Would you recommend a career in the Law?

[brutplonk]

DD is very interested in becoming a city lawyer... think she has her eyes on all the glitz n glamour and not the reality. If you are a city lawyer, or a lawyer in general. Would you do it again if you were 21 again?

Yes, but..
It is hard to get a traineeship. Like, really hard.

If I didn’t want a family Then yes

No... search for a thread on here called should I refrain to be a lawyer

Retrain not refrain

Nope...

To add...when I started out in London in 1993, it was hard but fun. Now it's just hard.

Get her to read this old thread in Classics:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_classics/1811553-City-lawyers-I-am-about-to-become-one-of-you-Please-advise-me

Getting a training contract in a city law firm is incredibly difficult. Not only do you have to have top degrees from a top university but you also have to have lots of varied charity/volunteering work on your CV to make you stand out. Most of the trainees from my city law firm were picked from a summer student scheme (work experience) which is also incredibly hard to get selected for.

Once you are a trainee you basically spend 2 years being the office dogs body and working long hours.

Obviously once qualified you get a massive salary and if your DD is ambitious there are a lot more female partners in law firms than 20 years ago. However, the female partners I have worked with either have no family or have had children who have been shipped off to boarding school and they never see them.

And most law is not glitz and glamour, just paperwork, deadlines and time recording.

Will read those thanks!

Going against the grain here, but I'm pleased I followed a career in law and am still (age 40) really enjoying it. I trained and worked in a magic circle firm in London. I took 8 years out to have and raise children before finding a part-time in house role. Despite my big career break, I was able to find a well paid, part time and really interesting job. I think a law degree is a good all round foundation degree that provides the opportunity to go on to lots of interesting roles. Being in-house, my role is a lot more commercial and I'm considering now doing further finance studies to move into a more operational (COO) type role. I'd say to your DD to go for it.

Thanks! Dd is already at Oxbridge studying history

No I think there are 1) more interesting jobs or 2) better paid jobs - law isn’t really either. I mean it is well paid but you have to work really long hours - if it’s the money,
go into banking. If you want an interesting career, do something else.

I trained at a city firm 2008-10. It's hard work and not at all glamourous. Lots of photocopying and proof reading. The hours are long - 12 hour days are the norm and she'll regularly work into the early hours.

On the flip side, the money is good even as a trainee and the quality of training is excellent. A city firm training contract on your CV opens doors for the rest of your career.

I now work in house for a large London based tech company. The work is interesting and the hours are reasonable. It'll never be a 9-5 job but thanks to modern technology working from home is increasingly common and I can fit the work around my life to some degree. I don't earn as much as my peers in private practice but I'm still very well paid compared to any normal job.

Hope that helps. I'd be happy to chat to your DC about my experiences if helpful.

My sister is a lawyer in a large prestigious London firm and these descriptions have not been her reality.
Sure there’s been the odd week when the hours were long in the early days but doesn’t everybody in a decent job get that?
On the whole she seems to get plenty of annual leave, is paid a fortune and doesn’t work weekends or nights. She can work from home easily and does so once or twice a week at least to suit her.
She has raised a family and managed to get to more plays and concerts than I ever did for my kids as a junior doctor.
She went into a section that is a bit more of a twilight area so not corporate which can be ridiculous for big all nighters and deadlines.
She’s slowly worked her way up to associate partner and is paid amazingly and seems way less stressed than those of her siblings incl me who did medicine and accountancy and managerial posts in big business.

If I didn’t want a family Then yes

Yes this, I gave up my legal career because it was, for me, incompatible with family life.

If I wasn’t sure if I wanted children, I’d absolutely do it again!

with an Oxbridge degree, she'll have a good chance at getting a training contract. But personality wise, ime you need to be socially skilled and v resilient.

It really depends on lots of things. I’m a criminal barrister. The work can be repetitive - it is highly stressful - it is fun and rewarding - it is not well paid once tax vat clerks fees and chambers rent plus travel etc are sliced off - other areas at the bar are better paid (commercial, chancery etc) - it is bloody hard work and you need to be physically and mentally robust - there is sexism and old boys network alive and well - it can be hard to have children although some sets are good at ensuring part time can work or those with children are able
To function !
From what I see of city firms I personally am so glad I went to the bar as have zero interest in corporate highly competitive stuff but it really suits some.
Good luck to her. Do what you can to rid her of the ‘glitz’ stuff. It’s higjly seductive for young people and very misleading. Lots enter the profession wholly unsuited because of it.

I read history at Oxford and joined a Magic Circle firm. I qualified into corporate litigation.

Firstly, the conversion course spoon feeds you the basics of law. I always felt at a disadvantage to those who read law as a 1st degree.

Secondly, it’s well paid - but not as well paid as many City jobs. As two 2 PQE lawyers, we could just about stretch to afford a 2 bedroom flat in Islington (ex Council property).

