpopular opinion!!!

Yes, you can do those jobs and be thick as mince. We see it everyday and watch in awe as totally uncritical, illogical thought spills from their lips. Barristers who ‘see the logic’ in freeing rapists, Doctors that think using nurses changing rooms is fine - there’s hundreds of them!

My unpopular opinion is - degree standards are far too low. You can pass a degree knowing less than half of your subject matter.

Let me repeat that - less than half!

A first class degree is 70% - less than three quarters.
The best doctors and lawyers in the country needed less than 75% accuracy to be considered as such.

Exam format lends itself to explanation, rather than yes/no questions, so if you can say something basic impressively with big words and the moderators know you’re from a red brick, you start with a bonus 20 😆

It sounds like I’m being mean to everyone, but when I consider that our average doctor needed a 50% pass rate to get there, you start to realize why standards are so low!

I'm a solicitor, and so know a lot of solicitors and accountants (no doctors though!). I'd say you have to have some degree of intelligence, but not super super all-round smart. What we do need to have, is the ability to take in lots of information and analyse it pretty quickly (often on the fly, during meetings) to determine advice given and make recommendations. An ability to identify risks in information you're given, and see ways to mitigate it within a reasonable scope that works for the client's business and overall objectives.

FWIW, I went to a bog-basic state comp in 2000's and did OK in GCSEs but not amazing. I was first in entire extended family to go beyond GCSEs (so didn't have a network of professionals in the slightest!). At A-Level I did alright, but again, we're not talking 3 As. I then went to a good uni and studied law and did well, and again at my post-grad LPC year. But I worked HARD at uni/law school and in comparison to my housemates studying other courses I definitely felt the pressure of workload, amount of reading expected etc. We were/are also expected (as part of law placements, and later in practice) to have a good awareness of current affairs, global politics, economics as all this is interlinked to risk profiles that affect the client's options (businesses in my case). Some of my friends working in other roles happily speak about the fact they no longer watch the news as its depressing, and they can seemingly get by in life without a need to understand current affairs or politics - so they are intelligent in their own area, but don't have a broader level of knowledge of other matters.

Am an academic in social science so surrounded by a mixture of people who are all about the maths or the social world. Have to say one of the perks of the perks of the job is that no one around me is dumb. Most aren't geniuses but not thick. My child also goes to a very middle class school - most parents are high level professionals and it's a bit more mixed. There are definitely people there where you wonder how they go their job.

An important part is having the right uptitudes for your role e.g. medics generally are pretty good with people, entrepreneurs are usually quite gregarious and outgoing, in other roles it's people who make things happen. It's often intelligence, hard work plus other skills necessary for the role.

Not necessarily! DH worked at KPMG. He hated it - all the Hooray Henrys in those days. They wanted him to stay.

He went to work for a small firm of accountants, where nobody was expected to work anything like the long hours at the Big Four. The partners had a relatively easy life and still earned 6 figures.

It doesn’t mean DH was less intelligent, because he preferred a better work life balance.

DS got a first and did a MA. His university asked him to be an academic - he looked at a friend of his, trailing round the country on short term appointments, maybe earning £10, 000 pa at one university and £10,000 pa at another. He thought “no thanks”, and went into accountancy, where he earns six figures, after a friend of ours, a solicitor told him not to go into law! It doesn’t mean DS is less intelligent, because he wanted security and a better standard of living for his family.

I have met very bright people among accountants, solicitors and barristers (usually the Oxbridge graduates, but not always), but the quickest people we have ever met on the uptake are the professors of neurology at The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery.

I have always wondered if you take a child from a household where both parents are in highly paid and educated professions vs the child of eg a Costa shop assistant and put them through the same education what would be the outcome.

I think some of the schools with high "progress 8" achieve this but it is also down to the parents pushing the child in the right direction. The child of a bus driver will be less likely to pursue a high flying career vs the child of a Big 4 partner if both kids went to the same school and got the same grades.

This reminds me of that alarming joke.

What do you a person who came bottom of every class in medical school?

Doctor.

Conveyancing work is high volume. It’s not necessarily a lack of intelligence but it’s high caseload vs low fees so you approach it differently.

