To consider retraining as a barrister?

[princessglitter]

I am a teacher in middle management with a fairly secure, reasonably satisfying career. I have always dreamed of a career in the law. Originally I considered becoming a solicitor, doing a conversion course and going down the LPC route.

However, at the last minute, I lost my nerve and pulled out of my college course. The idea of that amount of debt was horrifying to me.

I trained as a teacher, but has always felt unfulfilled if I'm honest. As I've got older, the idea of retraining as a barrister has become more appealing, but I am acutely aware that so many fall by the wayside. I have secured a mini-pupillage this summer, which I am extremely excited about. I am also going to apply for vacation schemes at solicitors' firms to enable me to make an informed decision.

I do have a strong academic background and an Oxbridge 2.1 - but I know that that alone will not be enough.

Am I unreasonable to take a risk (with my husband's support) and consider a career in the law? Possibly as a barrister, but I intend to research this thoroughly with some real experience in both areas and different specialisms.

The difference between being a commercial barrister and a criminal one is as different as being a GP and a heart sugeon.

Not only is the actual knowledge required and the system within which you operate completely different but your day to day working life is totally different.

I know commercial lawyers who can (almost!) count on their fingers the number of times they have actually appeared in court. They deal in written work, with the odd short hearing (day or a two at a time), which can be an awful lot more flexible than trial work.

Criminal barristers spend virtually every day in Court, often for weeks ata time. Court operates 5 days a week. If your trial runs for 5 days or a month you don't get any flexibility you are in court each of those days. Theoretically you could do a month on a month off but there is no such thing as a three or four day week at the criminal bar.

On the rare occasion I would book time out for papers "something" would always come up and I would be schlepping around doing odds and sods in order to avert some disaster for someone more senior. My senior clerk even called me the night before my wedding to ask if I could do a short hearing beforehand on the basis that the church was near the court.

"Am very ambitious and feel a need to be highly successful at whatever I do. Without career fulfilment I become too obsessed with trying to mould my children into perfect little beings, which can't be good..."

PG, I am a 10+ yrs PQE solicitor and I agree with a huge amount of the advice on here, given by people with direct experience of every part of the coal face. My tuppence ha'penny is to look at what you say from the perspective of your statement above. The fact is that no matter how well you do in the GDL and how good an understanding of the law you require, you are unlikely to feel remotely "successful" for at least 5 years PQE ( so 9 year from now!) because that's how long it takes to have any level of confidence in what you are doing. That's all very well when you start off as a new trainee/pupil in your first job but to go back to being a rookie when you have been in a position where you are trusted by parents and other teachers, have the confidence to stand up in front of a class or an assembly and know what to say and how to say it, where children look up to you as an inspiration and a guiding force in their lives, where more junior colleagues seek your advice....

I can say with all honesty that being a trainee is crap, two years of not being allowed (or knowing how) to speak directly to clients would be mind-numbing at your stage of professional life. Being a junior lawyer is in my experience like doing an endless stream of essays for a highly critical but disinterested teacher - don't expect hours and hours of patient teaching and discussion when you get it wrong, which you invariably will just becuase he/she has a different style to you. Nobody taking you seriously without "partner" on your business card, having to cc a partner on every single thing that you send out (this is not egomania on their part by the way, it's required by their insurers).

And if you do get into court, know that (even at a more senior level) about 65% of what you will be talking about is procedural technicalities, admissibility of evidence, adjournments, disclosure, why document X has to be added to Bundle D at new tab 16B, all under the steely gaze of a judge whose sole aim is to make you feel as stupid as possible - very little erudite debate about the substantive legal and factual issues. You can see that for yourself in the mini pupillages though, just try not to get too rose-tinted.

As others have suggested, you must have a high degree of ability, experience and maturity in teaching, looking at the posts on here there are a lot of people who are crying out for better quality people to whom they can entrust their children's education, there are advocacy opportunities on panels and things - if it's success you want then going back to the beginning is the last way to attain that.

As a final word, if you do get on vac schemes with law firms, my experience of having vac students is that it's very very hard to find any work for them which accurately replicates what it is really like doing the job, so my advice would be to use it as a good way of making contacts and to capitalise on your relative maturity by getting some of the 5-6 pqe solicitors out to lunch and grilling them about what they actually do. And one thing they might tell you is this - timesheets. A total and utter bloody nightmare. Think VERY VERY hard before embarking an any career that requires you to record every single thing that you do all day in 6 minute units. If vac students were required to fill them in then the number of applicants for TCs would halve, I guarantee it.

Good luck with your decision.

