Retraining as a solicitor

[FlotSHAMnJetson]

I'm 35, a SAHM to two young children. I would love to retrain as a solicitor, has anyone ever done this? How do you go about doing it? It's what I always wanted to do as a child and I ended up in accountancy instead.

Where on earth would I start?

Why do you want to be a solicitor? What areas are of interest to you?

I’d start by looking at firms you want to work for. Some sponsor the GDL, which you’d need to do, and others don’t.

I’d also attend as many open days to see if your ideas of what it is to be a solicitor are realistic.

I would imagine you’ll have to take a substantial pay cut compared to what you earned previously and it can take many years to earn decent money, depending on where you live and what area you want to practice. Some of the London NQs are on £90k but that’s not the norm and the regionals are substantially lower.

You also need to have robust childcare in place to undertake a training contract. Even in the more family friendly firms, it’s impossible to keep to 8-5 whilst training - you can gain more flexibility the more senior you get though.

The Law Society is a pretty good place to start: www.lawsociety.org.uk/law-careers/becoming-a-solicitor/

OP if you search on here "training to be a solicitor" there are around half a dozen posts on this, some of which I, as a former solicitor, have contributed to. I qualified 20 years ago and in those days it was tough to get a training contract and expensive to do the courses. There were 1000 people who applied to my medium sized city firm for 5 jobs and now it is even more competitive especially with so many more universities offering law. I often had to work overnights especially in my 2 year training contract and leaving on time was never possible. Have you looked into it or just fancy it? I was single at the time and had no life. I worked such long hours, relying on sandwiches and ready meals, always tired, put on weight due to the long hours, lack of sleep and propping myself up with crap food. It was all I could do to look after my cat and weekends would be sleeping to catch up, getting groceries and preparing my work clothes.
Good luck if you decide to proceed but it is very hard now to get a training contract and some do not pay your tuition fees for law school so alot of money for you to find.

This question always gets asked on here.

The answer is always 'don't do it'.

I speak as a solicitor.

Agreed Thunder am so glad I left and much happier and healthier now.

Also interested

@ThunderInMyHeart what reasons for not doing it?

Seems impossible to find a decent career these days

I should probably just learn to be grateful for what I have rather than chasing 'grass is greener' dreams.

As pps have said these threads come up roughly every 3/4 weeks so do a search and you'll find that many of us have contributed many times.

If you have outstanding academics, excellent and relevant work experience, a stash of cash to pay for law school, the ability to move to whatever part of the country might have a training contract and then the same again to secure an NQ job, are willing to sacrifice a few years of your life to low paid training where you are expected to be available at all times and then fancy a career with dreadful work life balance where contrary to popular belief you still might only ever earn a maximum of circa £40k then I say give it a shot.

Otherwise just don't.

And I speak as someone still in the profession at a senior level (20 years PQE)

@cloudtree
I suppose it's a bit like medicine in many respects. I do have the academics - Cambridge Masters, plenty of savings, OH has flexible job etc but given what you've said, the disruption to my comfortable (albeit stressful) life would probably not be worth it.

I think the final result might be better than my current job but the training and sacrifice would be a bit undertaking.

If I was SAHM like OP with nothing to lose then I would go for it.

It’s honestly a really bad idea.

The whole profession is struggling.

It costs a lot of money to do the academic training, and then your chances of getting a training contract are very low.

You may well end up as a paralegal on minimum wage and never actually qualify.

Even if you qualify then redundancies are high in law firms due to falling work. Hours are long, it’s very pressured, and your chances of making partner are worse than ever.

Don’t do it.

I think the thing people often forget is the disruption to your existing life. Students straight out of law school at one end of the country can move to the other end of the country to start a training contract and then somewhere else entirely two years later when they qualify. Those with partner and children generally can't. That means that instead of potentially hundreds of jobs available to them they are looking at a couple of local(ish) roles (if they're lucky). And they then have to compete with hundreds of others for those couple of jobs.

I literally went Midlands to North West to North East to Midlands to South to London to Midlands

Interesting reading, thank you!

Money isn't a problem but moving is (husband has to stay where we are for work, long hours in reality would be (child care, horses etc)

Why do I want to do it?? Because I love methodical fact based research and I love being the person that finds the loophole in the small print, but what I'm getting from this is that when I tossed the accountancy/legal coin as a teenager it fell the wrong way.

If that's the kind of work you would love, have you thought about a move into audit? There are many types of audit (so not just ticking through invoices) and there is a lot more judgement and research than a straight accountancy type job. Internal audit doesn't involve long hours particularly and the work you would do depends on the organisation you are working in - you can really tailor it.

Good progression opportunities too. There is a current trend of promoting previous auditors to senior management positions in FTSE 350 companies because of the regulatory insight they bring, rather than the strategic management decisions which are apparently in oversupply.

I wouldn’t do it again given my time over. It’s bad enough at 21 without responsibilities, but training would have a big impact on family life, for a not particularly exciting or rewarding career. 15 yr pqe.