AIBU to quit my job and retrain as a solicitor?

[Moobieboobie]

Should I not? I hate my job (civil service) although fairly well paid and have always hankered after joining the legal profession. But, I am almost 40 and have three children would I even have a chance at getting a training contract? I can self fund the GDL and LPC, but would need to have a training contract in place once the qualifications are completed. Am I totally unrealistic as I will be competing with lots of young'uns!?

OP have you thought of training as a mediator instead?

Having had a look here Training to be a Mediator There are different categories of mediation you can specialise in.

I can name 30 birmingham firms who pay GDL. Manchester newcastle Leeds etc probably 20 each. London 50?

I got my TC just before the recession, but had no legal experience. I think if you have As at A level and a 2.1 from a redbrick you'd get one. I don't know if the recession has affected it hugely but most people I meet without TCs haven't fulfilled the above requirements (and to be honest those that haven't often fail the maths/english/psychometric tests too). I don't know now whether this is bad advice as I think I bullshit interview quite well and so maybe my view is skewed. I was told it was a nightmare to get an NQ position too but I got five offers. There is always work for good lawyers, OP ; my boss said this to me once and it's always stuck with me

Different, I think, as mostly people apply based on location not to say eversheds then wait to be located. So I say if you're living in a regional city you've got 20-30 to choose from. The difficulty is if you have a 2.2 or a non redbrick degree I think, as all 20-30 firms will have the exact same requirements.

The people I'm familiar with who haven't got training contracts have first class Oxbridge / red brick degrees, ample relevant work experience and the requisite hobbies. Rarely even being offered interviews. Mind you, the ratio applicants to places available is staggering. From a purely selfish / employer perspective, this worked well for us - since we could pick up amazing paralegals with excellent academics and experience for peanuts (cheaper than temporary secretarial help).

But as this is now the 4th time I have gone on about the dearth of / difficulty in obtaining training contracts on a single thread, I'm not going to shut up!!!

BigPawsBrown There is always work for good lawyers, my boss said this to me once and it's always stuck with me

A quid pro quo, I got some very good advice when I was just starting out from a very experienced solicitor, which has proved true.

He said to watch out that, as a female lawyer, I didn't fall into the "cannon fodder trap". By that he meant doing quite hard work, reasonably long but not excessive hours but on a lowish-medium salary, and not being able to do the type of jobs where you do get the good money and prestige due to family reasons.

I can think of a number of friends who work in the public sector as solicitors for £30,000 to about £37,000, who do hard, difficult work, with the stress of severe consequences if it goes wrong, and they are 12 years plus PQE. But they want to hang onto the prestige of being a solicitor and their career, hence they end up getting this, but not really earning a salary commensurate with the difficulty of the job or the stress and effort involved.

I think its a hard job for those who don't excel or earn the big money; in other words, I think there are other careers you can go into where you will earn better money and have a better work life balance for slightly less effort and difficulty.

Really?? I'm an NQ in the regions and earn £40k

Yes, but you'll still be working for a large, commercial private sector firm in a big city BigPawsBrown.

There are an awful lot of solicitors still living the smaller city lifestyle ie not some semi-rural relaxed paradise, on I would guess 32-50/55k, working long hours and having a difficult job for what they get paid. Those working for the bigger more commercial firms, even in the region, are not represenatitive of the profession as a whole.

I say this when thinking of my DH, who is an engineer. He and his fellow engineers often seem to work remarkably relaxed hours in a much more relaxed environment, at a slower pace (his company has never made a profit in 8 years!!), for unfesably high salaries. Or even Human Resources (with all their fee-generating mistakes when they get employment law wrong)!

I was a solicitor until last year when I re-trained as a primary school teacher. I'm 47 and have just got my first part-time teaching job. I am also an associate lecturer on the OU law degree. I'd fallen out of love with the job but it is still a good profession for those who are interested in it.

If you want to be a solicitor, you should do what you want. Yes, it is hard work and yes, there are few training contracts around, especially for older applicants. However, if you really want to do it, why not? Have you considered the GLS? Your civil service background would really help there.

I know that leave is precious but how about using a few days to do some work-experience? You could also try contacting the Association of Women Solicitors and see if they could put you in touch with someone nearby to meet and chat to.

Good luck in whatever you choose to do.