I really truly wouldn't (and I am one!) A 2.1 from Oxbridge genuinely wouldn't even get you an interview in my set, and we're not super special by any means. Plus there is a definite bias against older pupils. If you did get pupillage and then tenancy, you've got a good few years getting sent all over the place for sod all money (the fat cat barrister is a myth for all but about 0.001%). And out of that sod all you have to pay chambers 25%, and pay your own travel, pension, life insurance etc, which doesn't leave much left over for having a life! Plus childcare is an absolute bitch when you don't have set hours and leaving early probably isn't an option. Oh, and no, of course you can't drop your trial because your child is suddenly ill and so on and so on.

I love my job, it is a huge amount of fun, but it is very hard.

Oh my God I've just read Xenia's post! It is certainly the case that there are a handful of commercial barristers who earn £1m a year (before tax, chambers' contribution etc, so probably about £300-350k net). They are so few and far between as to be a different species from the rest of us! Irishbird speaks sense!

Please don't make a decision like this based on such silly comments - it's like deciding to be an actor because Tom Cruise earns £20m a film.

I would agree with theQueen above that there is a big difference between the commercial bar and criminal. I accept there are some family law partners who earn a lot - I think top of equity at Farrars is about £700k a year but on the whole if your clients are criminals or just individuals without much money (ie most family clients) or is the state you will not get paid what clients can pay you if they are massive plcs. So women need to pick tactically IF it matters to them if they earn £600k rather than £60k. If it doesn't matter to them and they think £6k being 3x whjat most people earn is pretty good then that's fine but don't be under illusions.

I speak to school girls all the time who want to do law and want to do criminal or family and they have not been told the differences in pay between being an equity partner doing comemrcial work in a City firm and doing high street legal aid work in criminal law. Knowledge is power. Mind you there;'s nothing to stop them doing internet searches and finding out. I didn't mean family law wasn't always intellectually satisfying (and I read family cases for fun even though I don't do that (I don't watch TV)) but run of the mill Mrs Smith and her husband divorcing with hardly a penny in the world is not likely to be very intellectual taxing and you're not likely to make much money out of her.

Also yes most people don't earn £500kl a year but some do. Most women ore often limit themselves through low expectations they put on themselves and by not asking for more pay than any external factor and we need them to break through that and think I'm the best in the UK and anyone who is lucky enough to get me deserves to pay a lot for that (rather than sadly the all too typical mentality - it's a total fluke I am here, I am useless and one day I will be found out).

teenieleek I read your comments on vac schemes with interest. I did one recently and I had to fill in time sheets. and I had virtually no time for lunch. On one day I had a quick sandwich (20 minutes) with a couple of 3-4 pqe - every other day I ate at my desk while working (not even whilst reading the newspaper). I didn't go near a photocopier - in fact I even asked other people to photocopy for me . I was given some really interesting stuff to do (which may well not reflect the reality). However, my experience may have been different - it was in an area of law I've published a bit on (though only on a small subset of it) and was outside the company's normal graduate vac scheme.

irish, that is not the experience of most commercial clients. I am seeing a QC tomorrow. He is not cheap but he is good.

hatwoman, it does sound like the firm you vac schemed with were able to find a more productive role for you due to your specific experience, though I am surprised by the timesheets as most firms would have difficulty getting cleints' agreement to pay for the services of an untrained work experience person. Perhaps they were just asking you to record so you could see what it was like, or for their own internal management/record-keeping purposes, or maybe they sold you in as some sort of "expert".

I wasn't, however, suggesting that vac scheme students should be asked to photocopy and make tea, I just meant that doing discrete research or document review tasks is not really the same as being part of a team handling a matter long term, or having your own files. To be honest I don't really think that being a trainee gives you a completely rounded sense of the reality of the qualified job either.

On the solicitor side, £700k is also rare. I suspect that you can only get that at the top 20 or so firms in the UK and then only as a relatively senior partner (i.e. 8 yrs+ as partner, which means about 16 yrs+ qualified, which means about 20 yrs+ from where the OP currently is).

And you will need to give work your all (long hours, interrupted holidays and weekends, cancelled plans, never making it home for bedtime) in order to get there.

teenieleek - I was confused and a bit shocked by the timesheet thing - I don't know what they were for. Also I'm under no illusions about the week being representative of what life would be like there - I was given 5 or 6 discrete tasks, each for different (very interesting) cases - nothing team-oriented, nothing administrative/organisational or with much of an overview of an entire case. It was a bit like looking at a single piece of a jigsaw, coming to the conclusion that it had blue bits and some yellow and suggesting where it might fit. it was a great week.

as an ex-solicitor with barrister pals, agree with just about everyone on the thread (well apart from Xenia). Though I do think Xenia's pep talk about having high expectations for yourself is a message worth reiterating.

Would suggest if you are interested in criminal law, spending a day or two of school holidays watching proceedings in magistrates' court to give you a feel for what it is like in earlier years of a criminal barrister's career.

PG I think I saw on this thread that you are 31?

