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!?

emsyj I wholeheartedly agree with every word of your excellent post. I started off in the Magic Circle and am now a partner in a 150-partner firm, so I endorse your view from direct experience. Sadly the easier billing and time recording was the only good thing about the MC though. Hated the work.

OP, you say you have had some exposure to legalwork. With all due respect, especially if that exposure was from the client side, that is not the same as having experience of what it is like to work in a law firm.

TheCraicDealer spot on-our insurer clients are constantly threatening to freeze us out and use loss adjusters fo. everything that is not in active court proceedings.

Just to add my voice as an ex-Magic Curcle lawyer: this is not a family friendly profession unless you are prepared to see very little of your children.

But to all those people criticising the partners for letting things get to this point: I really don't think any partner can do anything meaningful in terms of offering flexibility or, heck, understanding to women who have children at home (or indeed men). It's the clients who drive everything. The partners are at their clients' beck and call; what the client wants the client gets, else he will take his business elsewhere. And if the partner has to produce the goods by 3pm on Sunday, his/her team have to do their part too. And there is simply no way this will ever get better. For as long as someone is prepared to run harder and longer than you, no client will choose you with your "our staff's work/life balance is important to us".

I'm also an ex-Magic Circle lawyer and I'd say don't do it as well. The profession is extremely competitive - you really need to be very well qualified to get into it and get a training contract. I've worked for law publishing companies and we've recruited people as paralegals who would have walked into training contracts a few years ago, they were so well qualified. In my current job, we have people working as paralegals who are in fact qualified lawyers and haven't been able to get work as qualified lawyers. Yet they are really good at their jobs.

The hours can be stupid - but that's not just because the clients are demanding, it is often because everything is left until the last minute and badly organised - it's human nature for a lot of people not to get anything done until a deadline is looming. I was quite lucky as a trainee in that I never did an all-nighter (even in a big city firm!) but it is super-frustrating to be sent on errands at 5.30 - you can bet they wouldn't do it if they had to pay overtime. And actually some clients DO say they will wait for things - it IS possible to push back on deadlines especially when they are false deadlines - better for a client to wait 24 hours and get proper work done than get it now and have a mess. Any sensible client understands that very well and yes there are plenty of sensible clients out there as well as the macho idiots.

If you could work for the GLS I am sure you'd have a much better quality of life (and more interesting work) but I don't know if they currently take trainees and of course it is very competitive as well.

I'd do an audit of your skills and see what else you can do with them which would be different, interesting and fit in with having a life outside work.

MadeInChorley - that is just AWFUL. I'm so sorry you had to go through that :( unfortunately I am not remotely surprised at all by this.

Op I am also civil service and I wondered if you'd considered working in a bill team? You do get to aquire and use legal skills and it was my second favourite job.

Not sure what grade you are( and you might not want to say on MN) but bill managers in my Department are G7s and we'd probably pay for you to do some legal qualifications.

They move from bill to Bill and while it's long hours, you sound as though you're used to that. Maybe see what your department/ others have on offer?

Coming at this rather late too and just have one comment - I think there are some sweeping generalisations and the culture within a firm is not necessarily something you can determine by the size of the firm.

I, my H, my sister, my Aunt and most of my cousins and their partners are lawyers. We range from equity partner, salaried partner, Of Counsel, associate and newly qualified solicitor our family get togethers are a riot (not!)

I have worked at large regionals for 14+ years and have never been actively involved in billing, chasing payment etc. Just recorded my time and someone else prepared bills (which I signed off) - we were generally working (a number of solicitors) on big transactions / large clients. Did have to do general business development but most of our work was won by tender / on service agreements so there was no scrapping around for work. Ever. I think it depends on what area you work in, how the head of department works. Yes, I had to be aware of my hours and my fee target but certainly at a solicitor level, even at associate level, it was the partners / BD team that brought in the work and there was no pressure on junior solicitors to worry about finances etc. I disagree that you won't do any "law" work at a large regional - that's all we did. I am now at a smaller firm and I would say yes, there is more "business awareness" about profitability, fee generation, but I would say 90% of my time is still giving advice / dealing with the "law". The other 10% is BD and admin.

And I also disagree that only magic circle / City firms have people who are the best of the best. There are an awful lot of genuinely gifted lawyers who work at large regionals and are respected leaders in their field. They may have been in London for a time, they may have never worked in London at all. Having socialised with some of my sister's magic circle friends, its not a given that you'd be good at what you do just because you're in the City . Certainly as a trainee, my sister spent a large proportion of her time on what I would call admin (photocopying / proof reading, collecting the partners dry cleaning ). Definitely less opportunity for "learning" at a MC firm (IMO).

