Any lawyers on here that could give some advice to my dd age 15 ?

[LovelyYellowLabrador]

She is interested in studying law, she says she doesn’t want to be a barrister
Because she doesn’t want to have to reprint people that she can’t stand or have done terrible things …….

So she’s wondering what other areas of law she could go for

She particularly enjoys geography So wonder if environmental law a good area to aim towards ?

Just wondered if you had and general advice or tips for her
She’s on track for 10 GCSEs atm with predictions of all a grades
She’s a real grafter aswell

barrister, to family to conveyancing to employment, most people would recognise.

but when you go into a big commercial firm, say, the variety and range of specialisms is pretty endless.
Yes there’s things like enivronmental, planning, finance, corporate. I specialise in energy. There’s no end of specialisms!

Barristers also don’t just represent criminals they do commercial and family work also.

It in also important to recognise however that practising in environmental law or whatever in a commercial practice - isn’t really related to enjoying geography or specific subjects in school, it’s very different. The focus is on commerciality and legal issues.

My advice would be that work experience or even just shadowing lawyers/barristers is key. It’s the only way you really get to see what’s involved say to day - which is often a 100 miles away from what people think it is

There is also the option of working for non-commercial type bodies of course, or in-house working for companies/organisation directly.

It’s so so varied - and often people don’t really decide what to specialise in until after their degree, or some further training/work experience in my experience!

Hello, I’m not a barrister (I’m the child of a barrister and a solicitor though), I am a civil engineer. I work for the Environment Agency though, and we employ regionsl and National legal teams in which we have solicitors that specialise in the law in relation to flood defence and land drainage, environment pollution, ground water abstraction. estates management and so on. These solicitors do need to have an interest and understanding of geography.

Whilst I am not suggesting that your dd should set her sights on a single future employer, I just wanted to highlight an area of law/geography overlap. When we need to take a case to court, we use specialist counsel, we do not have in house barristers.

If she’s a genuinely exceptional student go for it. But it takes a lot to succeed and she’ll be expected to have excellent extra curricular achievements & work experience as well as the academics

You don't have to study law to be a lawyer and there are lots of people with law degrees who don't go on to practice law.

If she wants to keep her options open she could do a non law degree (I'd recommend still doing something fairly "traditional") and then convert (it takes a year).

I did law at university and I'm now an Employment solicitor which is an area I find really interesting but I'm not sure I'd have picked it at undergrad stage.

Law is a very broad church, I'd suggest she keeps her options open at this stage.

What grade is she actually working at? A grade isn’t a thing anymore, if that’s what her teachers have described it as I would be asking for confirmation of grade.

Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to give her the benefit of your wisdom
And experience
It’s not an area me or dh know anything at all about and we have no one in our family and friends that knows about this kind of stuff either
She doesn’t really have “excellent extra curricular achievements”
As she tends to enjoy things like crafting and spending time with friends etc outside of school but she works so hard

So grades 8

She is too early to pick her specialism. If she wants to study law, then do the right a levels to get into a good university. And as she does her degree she can pick her modules. If she aims to be a solicitor, then she will also do four different seats in her two year training contract, prior to qualifying into an area either she likes or can get a nq role in.

My concern is that she is saying some very immature things, which is due to her age. Irrelevant of what area of law you work in you cannot pick and choose your clients based on if you like them or not. Well not until you’re very very senior.

At this age, she’s potentially up to a nearly decade away from qualifying, and it’s a very competitive field. Very. So focusing on the best a levels to get her into a good university is the way forward at 15.

I did a seat in environmental law at a big city firm. It was depressing, because the people that could afford our fees were the ones whose activities were basically destroying the planet.

What I would say is don't worry too much about what area of law to aim for yet. People fall into all sorts of areas of law that they never would have expected when they set out, and it really doesn't matter at this stage, she'll find what suits her in time.

The best thing she can do is focus on building her CV. If she's not sporty, is there a student council, debating club, school newspaper, yearbook Committee etc she can join? Ideally you want something which showcases her intellectual strength and also something which gives her the opportunity to demonstrate team work.

One of the best things you can do is make sure she either gets a job or does proactive volunteering through sixth form, even if just in the summer holidays. I regularly interview candidates for training contracts, and those that have worked or have done lots of volunteering are far better placed to answer the situational questions. A lad the other day answered the "tell me about a time when you dealt with a difficult situation" question by telling me about when he was at work in the supermarket and a fight broke out between customers over a lack of social distancing and one guy was trying to batter another one with a bottle of lemonade and he had to keep calm, take charge of the situation, liaise with the police etc. Much more compelling and impressive than the time a candidate struggled to juggle their riding commitments and their clarinet practice. Guess which one got an offer?

Hello, I’m not a lawyer but I’m a tax adviser. I considered being a lawyer but didn’t pursue for similar reasons to your DD. Tax is legislation based so has some legal aspects. There are some very good school leaver programmes offered where you get qualifications and an apprenticeship. And re geography, Environmental Social & Governance is a massive topic in the tax/financial/business world right now. Worth considering perhaps?

I’m a barrister. She’s not ready to make this decision if she thinks being a barrister is necessarily about crime (if that’s what you mean by “having done terrible things”). She also needs to understand that justice requires giving a voice even to those who may have done terrible things. We are well past the era in which the accused was automatically denied representation in court.

