A levels for law

I agree that History/Geography/Maths sounds an excellent set of choices to allow her to make strong applications to whatever courses appeal most in a year's time. If she starts exploring what law degrees are really about a bit more, what the training routes look like, she may decide that an alternative undergrad course appeals more, but will be well placed for a wide variety. Good luck to her!

(I've also got a just-turned-16 yr old, who I'm having to push to start thinking about what he might want to do at uni as this year will go quickly and then uni applications will be upon us. His options at the moment are very wide open. Having said that, I was only 17 when I started uni, albeit in a different country/system)

Well she may end up an environmental law solicitor so Geography could be helpful 🤷‍♀️

I think a law degree is worth having but anyone should think long and hard about being a solicitor or barrister.

I qualified as a solicitor over 25 years ago, and while it was pretty competitive then to get a training place / pupillage it is now crazy.

What many solicitors' firms tend to do now is give people who would have been given traineeships when I qualified a paralegal role. This means they can pay them buttons, play them off against each other and dangle the carrot of a training contract. These are people with impressive Russell Group uni degrees.

My son has just got stellar A level grades and is going to an excellent university. I am pleased he has no interest in going into law.

I think Maths, history and geography would be a fantastic combination too. Both for law - and if she changed her mind and wanted to do something different eg a geography or maths degree. I actually think she will be setting herself up fantastically for a lot of options!

I went to Oxbridge and did law - a long time ago. I would also do Maths or a foreign language IF she is equally capable at those as she is at Geography.
As a City solicitor I would say maths can be quite useful in that most do secondments to banks at some point or go in-house (better hours). MFL like French, Spanish or German can also be very useful for international secondments. For the bar, Latin was a favourite in my times but that may have changed.

( If she’s interested in the Bar (pupillage not a training contract - that’s solicitors’ training stage) then what’s needed is ...

Heron, I often find I have to explain pupillage by relating it to a solicitor’s training contract.)

If that's what she likes then its a good idea to keep up with the maths. I'm an employment solicitor and I use maths all the time in my job.

DS1 is about to start English lit and the books for his exam board are certainly not to everyone's taste.

Post grad. Not lost grad 😂

I’m at the Bar and sit on my Chambers ouillage committee. Honestly we rarely look at A level subjects or results. If she’s interested in the Bar (pupillage not a training contract - that’s solicitors’ training stage) then what’s needed is good degree or conversion course result plus Bar qualification (now BVS) plus a lot of evidence of enthusiasm (mini pupillage as/voluntary work/relevant extra curricular stuff). By the time they get to us A levels are largely irrelevant. So too can degrees be. Often the best candidates have NOT done a law degree and are a bit more well rounded and at least a year older having done the lost grad law conversion.

Our teen’s school (accustomed to trillions of successful Oxbridge applications every year) wouldn’t allow anyone with less than a 9 in Maths GCSE to proceed to A’ Level. They had a spreadsheet showing the results of people who started with ‘only’ an 8 ...

My nephew is about to go to Glasgow to study law.
He got 3 A* in politics, history and RS.
He had an interview for Oxford and was told in the first interview that his level 7 in GCSE maths was below par.
He was also turned down by Durham, who told him his application wasn’t strong enough. No idea if that was to do with his maths result, though.

Any of those A levels are fine for Oxbridge law - with the caveat that an A* in Geography or English may be more useful than an A in Maths - for university entrance purposes, that is.

Does she want to study law or is she keen on law as a career? The two have fairly little in common. If the latter, then would she enjoy a History degree and a conversion? Her training firm would fund the conversion.

I read law, having selected it on the basis that it sounded interesting and might earn me some good money one day. Reality was that I found most of it tediously dull, and didn’t end up entering the profession anyway. There’s a lot to be said for choosing a subject that you know you enjoy.

Another lawyer view here (although I'm 20 years PQE now so take my advice with a pinch of salt, I may be out of date) and I agree with those who say it's more important to have three good a levels than 2 x A's and a B in maths.

That said I don't know how much she enjoys maths...? I did English lit, economics, physics and maths. During my working life no one has ever been interested in my a levels but I do find my maths a level extremely useful especially as I'm in house so my work is quite varied.

I would say adding maths will be really useful for her future career but only if she likes it and is very good at it. I got an A* at GCSE but struggled with a level, I got an A in the end but only after private tutoring, it didn't come naturally to me by that point.