I posted yesterday agreeing with the suggestions that you do some work experience OP and I see you have commented since then that you have had some exposure to legal work so you are aware what it entails. To be honest, there are plenty of fairly interesting areas of work within the profession - my issue with law as a career is not with the work per se, but with the culture of law firms and the tedious processes involved in billing and time recording.

Having worked at a range of firms (I trained at a large regional - top 30 - firm and stayed for a while after qualification, then moved to a magic circle firm for a couple of years, then to another large regional and then to a small firm) I think it is actually easier to work in a magic circle (or other top tier city) firm than in any other, as billing is so much less of an issue. You put your time down, it gets billed, the client pays - simple. Also, you are likely to work on fewer things at once (for the most part - big transactions, for example, rather than 100 different people's wills/divorces/PI claims) and so it's less of a faff to record the time. Yes, there are longer hours - but the people around you would be the sharpest and the best at what they do, and the resources in terms of facilities, training and admin support are fantastic. The difference between magic circle/top city firm and large regional is enormous. Once you step down from the top tier firms, it gets much more difficult. My personal impression from the firms I worked at was that the magic circle firm wants you to do the work to the highest possible standard - they know they'll get paid at the end of it. The smaller firm (I include the large regionals I worked at in this sweeping generalisation, although there are certainly some very highly regarded large regionals that this may not apply to) wants you to bring in the most money.

Make no mistake that a private practice law firm would be a major culture shock for someone who has been used to the civil service - certainly, it has been a major adjustment for me to move in the other direction! Unless you go to a top tier firm, your main focus at work in a law firm will not be law, it will be money. It's all about the money. I think you need to do some work experience, not to find out what it's like to draft a contract or review a sale and purchase agreement - but to see what the culture of a law firm is like, and if you would want to spend your future career in that environment.

I think your comments regarding not liking being bossed about by a 28 year old suggest that you would also find it difficult to go back to the beginning. You would be at the bottom of the heap as a trainee - can you stomach that?

Whilst it is true that there are some flexible/in-house/part time options for solicitors, it would be a long time before you would get to the stage where they would open up for you. If you were able to get into the GLS, I agree with other posters that it would be a fantastic route. I would have loved to move into the GLS but sadly there's no presence in my location and I would have had to commute a long way (if I could even have got a job, which seems unlikely given that they're rare!!!) Legal work is great - the legal workplace is not (IMVHO).

In terms of other options, have you looked at other career routes in the civil service? I am on a graduate scheme which will lead me to do quasi-legal type work but in a flexible working environment with no chargeable hours. Might that be of interest to you?

Bigpawsbrown I think you have a distorted picture of how things are. There are not 20 firms in each regional city paying for the GDL. Birmingham perhaps so but they only take a handful of trainees each. That does not equate to enough funded training contracts to give out to anyone with As at A level and a 2.1 from a redbrick university. There are hundreds of kids on law degrees up and down the country who will never get a training contract.

Actually I don't think we've asked the OP about her academics. I am about the same age as the OP, it was far less common for people to come away with 3 or 4 As at A level in those days. What are your academics like OP?

I would also point out, as I've said on other threads, that any situation where the applicant is tied to one place (which presumably the OP is since she has family and kids) will make it extremely difficult to obtain a decent TC.

Its also worth noting that the pay has stagnated and in some case gone down. I was working at a top national firm (Birmingham office) 17 years ago as a 2 year PQE earning £44.5k. That same firm pays pretty much the same now.

Another one here who says don't do it unless you're sure you are totally brilliant and will definitely get a training contract in large firm in a regional firm.

Salaries in small town high street practices can be so low for all the work and hours. You can earn more doing other careers that dont require you to spend over 10k on GDL and LPC.

Sure, its a very respected job title but some solicitors just dont earn what you think they might. It is VERY hard work.

Not very helpful but some spot on and amazing advice already on here.

I am a solicitor. I am a partner in a City firm and I went back 3 days a week after DS1 and I am currently on maternity leave with DC2, 37 weeks and waiting for D-day. Personally, my firm have been very supportive. We would certainly be interested in a mature candidate for a training contract. It shows determination for you to get to that stage. But is is expensive to study, not just the degree nowadays but also the LPC (1 year post grad course). Have you considered ILEX or alternative routes in to the profession?

