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.

mumofs, but he will be going this year before fees go up so won't have massive debts and he sounds as though he's very focussed. A lot of students don't apply in time for their vac ation schemes with good firms (and equivalent at the bar) and end up not getting their law school fees paid and no job after. I am sure he will be fine. Most of why most of us have succeeded on this thread is probably as much to do with capacity for hard work and enthusiasm as anything else.

As for what married says - if you present a model to children of mummy ath ome that is what will be perpetuated and you stampd on other women every time you opt out to be home. It's not a personal decision only. It's political and because women do it in such huge numbers more than 50% of entrants to law are women but only about 11% are at the senior bar or equity partners in the big firms. It's because they marry up and want to live off male earnings.

If equal men and women were making these choices to stay home all well and good but they aren't. WOmen will never gert anywhere until all this is altered and we have threads where it is clear about 70% of men make career sacrifices and reduce earnings and 30% of women do. At the moment it's very very much the other way round.

I don't think anyone though shoudl be put off doing law. It's a great thing to do.

But Xenia if the fact is that 70% of women want and choose to make career sacrifices, then what is wrong with that?

Are you saying that women should stay in FT work even if they don't want to and don't need to - just to provide role models to others?

Xenia, I didn't say I was mummy at home. I said I was at home in the early years. i returned to work part time when my youngest child started school and full time just before my youngest child was 7. That was 6 years ago now. During that time I have made a new career for myself in the public sector and which I love and enjoy. I don't need to earn big bucks (although for many on mumsnet I suspect I do but I wouldn't brag about it) but I can walk to work.

Yes, they should until we get to a position of development where 50% of the cabinet if female, 50% of senior board posts etc. We haven't got there yet and every women who stays home and gives up a career and leaves her husband to succeed is one fewer who will help us achieve more fairness for women and men. Each flexitime woman is a kind of petit mort for the rest of us.

I was a solicitor for over 20 years, mainly criminal defence, and the bar held no attraction for me. Firstly it is very very difficult to get a tenancy, and those who do really are those who have top notch academic backgrounds, workaholic tendancies and who are prepared to schmooze the solicitors to get work ( sad but true the really good looking ones get on better too) Secondly they live on very limited income and huge debt for years and thirdly they are only ever as good as their last rsult - and any case of substance you do is scrutiised, dscussed and criticised by all and sundry.
As a solicitor I used to quite enjoy the power of picking a barrister for a client and negotiating the fees to make sure I got the very best person for the very best price - not so nice for the barristers themselves though.

I ended my legal career doing freelance advocacy ( mainly trials ) and police station work, people came to me and via me to the firms I worked with, so I was very independent. Whilst there is nothing to beat the thrill and challenge of turning out for a serious case you feel you might win at 2am in the morning the reality is that I had to work over 70 hours a week, be permanantly on call and go without holidays. I took 6 weeks off with each of my children and had a full time live in nanny - that was essential. In a good year I earned around about the VAT registration level, and my life was my work. You cannot go on like that for ever and lots of people I worked with burned out - the solicitor I shared an office with committed suicide, another was admitted to a mental hospital and another dear friend died of heart problems at 64 ( Smoking drinking and sometimes drugs were not a rare occurence amongst my colleagues)Divorce was rife.

The profession is now so overcrowded and underpaid I doubt I could find niche to go back to that way of life even if I wanted to. I have some fond memories, but if my sons thought about a legal career I'd suggest theey have another think.

Xenia, that's absolute nonsense. I'm a woman and I have never, ever felt that life has been unfair to me. I have had success in business, a successful marriage, a successsful second career and what I hope to achieve most are successful children who are able as I did to make informed choices. Also, at risk of outing myself I have a friend in government - who whilst very successful and driven is rarely around for her family and I'm not sure the children are particularly well balanced young people having spent most of their lives farmed out, at boarding school or being dragged backwards and forwards to the constituency. Think back too to Mrs T - I'm not sure Mark and Carol ended up particularly successful or particularly happy.

careful married you're getting very close to saying that mothers shouldn't work as it messes up their DCs

Xenia I can kind of see why you say that and I agree the world doesn't work very well at the moment for women who want to continue high flying careers post DCs. But surely you can see it's a bit ridiculous to tell women to stay in FT work even though they don't want to - just to improve the opportunities for those who do want to? Ultimately we are all entitled to make what is the best choice for us.