My H is in a tiny high street practice. He is fighting people off with a stick he is that busy. He works more hours than I do. He earns about the same as I do (high for a high street firm) because his firm knows how valuable he is. Again, aware of his target etc but hasn't got time to worry about debt collection/ bill payment. Even in a tiny firm they have a cashier / accounts person to deal with this.

I think as this thread demonstrates, the firm's culture can often be dictated by the partner you work for, or the head of the department. Yes you can make some generalisations about hours / training contracts / likely pay but honestly, teams / specialisms / firms can be vastly different and you'll only get a feel for a particular firm if you get the chance to work there. There is lots of "snobbery" - not the right word - about London firms having the best lawyers / clients / quality of work. It really does depend on the specialism and the firm. Good luck whatever you decide.

" Certainly as a trainee, my sister spent a large proportion of her time on what I would call admin (photocopying / proof reading, collecting the partners dry cleaning ). Definitely less opportunity for "learning" at a MC firm (IMO). "

I was never a trainee at a MC firm but from my own experience I couldn't disagree more with this. Having said that, I was in a specialist team - this may well be true in a mainstream seat such as corporate.

Posted too soon! Meant to say - just goes to show, you can't beat real life experience of the type of work and type of firm that you're interested in. Law is a diverse profession - but in general, from where I'm standing, an unhappy one (sadly).

Emsyj - very well known magic circle firm. She didn't speak to a client at all for 3 seats! It was document heavy experience - bibles, Court bundles, reports. Use of precedents. Writing of articles. Might be better now.

emsyj I was trainee in the MC and my experience was exactly the same as that of mandy124's sister. It was before itvwas common to send attachments by email and I was regularly used as a messenger to take documents from one qualified lawyer's office to another- literally just delivering, often being told to wait and bring back a mark-up; no involvement in the legal work at all.

Mandy and Jessie - that was my MC experience too about 17 years ago. Running errands (including dog walking and birthday presents for partners wives and mistresses) and manning and stocking vast data rooms for weeks on end, then bibling stuff post completion. Paper everywhere! Email was very novel

I think it's different now. Mainly due to the bank of temp paralegals doing that work. The up side of fewer training contracts is better trainee work in the MC. In my area, no longer MC but big City firm, trainees run the CP lists and do lots of post completion registration work. Not rocket science and form heavy but but quite crucial and heavily involved

It is 6 years since I left the MC firm I worked at so possibly things are different, although as I mentioned I was never a trainee at a magic myself, I was a year qualified when I moved there so I only saw what the trainees in my own team did. I've never worked in a corporate type team but my exposure to deals (giving specialist input) gave me the impression that a lot of the work for the qualified lawyers in that area is quite administrative - co-ordinating input from various teams, co-ordinating input from overseas offices etc. We had paralegals to do support-type work that would otherwise have been done by trainees - perhaps the increase in the number of LPC graduates and decrease in training contracts has made it so much easier and cheaper to recruit well qualified paralegals, with the result that the work for trainees is better now?

Any more thoughts OP? I was actually really interested in the post about mediation - that looks really be something I would look into if I was still considering career change options.

A lot of lawyers pay for mediation courses and then most (I would guess 90%) get virtually no mediation work. I think you need to be careful. However I take disputes to mediation average once a year and the mediators I've used are very good. it is just there are a huge number of them out there and most tend only to get occasional work. It may be better for family law although I bet the pay is worse. My daughters have been trainees relatively recently and did a reasonable balance of work and of course when you start you aren't much good however bright as you need experience which is why most trades and professions 100 years ago you paid for someone to endure your incompetence whilst you trained which is the logical free market approach so not surprising that trainees are not on day 1 trusted to do work they have no practical experience of.

OP, not sure if you are still here reading all these replies. I am a lawyer who started off at the independent Bar. Due to changes in funding my specialisation took a real hammering and I could no longer earn a decent income. I moved to a boutique firm and into a niche area of law. I adapted. Many of my former colleagues have not been able to do this. I have loved every minute of my career and can think of nothing else I would rather be doing work-wise. A career in the law is a lifestyle choice and involves many sacrifices but in my experience every day is different, challenging and good fun. I am also very well paid. Prior to making any decision you should undertake lots of work experience to see if working in the law is what you expect. It is highly competitive and you may struggle to get work experience but this will at least give you an idea of how your CV and experience will be viewed by potential employers. On a practical level I would not have been able to undertake all my training and junior years with long hours if I had children. You would need major childcare support to manage a training contract or pupillage with young children.