Head down for the best possible grades. There’s plenty of time to learn more about the legal profession and decide whether it’s for her or not.

I have a lot of lawyers in my family.
Very hard as a lawyer to not end up advocating for someone (or an organisation) who hasn't done something bad, or whose motives/character might seem unpleasant.

So it helps if you understand the lawyers are not meant to be juries (they don't decide guilt), or arbitrators (judges) -- they are there to make sure justice happens. There is NO such thing as Justice if the very bad people don't also have access to good quality representation.

That said, there may be the least contact with the 'bad' parties if you work for charities or human rights -- also the very least money. Like cops with victims, lawyers expect their clients to often misrepresent, obfuscate & lie, the difficulty in identifying the 'bad' people can be high.

Research lawyer is possible, too -- but they are often working on cases that involve trying to help some bad people (or corporations, or irresponsible govt, etc).

Totally agree that many who study law do a different job later, which is fine. Notaries, paralegals, legal secretaries, academics, etc.

I’d also advise her, that as well as spending time researching law degrees and the various routes into law, the different universities, and the best a levels to get to the uni she would prefer, she also spends some time researching the field of law and practicing it be it via barrister or solicitor, and the very many different fields of law. From proffessional liability, to cyber to construction to commercial litigation and everything in between,

She also needs to recognise it’s a long hard path and competition is fierce. The numbers are something like 18 percent succeed and get a training contract (required to be a solicitor generally at this stage) and five percent get a pupillage to be a barrister. The other 82 and 95 percent respectively do not succeed and do other things. And they are all top students.

It’s also years of study and hard study at that, so it’s something she needs to understand fully and be very committed to.

She’s still very young, so has time, but what she qualifies into is very far down her list of priorities right now. It’s still on it, but focusing on a levels, university choices, understanding what she would be getting into and what would be expected of her, is more critical at this stage.

You can also help her by spending some time googling it youtself, the info is easily available, and then talking it through with her.

Property and planning law are good progressions from geography.

Reading with intrigue

Here’s a useful and accessible brochure from the Bar Council about becoming a barrister, aimed at young people.

What about employment law?

I'm a lawyer. Wanted to be a criminal lawyer since I was 12. Did crime for 10 years and then bolted to regulation. There are endless options. Get her to do the degree first and then see where life takes her.

As long as she picks “serious” academic subjects she can keep her options open and decide to go for law at any stage. Make sure she doesn’t choose any non academic type subjects for A levels though I wanted to do home economics A level thankfully my dad stopped me - ended up being a City solicitor would not have got there with that a level!

Training contracts are like hens' teeth at present. She needs to assess when she's doing A'Levels and be aware that Solicitor/barrister trajectories are only at oresent available for the Creme de la Creme from the Russell Group universities: specialisms that I am aware of:

Employment
Property
Family
Private client
Tax
Immigration
Data protection
Patents
Crime
Dispute resolution

It's an almost endless list. DH specialised in tax: cross border transactions, taxation of investment funds, and a lot of EEC related work.

I would say don't get hide bound on the traditional entry A'Level subjects: history, English, classics, etc. A lot of the DC's friends who are presently doing law have entered via stem subjects. A language helps.

Yes any subject is fine as long as it’s perceived as “proper” science / maths / language / humanities etc . Just not something like sociology or law A level as not respected. Broke my heart that my magic circle firm would not give my extremely able para legal with a 2.1 in American Studies a training contact as they scoffed at her degree. Unfair but there you have it.

@JessyCarr

I’m a barrister. She’s not ready to make this decision if she thinks being a barrister is necessarily about crime (if that’s what you mean by “having done terrible things”). She also needs to understand that justice requires giving a voice even to those who may have done terrible things. We are well past the era in which the accused was automatically denied representation in court.

Head down for the best possible grades. There’s plenty of time to learn more about the legal profession and decide whether it’s for her or not.

That's harsh - because your requirement means that the vast majority of children from poor backgrounds who don't have barristers in their family or the parents of their friends 'aren't ready to make that decision' right at the point that they need to be making it in terms of college applications/A Level selection.

I would recommend NOT doing a law degree. Do something she is really interested in (honestly, law as a degree is pretty dull), and then convert afterwards.

I don't think she understands about Barristers! There are far more fields than criminal defence barristers. I suggest she visits the courts in your city as an observer now to get an idea. If she likes debating, she could do some of that in sixth form too.

But really, I would advise not to do a law degree. And yes, go for the best university she can get into with her strongest subjects. All she needs to do now is aim for 9s. Pick 3 traditional subjects at A Level and do very well!

I don't think the pp was harsh about understanding of barristers' work. DH read history and made his decision about law when he was at Oxford and becoming more knowledgeable about the wider world as a working class northern lad. His only regret was never having studied Latin and having to learn what even some of his public school history contemporaries were wanging on about in their spare time.

Even 40 years ago pupillages were hard to get and hard to fund. A keen interest in politics, an accomplished amateur cricket career and A'Level French and near fluency helped even then.

DH was penniless when I met him and wondering if he could continue as the necessary expenses outweighed the income. He always looked quite sympathetically on letters from young people doing A'Levels who were forward enough to write to him. Providing their letters were grammar perfect and well constructed.