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.

I certainly agree that most of us who work for ourselves don't turn down work we can do. Obviously if it's something we know nothing about we turn it down all the time or it's never put our way. However if you're earning quite a bit then you do have some flexibility. The impetus however is from within you not some boss telling you the call centre operative to work harder so that makes it much more manageable. I know people who have decided not to work on Sundays because they can live on what they earn Monday to Friday and 52% tax and NI just tips them over into thinking they would rather spend the time with the family, not wanting to work so hard for half the day to give it away on silly wars and benefit claimants and the idle (and indeed the deserving). Others will earn what they can. I genuinely often work because I like the intellectual challenge in it as much as the money.

I don't think we can disagree tha tpeople earn a lot. Until I saw her age I didn't think the sums above were even particularly high actually.

I think it's terrily important that teenage girls know that teaching earns you £x and being a surgeon Y and hairdressing Z and top commercial £x and legal aid barrister work £A etc.

There is also a sexism you never get in groups of men on many places where women post that somehow women being gentle sweet non capitalist moral little flowers who are devoted to good works like a modern day Florence Nightingale will not sully their little hands with seeking to earn £1m a year because it is wrong and they should leave that to those with a big swinging penis. If you believe in God you can as a woman do more of God's work if you earn over £200k than £20k and probably have more fun in the meantime. Go for it.

Regarding your last point, that rather depends on what you're doing to get the money. And before anyone gets hysterical or defensive, no of course I'm not suggesting commercial law is intrinsically immoral, or anything of that ilk.

I would hope most lawyers were bound by conduct rules which means they don't do wrong things to get the money although you get the odd one siphoning off £1m in expenses etc. Obviously if people are communists then they would not be happy with acting for any business or indeed any client who personally pays them and there will be a continuum from there. When China decided to pay dustbin men more than doctors things didn't go very well. It didn't really work.

Lawyers are, although as you say we all know not everyone sticks to them. Not every high earner is a lawyer though.

As for the communist stuff, I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. There are certainly people earning lots of money for doing things many would consider unethical, though. No getting round that, even if we confine ourselves to people who are acting within the law. You can earn a lot of money doing things that are the absolute opposite of 'God's work'- presuming you mean what I think you mean by that term. This is the case even if we exclude people who earn their money in illegal ways. (I assume it's common ground that someone earning 200k a year through something awful like sex trafficking is morally worse than someone earning 15k a year as a childminder, even if the richer person gave most of it to good causes).

"From my experience of the bar, it is the publicly funded work that is the most family-friendly. Ok, you do need to have reliable alternative childcare for when you get stuck in or called into court unexpectedly, but generally, your solicitor- client is not going to expect you to be working at 9pm every evening, because they will be at home with their children also."

I disagree that publicly funded work at the bar is family friendly. It's not unusual to get papers in at 4pm for a final hearing the next morning. Your solicitor might not care whether you work 7pm til midnight or get up at 4am, but they'd expect the work to be done.

It was Blankfein of Goldman Sachs who had the famous line of doing God's work as indeed they are do and we do. Just because people get paid doesn't morally sully the work. A nurse is not doing more of God's work because she is paid less than a surgeon and the social utility in aiding commerce which ensures the poor are better fed than in the African state I am in today is huge.

Anyway, all good fun and I just think more women would do better in thinking long term in what pays what.

Nobody said getting paid sullies the work. I don't work for free either. We all have to eat, no? But the fact is that it isn't just about how much money you give to others, either through tax or charity. It's also about how you get it. So a person selling arms to a regime that will use them on its own people in unprovoked attacks, even if they give all their money away, does less of 'God's work' than someone whose work is in trying to stop such abuses from happening. Or even than someone who earns their money from something completely unrelated. Like cleaning or architecture or scriptwriting or insurance- all socially useful and valid jobs.

As for the pay, that's one of a number of factors. It just isn't the only one. I agree with you that teenage girls need good careers advice. They need to think hard about what they might want. Women do get channelled towards certain occupations and fields sometimes- although you don't seem to take into account the fact that if large numbers of women do a previously male job, it always becomes less prestigious. And regarding choosing a legal specialism, it definitely is a good idea not to rule stuff out before you've tried it. I'd advise anyone to get as wide a variety of work experience as possible.