Should clarify I have children now, but did not start a family until I was over 10 years qualified.

I'm another ex-Oxbridge MC lawyer who thinks don't go into private practice. My issue is that in a lot of firms it's up or out, so if you don't make partner by 8-10 years PQE you're effectively out of the profession, as you become too expensive to keep on. And my experience is that to make partner you need to put in the extra schmoozing hours, as well as doing the day job properly, so not child-friendly. Goes without saying partnetship also very competitive and not at all guaranteed as it's decided on business cases not merit. Not sure it's worth changing career to something that won't necessarily last you more than 10 years. And it's very hard to change career out of law - it doesn't set you up for other things as say accountancy does. Sorry.

Sorry to hijack, but what would people say is my best course of action to retrain as a solicitor/get into law? I am early 30's, 2:2 Politics from a Russell Group Uni. I want to get started asap but know that realistically I will have to wait until DD (1) starts school in 2-3 years. I am very much not in London (but in another city). I have worked in residential lettings for almost 15years and have a tiny qualification relating to law and lettings/management (which sparked my interest) as well as carrying out minor legal work (ie small claims, evictions, bailiffs etc).

Petty - I already mentioned it once above, but I think you should research the apprenticeship route. I believe it is being relaunched so that it can take you all the way to qualification, with the benefit of being paid, and not having to incur the risk of the cost of the PGDL/LPC.

Having a 2:2 will count against you if you are applying for the training contract in the usual way.

petty, good luck. I would get as much work experience in local firms as you can. I don't know firms which take people with 2./2s to be honest but that is because I am in London and that is where my daughters applied (they were lucky enough to have 2/1s as do I. You might property law is good for you as you have 15 years experience in lettings which 22 year olds coming out of law school don't have. You may well have to pay for your GDL and LPC fees yourself and if you cannot work when the children are young (I did) then fitting in those courses might be possible with a 1 year old and childcare although plenty of us will say it's risky to pay for the courses if you don't have a training contract lined up.

I agree with Knight that it is usually up and out for bigger firms but out can be wonderful - my out is earning hundreds of thousands with my own firm. That is not a bad "out".

Jilly, what's your area of law? Just curious, obviously no need to say if very niche or potentially outing!

Petty, I sometimes have students sitting with me during vacation schemes and have just recently looked at the CVs of some of the Easter students. None of them have 2:2s and they have all done placements etc. This is in a City firm but I think the 2:2 will be a real hurdling block wherever you're looking for taining contracts (sorry!) Your experience should be a big plus though if you fancy real estate work. Dont know much about it but ILEX may be something to look into.

In general terms business law. I had better not say much more as I'm always getting identified.

It is getting a bit unfair about the 2/1s. When I went to university only 15% of teenagers did and 2/3rds got a 2/2 or less (I almost got a first - top of year actually and got a 2/1). Some people in my year who got 2/2 were probably pretty good and would get 2/1s nowadays. I am not even sure we will be able to compare my older children 10+ years ago doing GCSE with their brothers doing them this year. Although even 30 years ago it was very helpful I had a 2/1.

Jillyr I wonder when you set up on your own? I don't think that's a viable alternative these days, not least because of difficulties obtaining insurance and having to keep run-off insurance for several years if you have to pack it in. My dad did very well going on his own in the 1980s but it would be much harder to do now.

I know loads of people who have recently set up on their own and are doing very well. Insurance has never been big for me and I have no staff or rent to pay so it's easy (and I've never had a claim against me). In fact someone came up to me last week who has set up on her own in the last year and thanked me for my help and she said it was going very well.

I would rather die on the job so reckon I have another 30 years to go so not thinking about run off insurance if I give up or sell the practice. I also have lawyer children so some of them might want to take it on once I'm 85 I suppose too. I don't hold clients' money which keeps it simple.

I think anyone with a 2.2 will struggle. I wouldn't even consider law with a 2.2

I set up on my own recently and it's definitely not cost prohibitive (depending in what area you work in). You do need some up front money though and an established client following. I make three times what I made when working full time for a law firm and I don't work full time any longer.

Op, do you need to actually quit your job? I'm a civil servant and every department ive worked in had 5 years SUPL or career break as an alternative to resigning. Then you would have a fallback if the grass wasn't greener. Or why not look for other jobs, in other departments. Permanent transfers or loans /secondments, then you would get a change of scenery....