^mumofsussex Thu 28-Jul-11 20:17:45

Any barristers still reading happy to offer him mini pupillages please feel free to PM me grin^

Best thing you can do for him is to encourage him to do it himself. Most chambers have websites, and there are usually sections on pupillage/mini pupillage.

married, why address that to women though and not the fathers? Most mothers and fathers who work do the best they can to see a lot of their children and many succeed. I have been in Nigeria for part of this week but today I'm working here and various children are around. The barrister I was working with yesterday works from her home a lot. We sent some dates to the court today which were fixed around her and her husband's obligations to their children. Most of us of both sexes who work full time do manage nice balanced lives.

My political point is women will lose the gains they have so recently made if they give up work all the time and their husbands don't. If you're only going to work properly for 5 years and then spend the next 30 on a mummy track of school hours and pretty low pay what is the point in bothering even with GCSEs. You'd be better at a finishing type school or hanging around places rich men will be or geting your mother to set up a suitable match for you once you near 18 (if not 16) as plenty of cultures in the UK do in fact seek to achieve.

Xenia perhaps the point of women doing GSCEs is to get them into good universities to meet future rich men (and snag them before they get rich and the competition for them increases). For example, I met my now banker DH at Oxford, I doubt we'd have met if I'd gone to finishing school .

Just kidding of course.

The real problem IMO is the ridiculous prejudice that says if you've been on a reduced hours "mummy track" for even a few years then you are not considered able to return to a "proper" full on career.

What many "career" women would like is to work FT for 5 years, then be on the "mummy track" for let's say 5-10 years, then spend the next 20-25 years working FT again. But because of the prejudice, that's not an option.

So women end up with the choice between FT for 30 years, or FT for 5 years followed by mummy track for 25 years. And if those are the only choices many will choose the latter.

So what is really needed is removal of that prejudice - rather than forcing women to work FT through the (relatively few) years when they don't want to, purely so they are not barred from re-entering FT work later on.

ZillionChocolate I was joking, he has already in the past few years done 3 weeks work experienc in different firms of solicitors and a mini pupillage last summer at a very large set of chambers where he was lucky enough to attend a week long hearing with the head of chambers. Now exams are out of the way I'm hoping he might sort something else out for himself.

Mumof sussex - glad to hear he's doing the right things. in my experience, any application to chambers for pupillage is more likely to succeed if you've bothered to give up a week of your holidays to do a mini-pupillage.

oh I do hope so. He has not organised anything for this summer (wanted stress of A levels out of way first) but am hopeful he might be able to do some outdoor clerking for someone he did it for last summer. Am hoping all these little things will illustrate how keen he is

If you spend five years FT and the spend ten on the "mummy track" you will then have less useful and saleable experience than someone who has spent fifteen years FT.

If you spent the ten as a SAHP you will have even less and may have next to no saleable experience because of changes in the world.

In my office we used to have a full-time telex op (who remembers telex?) who left to be a SAHM to two children. When she enquired about coming back telex had gone, we were sending our own faxes, and in fact doing nearly all our own typing. There just wasn't a job for her.

To be sure she could - perhaps - have been retrained. But then somebody else would not have got a job. You can't have everything and if you do somebody else has to do without which is unfair to that person!

Xenia - since the correlation between a mother's level of education and the educational success of her children is extremely high, "bothering with GCSEs" (and a degree, or even several degrees) is particularly important for all women who intend to have children, whether or not they wish to pursue their careers.

In some countries, the correlation between children's educational success and having a SAHM is very high too (this depends a lot on educational structures).

Minipie - that's exactly what I did though and more - full time (and fairly high powered for 16 years) - 8 years at home - and then another, so far, 8 years at work (so actually Xenia not five years as you rather derogatorily put it a post or two ago. Of course women are entitled to be equal if they want and personally I don't think there's anything to stop them. I did go to finishing school - shock horror, didn't go to university, but still managed to earn 100K plus for several years. Also bagged a barrister along the way - and he's so clever that I don't think he would have given me a second look had I been a chinless wonder. I can hold my own around a table of silks.

Muminsussex - good luck - let's put it the other way - when the lad brings you home a first - pm me and I'll have a word with DH!

That illustrates the class thi8ng too. If the girl's accent is right she is more likely to get the better man so all these girls who will never really work much mght be better off honing their accents at elocution lessons in their teens. In fact the bigger bias in terms of career success in many many places is not gender or colour but class.

There is nothing to stop any mummy tracker with talent working for herself . We have countless examples of women who do work for themselves from the White Company lady even to me (and every barrister works for themselves). There are too many women who whinge because the only job that will have them back after their career break is teaching assistance on minimum wage at local school but if they really were Mrs Brilliant to whom clients flock they could work for themselves. May be the mediocre who would never really hack it at work use the marriage/baby excuse to explain their lack of future success.