Re glamorous, as a trainee I spent 4 months trial bundling. Basically collating papers. All day every day. Often until 3am, every weekend and sometimes all night. Napping on the office floor next to the bins in a mouse infested office! My health took a long time to recover and I learnt nothing.

Things improved on qualification as the work became slightly more interesting. I had some client contact and some research and drafting. However, it is very document heavy. Average day would be 9:30 to 10pm. Friendships declined as I was never available.

Once I became a senior associate things improved a lot. Much more autonomy, the juniors were left to deal with the shitty document reviews and I could run the cases. Going to court and having the opportunity to do some of the advocacy was pretty glamorous. However this was 7 years after joining the firm.

Just want to make your DD aware what lurks below the glossy brochures.

Interesting stuff! Quite depressinf after such hard work that one could only afford an ex council flat, but that’s how London property is isn’t it Perhaps with Brexit house prices will continue to drop..

Absolutely I’m trying to get rid of this image of glitzy life of business flights to NYC then Tokyo etc. I’ve watched some promo grad vids from the top firms and many wheel out lines such as “Are you ready to be the best? push one step further” etc
Whereas, as some say; it’s just document checks as a trainee!

She has stated isn’t broody at all. However, nor was I at her age

What an interesting thread. I'm not a lawyer but I'm nosy.

I know there's different areas of law etc but what do they do? Obviously some are straight forward like employment or family (divorce?) but what do corporate or commercial lawyers do?

Hope you don't mind me asking OP.

I think the 'Do you want to have kids' thing is a total red herring. Im on mat leave at the moment and I can either go back to my in-house role after (FTSE100) or do a myriad of other roles within the profession - E.g. become a knowledge lawyer, teach at law school or, most lucratively, go freelance (about £600-700 per day). There's all sorts of non traditional paths in the law now - it's not just join a city firm and stay there forever in the hope of getting partnership. I wouldn't have enjoyed that regardless of whether I wanted a family. She should do whatever she wants career wise and then figure out the family bit later, the world of work is way more flexible than it used to be and will be even more so by the time she's considering kids.

I absolutely love my job in property law and can't imagine doing anything else. I have a young family and work for a high end but non-city law firm in the northwest. My firm is amazing. At least half the partners are female and there is more females than males across the whole firm.

Yes, the hours are long as a trainee but it's only two years and then it becomes a lot more manageable. My advice would be to look at smaller, off of the city firms for the first few years and then she can look at moving to a city firm if she wants to. Although the chances of becoming a partner would be higher in a smaller firm.

It really depends on the firm. Some of them provide world class training and very exciting opportunities. Others just use young lawyers as slaves pretty much (some of them even have sleeping quarters in their offices). Her background is going to prove problematic. Training contracts are becoming rare and it’s becoming increasingly rare to get in via alternative routes (e.g. silex, paralegal then training contract etc). Is she going to get a first? That’s pretty much essential. Then she will need to do her GDL. Alternatively postgrads are increasingly desirable. Another thing to consider is her intellectual capacity. Life at the top of a big firm is great but many people get stuck in the middle when they hit an intellectual glass ceiling. The pay is good there but hours are long. Many also find it quite humiliating. Success in law requires a great deal of creativity and intelligence. Most people aren’t cut out for it. Obviously some people slip through the net when a vacancy comes up and there are no good options so the firm promotes soneone who has worked consistently over a long period of time but that is becoming increasingly rare. You see a lot of it in the older generation but the young ones these days are a different breed. It’s ibteresting to observe. You have the ones who went in for a steady job like their fathers before them and then you have another group who have a killer instinct sitting just beneath the surface. They cut through the rest like a hot knife through butter. Hard to compete with that. She should also consider whether the is actually interested. It’s impossible to be successful without really getting the law and in order to get it one has to enjoy it and be interested in it. There needs to be an intellectual thirst. Many develop this during their degree. Law can be really fun. But a lot of people hate it. If she can’t get into it then maybe she should consider consultancy instead. A lot of people go from a law degree into consultancy because it’s a bit more interesting in some ways.

Of course I don’t mind Wakk, more info is good all round:)

She has been given the advice by a friend who’s training at the moment to look at the less “big name” firms. She’s applied for some schemes at some so hopefully she will find an insight somewhere. She is already finding it brutal with several rejections for schemes after spending hours and hours and hours on written applications.

She is fairly determined, but the image you portray racedriver is pretty scary. Not meaning to doubt you,
but has anyone else here found it that bad?

In regards to intelligence, I as her mum would like to say she is pretty smart. She did well in her a levels, and got into Oxbridge off her own steam. She was actually the first in 5 years of her school
to do so..

I also didn’t know the GDL was becoming a less viable route?