For what it's worth they only cared about LPC results. One of the partners did an undergrad degree in archaeology before doing a conversion course 🤷🏻‍♀️

This is poor advice. It isn't true that law firms only care about LPC results at all and most trainees will have secured their training contract before they have their LPC result. Law firms will very much look at your degree result, the university you went to and your A Level results.

It is however true that there is no preference given to law graduates over graduates in other subjects who did a conversion (and in fact the conversion students may have something more to offer in some cases).

DS1 is doing English Lit, History and Economics and will also do core maths outside of school. But he isn't going to do law as his undergraduate degree.

He definitely wants to be a lawyer and has been to court with me quite a few times now. But he is going to do a different subject at university and then do the conversion.

My daughter did English, history and government in politics

Why does she want to do law? Does she want to be a solicitor or a barrister?

I would say it’s a very competitive field and very few make it to a pupillage or training contract. When you are working with smaller regional or high street firms the pay is shit and quite frankly the training not much better, but competition for the major law firms is fierce and even having a first is no guarantee. Plus the work life balance is hard. However thr pay and training is excellent.

Having watched my daughter go through it, I’d say make sure she knows what’s ahead. My daughter was lucky and got a training contract as she wishes to be a commercial litigation lawyer, and with one of the biggest global law firms but many of her cohorts, who also scored firsts, from her highly ranked Russel group uni, simply didn’t.

Law is not an easy route and very over subscribed.

Does her school offer core maths which is the equivalent of an AS? If so then I’d do that on top of her three ALevels

Another lawyer here saying she’s better to do the three she likes and get three A*s than try to do maths and get a B.

Having said that I’ve dealt with a lot of maths in my career and would have found it limiting if I’d stopped doing maths completely at age 16

Perhaps you read in a hurry, aroobmanzoor? There’s absolutely nothing in either of the OP’s two posts that suggest she is putting any pressure on her daughter to study any particular subject.

As a law student about tp start her first year at a top 3 Law school in the UK. I can assure you Oxbridge only want you to take what is written on their website as requirements. They do not care for a fourth subject, rather a well-rounded student with adequate experience in the field, a real interest in the subject and a great interview.

By putting so much pressure on your daughter to do a "harder" A-level you are just setting her up for failure in reality. There is no need to do unnecessary unhelpful subjects like maths for LLB. If anything she should be focusing on getting A* in just the three.

Here is the Oxford website and it has the requirements
www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses-listing/law-jurisprudence

Are they an admissions tutor for an Oxbridge college?

I’m not. One of my closest friends is; and half my closest associates are. I’m merely academically attached to an Oxbridge college. And a former lawyer. (With an Oxbridge law degree.)

Anyway, all the combinations the OP has listed sound perfectly fine for the purposes of getting in. But having a Maths A’Level, with a high grade, could be particularly helpful in seeking a training contract at the Bar, especially if she’s interested in commercial work. (I also worked briefly at the Bar Council sifting pupillage applications, post qualification. ) I know less about solicitors’ firms.)

But obviously a poor A’ Level Maths grade would be no use at all. She should certainly take the relevant subjects that she’s likely to do best in.

For what it's worth they only cared about LPC results. One of the partners did an undergrad degree in archaeology before doing a conversion course 🤷🏻‍♀️

I would honestly ask her to have a hard think about why she wants to study law. I fell into a job in law and went down the legal exec route but the four training contracts on offer at the firm where I worked attracted over 500 applications every year and paid terribly (18k in 2015). My own experience was that you were constantly threatened with losing your job and exceeding targets was met with huge increase in targets (my record was a 65% increase in one year having covered with 12 hour days and weekend work after a colleague was fired. I had exceeded my target by 60%). There is nothing worse than working in an office where they have an employment lawyer on hand to find a way to get rid of you if you were deemed of no use. I worked myself to the bone trying to prove I was worthy before realising they were taking the piss. The colleagues who had law degrees rather than falling into the jobs are equally disillusioned but feel like they can't leave having invested so much time and money so keep jumping from firm to firm.

Why are there so often interfering types who are sure they know everything when it’s likely they don’t? Are they an admissions tutor for an Oxbridge college? I don’t think there’s any need to “stand out” with a level choices and tbh there will be a lot of people with Maths A Level.
Having excellent a level predictions and having a passion for your subject is more likely to help you to get firstly an interview and then possibly an offer