Agree with Atticus too, in my day, people applied for TCs all over England and Wales and just went there as they had no constraints or else they waited years (some even 5 years) after joining a firm in their local city/large town. Hard to do if you take a loan out to find GDL etc.

I am a solicitor and don't want my children to enter the profession.
I am trying to 'encourage' them to take an interest in science , engineering etc.
I think that there are so many institutions offering the LPC course and thus there are too many graduates all vying for very few jobs. As a result ,pay is generally poor .
I do enjoy my work, but if I had my time again I would have probably studied engineering.
I would not give up a job in the Civil Service to train as a solicitor, I would undertake further study.

Yes, it seems I had an easy ride of
it then, apologies OP, seems it is harder than I thought.

(Atticus are you still Bham based?£

No I have now set up my own firm and MN work from home in my PJs but DH is an equity partner in a Birmingham firm

You pretty much need to private message me now.... Hope he's not my boss!

Don't worry you're safe, he does corporate (and his firm doesn't pay NQs £40k!)

Not a solicitor, but TheChandler I'm going to remember your boss and that point.

I work in Loss Adjusting- pretty much at the start of my career but gradually specialising in casualty work as time goes on. The subject of solicitors came up the other day. My boss said that solicitors often try to suggest that Insurers should shortcut and appoint a solicitor immediately rather than an LA firm. However, as we're cheaper and often have a broader knowledge/skill set in other areas (for example, deciding quantum on a Loss of Profits claim, or adjusting costs for repairs after a burst pipe, etc.), we're often the "better" (more cost effective, more like) option.

Now I'm not saying I agree with him, but that's just one area of the law where solicitors are fighting for the work with other professions, who can often do it that bit cheaper. Key when you're dealing with volumes. It's repeated again and again across the board.

And that's before you consider the clients, especially in private practice. People often say to me, "I'm going to speak to my solicitor!", and i just think, "Poor sod, have you ranting at them; hey ho, at least they can charge a few hundred quid for the phone call and the letter you'll ask them to write". It's one of those professions that has a bit of a hangover -like architecture- where the majority of people still think it's very impressive and that you must be really wealthy and commanding. In reality unless you're at a massive firm or in the city you're probably on an average salary, dodging that shitty client or arguing about who hasn't contributed to the tea kitty like in most other offices across the country.

Don't bother training to be a lawyer. I've spent a lot of time recently trying to impress on DS1s friends that law is impossibly hard to get into, and for the most part not financially worthwhile.

I work in PI, which as an area of practice is pretty screwed. I earn a decent salary in general terms (probably less than nq lawyers in the City, even though I am 18 years pqe), but will almost certainly never increase upon it, and frankly am just hoping I can cling onto a job for another 10 years or so,by when I might be able to semi retire.

My bf works in a senior IT role. He is very good at his job, but no formal qualifications (whereas I did many years of study, Oxbridge degree etc). He can command double the salary I do, and if he pushes to director level it would quadruple...

I agree with ems. I have only worked in those London big firms (same with my daughter) and it's a different world (and much better both for pay, the people with whom you work and doing law) than many regional firms where people seem to be having to fight for work so much and even pay to buy it in. It is almost like a different profession. I turn people away all the time and in a sense they are lucky to get me as their lawyer. It is a very different and nicer dynamic that I have.

I'm coming to this late, but have RTFT.

I'm in a City corporate firm, 14pqe and exMagic Circle and agree with all the pps have said about the difficulty of the profession. I have recruited and supervised many trainees and it's a very, very hard job to manage with a family. Training contracts have been massively scaled back. Firms prefer cheap temp paralegals, they can hire and discard on a week notice many of whom are excellent but will usually never be noticed.

Oh, and after qualification job security is rubbish, esp in litigation and employment currently.I'm in Property Finance (acting for the Canary Wharf banks who never sleep)so relentless hours and I was made redundant at the first hint of recession (pregnant, in my case).

The NHS ain't perfect, but one sister is a consultant obs/gyn (so recognised as being not family friendly practice area) and she has far far more control of her hours than I do, more money and respect for far fewer hours. Can be stressful, yes, but she pities me and my job. Would you like to be phoned at home and summoned back to work the day after you had a miscarriage in the ladies loos in the office? The partner was apologetic and sympathetic, knowing what happened, but because a deal was closing that day and it couldn't happen that day unless I was there or I spent the day handing over my work to someone else, they needed me to make the effort.