In terms of qualifications, I cant speak for law but I can promise you that my 30 year old science degree was harder and more competitive than current science degrees.
The school exams were harder and there were fewer Uni places.
Reading what my now 17 year olds produce in essays is appalling and they are considered to be amongst the better kids.
When I worked in higher education and read reports (and I am talking taught masters course level, not undergrad), the level of scientific rigor and analysis was very low. The standard of written English was dire as was the ability to present information in a concise way and in a logical order. I wrote better and was expected to write better as a school girl.

I did law at Cambridge. While I didn't meet anyone who was truly stupid, I did meet a few people who were naturally nothing particularly special, and would have scored very low on measures of creativity, curiosity, problem solving and/or lateral thinking. The people like that generally offset this with a really strong work ethic, and often public school confidence. And while I absolutely agree with pp that barristers are not automatically more intelligent than solicitors, I do believe that being low curiosity and high conformity is actually quite a strength if you take the magic circle route. Dominic Raab types.

Unless you're in politics.

Of course. People love a stereotype. Here’s another one - People see what they want to see and disregard the rest.

I'm a lawyer and have worked in some top firms and in-house teams. Some of the other lawyers have been adequate but I wouldn't say hugely intelligent. A worse problem (particularly in-house) is where they may be academically able but completely lacking in common sense and a commercial approach.

Eg at a previous role we had a trainee on secondment. She was in her fourth and final seat so had already done 1.5 years, and by this stage you'd expect her to be acting essentially as a qualified lawyer (I certainly was at that stage). Her line manager asked her a very, very simple research question that could have been answered in a couple of sentences after maybe an hour's research. He also told her it was pretty urgent and needed ideally by COB that day.

Kept asking for progress updates. After a WEEK she comes back with a 20 slide PowerPoint going way off piste, including various academic references, jazzy fonts and pictures and tells her line manager she's booked a room to present it to him.

I mean, all the stuff in there was accurate but my god, that to me is someone with no common sense sense whatsoever. How she got a training contract at a top tier firm I have no idea.

Some of the other lawyers I've met, particularly from the older generations when I guess there were fewer people going to uni so less competition, were decent at their jobs (I'm guessing through decades of experience) but when you actually spoke to them they weren't the brightest tbh.

I work in finance/tax and earn £200k+ pa (just for reference) and have accounting and tax qualifications. I am definitely not above average intelligence, slightly academic (but also quite lazy) but I did work hard to get my qualifications and have worked hard for the last 25+ years - not every single day but generally!
So I don't think you have to be above average intelligence to do those jobs, maybe if you are very below average it would be difficult.

So many stereotypes on this thread it’s almost like a satirical caricature; the usual bitter comments about “privilege”, derogatory comments about intelligence being “book smart” and pretence that people who are academic cannot manage basic life tasks, ridiculous comments about “school ties” despite blind recruitment, claims that “anybody” could get these jobs which clearly isn’t the case when there are minimum requirements even to apply to train and for the roles in good firms there are hundreds of applicants per place, and that is just to get a foot in the door: you then still have to pass the professional exams and work your way up.

Much of it seems predictably defensive and exemplifies the strange anti-intelligence attitude that, sadly, is prevalent in the UK. It should be immediately obvious to anyone who has been to a non-selective school, or indeed ever dealt with a cross-section of the general public, that it is quite clearly not the case that “anybody could do these roles if they try” otherwise there wouldn’t be so many failed applicants, let alone those who don’t meet the requirements to apply in the first place.

I work in the top tier of one of the named professions. I went to a terrible state school that was subsequently closed because it was so awful. I left home as a teenager and lived alone because I had an abusive childhood. My parents couldn’t be bothered to house me let alone coach me on job interview techniques or exams. 😆 I supported myself financially through A levels and university and then did professional qualifications.

The assumption that everyone in these roles is there because of “privilege” or networks in nonsense. Of course that may make the pathway easier for some initially however, later it makes things harder for them in my experience as they are less independent and have a smaller range of experiences to draw upon so that is a double-edged sword. To be genuinely successful at the top of a profession you need intelligence, work ethic, integrity, inter-personal skills, a capacity for decision-making, innovotion and independent thought and the ability to grasp and connect new concepts quickly. The reality is that only a small percentage of people possess all of these qualities so some may find a way in or progress to an extent but few are capable of reaching the top. Intelligence, however, is a prerequisite of doing so.