FWIW, a lot of people seem to have a career crisis around that point. I know I did. I considered medicine as alternative career, or going back to the independent Bar where I started out rather than working in a lawfirm. I was a bit too gutless to make that big a change so moved firms instead. It was a disaster and I wish I had stayed where I was. I moved again very quickly and am in a decent place but I wish I was back in the first firm.

I know two other lawyers who left the law around that age and went to study, planning a career change. One did some kind of politics masters, worked in government afterwards and hated it. He's now back in the law. The other did a hugely expensive MBA. He then worked as a consultant for a while. Guess what he's doing now? Yep, he's back in the law.

I think around 30 is a common point in your life to start questioning what you are doing and looking for something better. But a radical change isn't always the best thing.

Oooh, I so don't agree with the comment that some juniors don't earn a million pounds plus. Some commercial/tax/euro barristers do. I have a friend who is a junior barrister in a very large euro case (8 weeks) at the moment, his brief fee is £250k for 8 weeks. I reckon he'll earn over £1m this year no problem at all.

I actually think that Xenia is right on this one. We need women to stop thinking that family/criminal is family-friendly/women-friendly. In fact, what is super-friendly is being well respected enough to take time out and work as hard as you like and still have clients who want to come back to you.

I posted yesterday and have been thinking about this whole topic. Money can be v good, lawyers forget how little many others earn ,so when I was 35 I was on about 75 k ( in 2004) at a mid range firm in London, doing general litigation, were I still there, i would prob be on about £100 now . I was never going to be a partner - that is anohter issue, a lot of who yuo know not what yuo know for the partnership race, but that is a whole thread in itself....I left after 2 kids as I could not perform as well as the youngsters who could stay until 10pm every night, be there at the drop of a hat etc and I wanted to move to a different legal job on my terms, raher than being squeeze out by firm when my inability to perform to previous level, due ot childcare etc was noted.

I love the law and have generally enjoyed beign a solicitor, but I would not start out at 31 wiht a couple of kids, as yuo will not be able to cope with the demands made of yu in the early part of career and a family. Maybe yuo will - I do not think I would have been able to. The law is actually quite hard sometimes - pre kids, if I had a new area I foudn tricky or a difficult case, I could and did soend weekends masterign it - try that with kids - impossible.

Re pay at the Bar - I am sure that in the Euro, high end commericial silks £1 million is not out of the way, but in generla litigation, civil commerical, in London, workign really hard and being good, prob around £150k pre expenses. A lot on money, but these people have no life - iof not workign they are out drinking with solicitors. That is another thing - the drinking adn going out etc - most lawyers are "work hard play hard" people and firms encourage it as bonding. Pre kids I loved it, loved going out, flirting, drinking etc, tellign war stories etc. Post kids, yuo just can't do it and eventually yuo become the mumsy one in a bad M and S suit, bought cos you are goign to lose that last half stone of baby weight before yuo buy Hobbs etc - who never goes out.

!

..may be although it's the ones who go out drinking who tend to be fat of both sexes by the time they reach my age (40s), not those with children who come home and eat proper meals.

OP

I'm a solicitor (Oxbridge 2:1, magic circle firm till 5 years PQE) then PSL at regional firm part time now I have my DD and unborn DC2.

You're getting a lot of negative comments on this thread - sorry that this is another - you say you are looking for an academic challenge but in my experience the CPE and LPE (at the College of Law at the tail end of the 90s) was mind-blowingly spoon-feedy, box ticky, and the total antithesis of the sort of intellectual experience I'd enjoyed at college. There is a set syllabus to cover to meet requirements, the teachers are often ex lawyers who left the profession for what ever reason and who are not that enthused by what they are (who could be when you have to go through one set scenario in the class and they have to tick all the boxes you've got on your crib sheet to get the marks).

Much of the work as a solicitor at least is about managing a business - correspondence, organising meetings, chasing people up, trying to decide what to bill. THere are no marks for being a great academic lawyer, in fact you will be trained not to refer too much to the law as clients will see it as "legalese". You won't get much chance to sit and read cases in depth for their own sake. You'll have to take a "commercial approach" which makes you more of a business person in some ways than an academic.

Barristering I am sure has more scope for getting into the detail of the law, but again at the end of the day the clients want a commercial answer and they are not too interested in it as an academic proposition.

I'm happy with what I do now - work for a great firm as a PSL - so do get to spend time researching the law and helping fee earners understand the latest position (which they haven't time to do because they are too busy managing the business that is a law firm!) I'll never reach dizzy heights financially but do earn a decent amount and can work pretty much 9 to 5 with occasional rushes. I will never have the status of being a partner, but as a senior PSL you can develop a reputation for being a helpful consultant and find that you get senior people calling you to ask you for your advice, which is nice.

Could you think about that route? You would probably need 4 to 5 years PQE before you could make the move across into a PSL role though.

Should read "not that enthused by what they are doing" ....