I don't think there is anything wrong with Tablevamps figures, nor her description of her working week but obviously I do not know her area of law.

But in my experience not every week is like that and it is extremely difficult to plan to finish by 2pm every day and still make a good living.

Sometimes I have hardly any work, yet seemingly earn lots.
Other weeks I work ridiculous hours and seem to make very little.
I estimate, even with a good accountant I take home about 45% of my gross (net of VAT) earnings.

For lower earners (and I am thinking lower level crime and family) who are likely to see about to see a 10-15% decrease in earnings from October, it can be very hand to mouth and stressful when work is not on.

*When China decided to pay dustbin men more than doctors things didn't go very well. It didn't really work.

Funnily enough, where I live, it was in the local paper that refuse collectors (never seen a female one) earn up to 40k per year, including overtime. Thats more than many junior solicitors and amazing for unskilled manual work. Although considering they don't collect when the weathers bad, which then means they have to do their job on double time on a Sunday instead or over Christmas, I'm not surprised.

Personally, I see the whole set up that supports that sort of nonsense far more morally corrupt than someone doing commercial law deliberately to get well paid. And how far removed is it from a bit of low level fraud?

Well I have thought long and hard about this and this year will be embarking on an OU Psychology degree and will retrain as an Educational Psychologist (I realise I probably sound rather flakey - but this is another option I have considered for a while and would utilise my previous teaching experience). The realities of getting into so much debt with no guarantees is scary and whilst as a mature candidate the odds would be stacked against me in law, it would be a positive as an Ed Psych.

Thanks everyone - your comments were useful and really helped me to come to this decision.

Good luck with it. I think we've enjoyed the more general discussion too.

Well yes VW, it may well be more morally corrupt to work in sectors where people are fairly idle andlive off the back of tax payers than others.

There still is a way to go with equal pay cases. The unions (male) were so cross about those thousands of cases brought by brave women i the North fairly recently who were paid so much less than men for female jobs.

Tube driver usually male but they had ads in Cosmopolitan once to get in more women might be another reasonable one for women who might not earn that much in other work. My daughter's friend on graduation went off to train as a pilot (female). It's families where they say you girl so you nurse not surgeon, you girl so air hostess not pilot that the girls suffer. Or you girl so you low paid famiyl law work. You boy so you earn £500k+ as a commercial QC etc.

I don't get that last post at all - really Xenia I don't. Becoming successful is hard and the DH wouldn't have done it without me - perhaps he's not as tough as you. After 20 odd years though, we are still together - the DC had me at home for 8 or 9 years and have done well as a result and I now work locally - for what you would call a pittance but I serve my local community and many who have been failed by every establishment, agency and family member they have been in contact with and I also get my own money paid into my bank account every month which I can spend as I please. Would be peanuts to you though.

I'm glad I gave up a successful career to support DH and DC. If I hadn't I think four people would be less happy than they are now. I am my DH's equal in every way and we are a partnership that works together but I don't need to compete with him in the context of equal pay - and his success allows me to do something both fulfilling and altruistic. Life isn't all about money although of course I would have far more limited options if it wasn't for DH but if I hadn't taken a back seat to support DH I don't think he would be making what he makes now.

Good luck OP - I'm sure you've made the right decision from a practical and potentially fulfilling perspective.

Shame it's always the women earning the pin money and doing the good works though....We're never going to get anywhere as women until that stops.

We need a campaign slogan of a woman in a suit handing a mop and a squalling set of toddlers to a man whilst he goes off to support her ironing her shirts and doing her dross jobs whilst she earns a packet.

Yes, but Xenia I earn the pin money and do the good works because that's want I want to do and supporting DH has facilitated that. We are a partnership and together we are a successful partnership. I don't think we would have achieved either the same success or happiness if we were not a successful partnership. It is successful because we are both determined and hard working and supportive of each other. Not all women want the same things as you although having taken a back seat I suspect as a family we may be even wealthier, especially as we only have two children and after twenty years we are still together and love each other still.

Xenia I agree it would be great if there were equal numbers of high earning women, but there's no getting round the evidence that most (not all but most) women just don't care that much about being senior and earning lots of money. At least not if there is someone else (DH) to it instead ...