I don't think "class" (as in the social class of your family) has much to do with career any more and it will have less and less of an impact in future. What matters are skills and having the right combination of them at an appropriate level for the job. Eloquence is a valuable skill, but not one that is acquired at elocution lessons.

www.legalservicesboard.org.uk/what_we_do/Research/publications/pdf/literature_review_on_diversity2.pdf

www.cass.city.ac.uk/_media/internals/easy-edit-suite/wym/?a=36200 :-
"In 1988 59 percent of UK-educated partners in this sample group younger than 39 years old had attended fee-paying schools compared with 73 percent of those 40 or older.

However, in 2004 71 percent of the younger partners were independently educated compared with 51 percent of the older group."

Xenia not all of us are suited to be self employed or entrepreneurial. Doesn't mean we wouldn't be great employees though.

Andrewfogg of course reduced experience levels and the need for getting back up to date would have to be taken into account if someone returns to FT work after being PT or SAH. But too often "reduced experience in recent years, may need a bit of updating" is (wrongly) seen as "no relevant experience at all".

marriedinwhite out of interest, when you returned to work after 8 years at home, did you return to the same job as you had before being at home? If so what was the reaction to your SAHM years?

Princess I've just checked back in on this thread and I just want to say that your proposed career choice sounds fantastic- you will already have so many skills which you can bring to ed psychology. I know a now retired ed psych and he adored the work.

I also want to say that in my horror at your initial post I may have suggested that you were likely to fail- I didn't mean for that to sound so harsh (it's more that I wanted you to appreciate that even if you 'succeed' it will be a horrid existence).

Wishing you all the best in the new career and (we are the same age) you will be able to bring much to the profession with your excellent academic record and experience as a teacher go date (didn't mean to put it down as average degree generally).

Thanks so much Poppy, your comments are really appreciated. I can't face never seeing my dcs and so my career choice has to be compatible with that.

Law is something where you have to know the law. In some areas many of us do there is a change virtually every day and we read those changes. You can do that as a housewife at home but if you didn't the firm should be wound up if it lets you practise without the right knowledge. There are returners' courses etc.

Yes, plenty of people don't want to be self employed and there are all kinds of ways you can practise law which is why it's a good career.

I am sure pg's educational psychology will be fun too and as it relates in a sense to teaching it sounds like a good choice. It could even be done part time whilst also teaching to see if it is going to work or not without burning the bridges of the existing job.

Minipie - exactly - my former colleague had no relevant experience at all because the only skill she had had either been "de-skilled" (the keyboard) or was obsolete (the telex). And that is the risk you take if you leave your work for a number of years for any reason at all.

In the law before 1977 there were a number of members of the Bar, many of them women, who scratched a modest living doing "undefended divorces" on legal aid which was rather like dribbling a football through a complicated obstacle course and if you made it kicking it at an open goal. It was done away with in favour of a paper-based procedure (without legal aid) and some barristers found their livelihood gone - one (nameless here!) became known as the worst Chairman of Industrial Tribunals in the business; still Industrial in those days and yes, we called them Chairmen.

A woman who had left the Bar for a few years on the "mummy track" in the early Seventies would have found no work when she got back in the line she was used to. She might have been able to find other work - and then she might not. As you will know, any member of the Bar who quits and returns may find that s/he is forgotten and solicitors who used to brief them have necessarily found somebody else. That can even happen during a few months' maternity absence - the solicitors have no obligation to come back to you.

stopped reading when xenia asked what the point of GCSEs was if you're going to mummy track and had to respond. (after spluttering my tea all over the key board). what a ridiculous - and frankly offensive - question.

I suspect, xenia, that you might consider I am on the mummy track. I am a self-employed consultant - I work approx 4 days/week in term 2 days/week in the holidays. I chose this over the bright lights of the employed management track. mummy track enough? whilst on this "mummy track" I have lectured, I have published in academic journals, I have worked for leading universities in my field. I have been invited to speak at conferences and to contribute to expert round tables. I have just been appointed to a governance position with one the UK's leading NGOs. you're right. I shouldn't have bothered with my education because opting for this mummy track lark has rendered it useless .

and, it's perhaps worth noting that dh is firmly on the daddy track. perhaps he shouldn't have bothered with an education either. but, hold on, if neither of us had had an education we'd probably both be working f-t in jobs we disliked on min wage. education gave us, as individuals and a family unit, choices. choices to make as adults, choices to make at many different stages of our lives, not just a one-off decision aged 14 as to which track to go on.

why why why are you so blinkered xenia?