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

Sadly today, as the economist Gary Stevenson has said, the main factor which will determine how wealthy (not how ‘successful’) a person is, is how wealthy their parents are. Generational wealth, inheritance. It never used to be this way, only in recent years. A result of the widening wealth inequality gap.

My eldest DD is incredibly clever - bordering on a kind of almost genius level. A* grades in nearly everything. Extremely hard working, academic, conscientious, very quirky. She's ahead of her peers and will certainly fly, but she has the personality and character to go with her intelligence too. Her teachers always say that she's looking for the answers in a very unique and unusual way, seeing patterns that aren't always obvious. This is what I consider a real mark of intelligence.

She's got what some might say is "the X factor", but had always been a character from the minute she was born. I'm sure that I'm incredibly biased obviously, but I know she's got true potential to be very good at whatever she does. The one thing that she's not so good at is sport, but I don't think she's too bothered.

In many ways, intelligence is certainly a real asset but hard work, perseverance, personality and an ability to think outside the box is equally important.

Thanks for the thread OP.

I have a law degree but work in a fashion related industry. Think 'thicko' beauticians as per a previous poster.
I have just agreed a £500m deal making me a multi millionaire.
So I'm not a lawyer, doctor or accountant although my wider family are/ were.
How did I do it?
Not connections in my earlier career. I worked 5am until 10pm for 35 years. I commuted long distances and I frequently failed to see my first child. I took massive risks with investments. Some failed.
I grew up on a council estate but I had a genteel impoverished mother. I also met and married a decent hard working man who had the emotional intelligence to let me shine. He was happy to pick up the slack. I'm one of the few women at my level and my age in my industry. Although targeted at women it's all men at the top and they're pretty toxic to mature women.
I have two adult DC, one's at Oxford and the other is in the civil service. They both had some private schooling.
Both have a love of learning. I don't have any connections in their chosen fields but they've watched me succeed and my DS is super proud of me. My DD as a trainee medic thinks my industry is tosh!
Looking around my friends none of them would have worked those hours or dealt with the people I have had too. They might have fancy schooling but they lack grit and the capacity to problem solve.
Would I do it all again? Hell no I'd work in academia. I do have a high IQ and was a member of mensa as a kid.

Maybe the conveyancing solicitors are simply less organised then, because the number of errors in their work that I’ve experienced has been alarming.

I think @Frozo that @Theunamedcat was probably referring to SEND case officers, who are certainly not what one would regard as highly paid, but maybe are lacking in emotional intelligence. That could be said of a number of highly paid professionals, particularly those with logical brains. I’m sure someone will say that it’s a generalisation, which could be true, but I think emotional intelligence requires a focus on the person as well as the task,

I'm in one of those professions and there are people who sneak through despite being not being very bright. There are many who are above average intelligence but not top 5% intelligent and I can think of one in particular who didn't get good academic grades and sneaked through an entry level role and is working her way up but isn't very intelligent. I'm sure she's not the only one. Someone I went to school with is a gp now and wasn't one of the most intelligent kids in class so yes it is possible.

How can you know that, though? Have you read the written advices or listened to oral submissions made by your legal friends? Have you followed their cases through to judgement to see what the judge made of their critical thinking skills, or seen how their contract drafting has resulted in success or failure for the companies they work with?

Personally I wouldn't have a clue how good my legal friends outside of my specific field are at critical thinking except that they still have jobs, and critical thinking essentially IS the job.

I’m a chartered accountant (ACA) and those exams were the hardest thing I’ve ever done and I LOVE exams (I have a law degree that I did part time while working full time and that was a piece of piss!)

I can’t tell you how many times I was in tears, how often I thought I’d never manage to do them all and qualify.

For the accountancy exams you have very little input per module, a matter of days worth of teaching and the rest is self taught. So you need to be able to understand the information, go through very long winded questions (multiple pages of info) and be able to interpret the information, apply the right standards, do calculations to varying degrees of difficulty. There’s a lot involved and there are absolutely people who cannot do it.

It’s very much pass or fail, you’re not going for a “score” you’re just hoping you’re at a good enough level to pass within the short window you have to learn the materials (usually a matter of a few weeks start to finish for each module, often more than one exam at a time depending who your training control is with and what their expectations are).

To be a doctor, yes very intelligent but especially to have a good memory. You also need to be very hardworking and resilient.

You've taken what I said a touch too literally.

No one sits there rating their friends intelligence, obviously. But, in terms of logic and critical thinking skills, I can safely say that my friends do not have as much of them as my PA does.

And, as I said in my first post, there are two types of intelligence - book smart, and world smart. I'm talking about the latter.

My DH has a brain the size of a planet. Took a first from Oxford, won prizes as a Pupil, KC, corporate bar and a niche sub specialty of it. Learnt the piano in his 30s, has learnt passable Russian, etc.