I'm not a lawyer but I do find my job interesting and I am far better paid than I expected I could be when I was 15 or so. I agree with Xenia, girls do need education that the world of big business can be of personal and social value. I have progressed steadily in my career for the last 15 years and I have gone from thinking it was necessary to have a steady job to support a mortgage and maternity leaves to really being excited that it could be possible I could yet make it to FTSE100 Board level. I see such jobs as being amazing, the power to build businesses and make corporate deals is almost like magic, as they can get someone else to sort out the details and do the grunt work. They can decide to open a new line of business in a country, decide how it should be developed, and next month make a decision of similar magnitude. Much more exciting than, say, being a backbench MP.

I think that boys at public schools are taught to aspire to this kind of work but I don't think girls are, anywhere, and they should be.

OP, glad it was helpful and you've made a decision you feel more confident about. An eye-opening discussion for me. I trained as a barrister but have always worked in NGOs and now in an educational setting. Occasionally I wonder about the road not taken. Of course I agree that girls should get good career advice and encouraged to think about the financial consequences of their choices, but I've always chosen work based on the intrinsic value I attach to it (and the enjoyment I get from it) rather than the salary. If I had to do it all over, I'd make the same decisions again.

I suppose the point being made by the higher paid women is that that work is absolutely amazing and interesting aned well paid and lots of teenagers seem to think they need jobs which are worthy and ineffect mean they earn little and wash the feet of the poor and only then are they true women. That is what we need to over turn. Get the men in the kitchen doing the dull stuff with a part time job if they want to but if there's a choice let's have the women in the top jobs not the men and enjoy them and aspire to them

As long as little girls just see mummy as earning nothing or not much and looking after daddy, seeing his shirts are ready, being supportive they will follow that role model. Girls work for charities boys run companies. no point educating girls as they will just marry ideally someone well off and live off male earnings in return for domestic services. We see that model time and again on mumsnet even amongst women who could hve been very senior lawyers on £1m a year but they marry richer men and end up as virtual servants.

Yes Xenia we do see that model time and time again - at least, we see women who could have been very senior, choosing not to.

But I don't think it's necessarily because they feel the need to do something worthy or because of their role models. I think it's because they just don't want to spend that much time at work, particularly after they have children.

Maybe they don't want to spend that time at work because they know they'll still be responsible for everything else in the house, too?

There have been many women on here who earn more than their partners, but who still have to do everything in the house.

I can see why the thought of working till late every evening and coming home to a pigsty is not appealing.

That's true Imperial it may be to do with that. Women are much less likely than men to have a partner who SAH or works part time and thus shoulders most of the domestic chores. So that does mean that most women don't have the option that many men do, of handing over pretty much all domestic duties to their spouse and getting on with WOH unhindered.

Perhaps the key is to focus on encouraging (forcing?) men to do more domestically and if necessary to make their work fit around that - in the same way women currently do. That would mean women have the option of being supported by a SAH partner in the same way men do.

That all said though, I still suspect that most women wouldn't want a SAH or part time DH. They prefer to do that role themselves.

Good luck princessglitter and I think you are right in your choice. I'm not pretending the world is fair, it isn't, but it is how it is.

very depressing reading this thread. DS1 has just finished his A levels and is anxiously awaiting his results to see whether he has achieved his AAA and succeeded in getting his place at Uni to read law. For at least 4 years now he has been set on a career in law and wants to become a barrister. Very worrying to know he could end up in debt after years of studying and still not achieve his goal Any barristers still reading happy to offer him mini pupillages please feel free to PM me

Well DD wants to be a lawyer and will be completely supported and encouraged. DS wants to be a journalist and will be completely supported and encouraged. Also Xenia, from 25 - 32 I was on more than six figures. When I "retired" to be a mummy I had already earned enough to provide a pretty good foundation for a professional couple in London which served us very well until DH was billing enough to have provided it. I also believe my children see me as a successful, happy, hard working, well organised woman, who can talk about many, many subjects and222 who is respected in our community and not as a mummy looking after daddy and seeing his shirts are ironed. Frankly Xenia that was somewhat offensive to women who have made different choices than you. And that is what I did, I made a choice.

marriedinwhite don't get me wrong, DS has and will continue to be supported and encouraged, its just disheartening reading so many negative comments. Good luck to your DD and DS.