Give him a car boot and a full quota of holiday luggage and he cannot see how it fits in - at all. He is similar about many practical things.

What I mean by this is that there will be v intelligent people in min wage jobs and ditto not intelligent people in "professional/academic" jobs. So they've found when you study intelligence

Don't you think it's quite weird to "rate" your actual friends' intelligence against each other? Seems a little insecure.
I am a lawyer, a lot of my friends are lawyers and a lot aren't and it would never occur to me to "rate" their intelligence against each other.
Aside from which it seems totally impossible anyway- my closest friends are a teacher and a charity manager- their skills are so different from legal skills that it wouldn't be possible for me to just rate their intelligence comparatively without some kind of baseline measurement like IQ or a standardised test.

I strongly believe alot of life is just the luck of the drawer and what family you’re born into. I don’t mean just elite families but for example I’ve never known hunger or cold and my parents have always supported me.

They've actually done studies on this and in terms of "raw" intelligence tests - there is the same distribution of very intelligent and not intelligent people across all professions.

So no, you don't have to be intelligent to get into an "intelligent" job. But you'll need to work hard

Back to the OP I do agree academia is only one measure of intelligence, my DH got one GSCE, a D, is dyslexic, did a useless degree so he could join a graduate scheme and has earned 6 figures since his mid 20’s. We are both intelligent but in totally different ways.

Cab drivers who’ve passed the Knowledge have either naturally retentive minds or have successfully trained themselves to retain large amounts of information, so surely it was never at all surprising that a cabbie won Mastermind?

Most of my friends are solicitors or barristers at top firms and, honestly, as much as I love them, not a single one is more intelligent than my PA or the Ambassadors I work with.

@HotCrossBunplease
https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/40-of-lpc-students-not-getting-training-contracts-/5105248.article

40% of LPC graduates don’t go on to qualify. (2020)

The pass rate of the LPC was 47.8% in 2022.

I’m not good with stats but doesn’t sound like 1 in 8. Still a lot to invest and relatively high risk.

To be a doctor, you must have a high IQ.

Based on the very small number of people I know well enough to comment on. I would say that the majority of people I know in 'professions' are academic clever. They are good at learning, so they retain knowledge well, are good at following formulaic ways of working that give the desired results. They are generally rule followers. They are great at pub quizzes for their areas of interest. Do well in academic settings and understand and have learnt how to use social interactions to reach their desired outcomes. They can work the room.

The people who work in small businesses, entrepreneurs have a different kind of clever, they are relentless questioners, they want to know everything. But don't retain a huge amount of knowledge and are not so great with formulaic ways of working. They are rule benders and usually hopeless at keeping records, sorting paperwork so others can follow. They are rubbish at pub quizzes as they rarely retain general knowledge. However they are excellent at any logic puzzle type rounds. Id say they are more take me as you find me as they may understand social niceties but will not necessarily follow the rules so are unlikely to be able to climb the corporate ladder though social connections.

Also, I’m not sure why you think lawyers don’t require critical thinking - in many legal roles that is the key part of the job. Quite a bizarre assertion.

Not to be a solicitor. I have come across some very thick ones. To be a good solicitor though you need a decent level of intelligence as with most professions. Hard work is also necessary. Intelligence alone doesn't get the job done.

Are you a lawyer? I am, and I’ve never met a PA more intelligent than my colleagues. Organised, yes, but super bright people would probably not go into that role if they could be the lawyer instead (why would they? 5x salary probably).
In response to OP’s weird heirarchy of academics/barristers/solicitors, I don’t find that holds true at all. All three roles require a slightly different skill set e.g. a barrister would have to be a very confident and convincing presenter but it doesn’t matter so much if they’re good with clients or have a bedside manner. In all three roles, you can probably get by with slightly above average intelligence with some hard graft (and a lot of confidence), but in my experience the very bright ones stand out very quickly and will be noticed and rewarded. The most successful lawyers I know (whose work would be featured in national newspapers) are all state educated but standout intelligent. And obviously there can be a difference between magic circle type lawyers and those at smaller firms, though not always - many people actually do make a lifestyle choice not to do the 3am finishes and take a lower paid role to facilitate that.

I have no experience of the other professions, but for accounting, you can't rely on just hard work or just cleverness to pass the exams, you need both, and you can't keep working if you don't pass the exams.
Re nepotism: These days for the big firms you need to go through the online process and the initial rounds with HR before you get anywhere near a hiring manager who probably won't even be the one you work for. I now work in a very large investment bank - our apprenticeship scheme actively recruits young people with talent who don't have degrees or an 'old school tie'.
It's not like smaller firms where the guy (and its always a guy) in charge sees a few people and offers a job to the one they get on with best.
My guess would be that with a big employer, the process is much less personal, and an application is more likely to be assessed 'blind', at least initially, so is a good way to get your foot in the door of the industry.