To ask your advice about re-training in law with a young family?

[jinglebellmel]

Okay so first of all, sorry, I realise this isn't really an aibu or particularly interesting but hoping it'll get seen by more people here.

I'm 33 with 2 preschool children, currently on mat leave from a fairly unfulfilling but flexible/family friendly admin job, and am feeling a little as though life has passed me by! This isn't what I'd imagined myself doing, I'm reasonably bright but for one reason or another just don't feel I've made the right decisions or fulfilled my potential career wise. Law is something I'd always wanted to do when I was younger and I'm wondering if I should just bite the bullet and try to retrain.

I'm hoping that some of you might be able to give advice. From what I can see the pathway would be a graduate diploma in law (which I could complete via distance learning while my baby is so small), a lpc or bar qualification and then 2 year training contract.

So assuming I'm correct with the above my questions are,
Would doing the graduate diploma via distance learning be seen as less valid than attending university? Is there any financial help available or is this all self funded? How hard is it to find a training contract? Are all training contracts full time hours? Are they paid? How difficult is it to find a job once newly qualified? What is the starting salary? Is there much option for part time/flexible working in this profession?

I know that's a lot of questions sorry! Would really appreciate any insight at all.

Let me ask the questions an interviewer is not allowed to ask.

How old are your DC?

What will be childcare arrangements? if they depend on OH what is his working pattern like?

Understand how it is: life at the junior bar (and I am a solicitor myself) is liable to mean a clerk telling you at 4 p.m. that somebody else is part-heard in a case which has gone long, you have to be at Blankville at 9.30 tomorrow and in the meantime you must master a substantial brief. And you won't get paid much and you will have to wait for what you get.

And there are no excuses: child-care problems, sick baby, school prize-giving, short of close family bereavement nobody gives a damn and that will include your clients, your instructing solicitor, and the judge, and it will make no difference if any of them are female and many of them will be. The only concession I have ever seen a judge give was to allow a heavily pg barrister a loo-break halfway through each session - and that was a male judge!

Later-call counsel have problems of their own - not gender-related. Some solicitors think they are dilettantes. And of course they have fewer years in which to make it; you can't argue with the calendar.

So there you go. Not an easy choice.

I should add that it's not much easier for trainee solicitors and even worse paid. Long hours - and if you are seen as not taking your share you have no chance of a job when you qualify.

I totally agree with trying to get a legal
secretary/ junior paralegal job and see for yourself how a law firm operates. If a large firm, see the fee earners preparing to pull a late one/ all nighter.

If a small one, the Partners trying to find enough work/ make work pay, deal with regulation/ marketing and a thousand other things the large firms can pay other people to do.

My friend started as a legal secretary and took the CILEX route (paid for by the firm). She is doing really well but has no dependents.

Another ex-colleague is a senior associate at a large national, no doubt fantastically paid and has 2 young children. However she has parents, in laws and a husband who all help with childcare. I doubt it could be done otherwise.

Me, I left private practice and am thankful for it. I wouldn't go back into a fee earning role. Before I had a child it was fine, but having (rarely) to call in with a sick child and be told "we need you in the office please come in asap" and emailing the office to sort out a transaction whilst in the hospital (pregnancy complications) shows the complete lack of work/ life balance many firms have.

Good luck!

A slightly more positive example is my mother, who went to night school when I was a teenager (and she was working full time) and qualified as a Licenced Conveyancer. She soon set up her own practice and ran a successful business until retirement, with family-friendly hours.

It's a slightly less well-known way of working in law but could be something to consider?

How about accountancy? More family-friendly than law, and also a profession with a solid career path available, if that's important to you? The tricky bit can be to find a partly-qualified job so you don't come out with all the exams but no experience, but it should be easier than establishing a legal career from what I'm reading above.

I would never go back to law and would never advise anyone to get into it. Most of the lawyers I know are looking to leave the profession. Gloom and doom, but that's the truth - sorry

Yup, pretty much my experience too. I got out and now work in HE. I hated my life for most of the time that I was a solicitor. It is stressful as hell, the hours can be bad and no, it is generally not very family friendly because clients expect you to be available. I also think I was not particularly suited for the legal profession, but it seemed a good idea after doing a law degree.

It is very competitive academically- I had good A-levels, top of year in my LLB at an RG-uni and distinction in my masters at another RG uni. I did get interviews and offers, but it was still tough.

Out of the people in my tutor group on the LPC (nearly all of us already had training contracts when we started but out of the whole cohort, most people didn't), at least half have left law altogether. These people aren't even 10 years qualified and most who left did so before 5 years PQE (me included).

I am probably biased because I hated my experience so much, but I think there is more to life than putting yourself through that. Have you thought about something like accountancy that can be studied on the job and is more family-friendly (from what I have heard)?

The most financially savvy and low risk route is: 1. Apply for law firm’s vacation placements (work experience, usually 1-2 weeks, very little pay just a nominal sum for expenses); 2. See if you enjoy it - this is a very big if. The legal profession is a brutal place to be and is definitely NOT family friendly in my experience. Lawyers are measured by their billable hours which means their worth is equated to how many hours they work. Most lawyers hate their job but don’t know how to get out because they are financially trapped by the high salary and don’t know how to do anything else; 3. If you enjoy it, interview for training contracts. Law firms usually recruit two years ahead, which allows time for GDL and LPC; 4. Secure a training contract starting in two years time and most big law firms will pay your tuition fees for GDL and LPC (which are £10k+ per year) and pay you maintenance (£8k per year at good firms in London). Training contracts are almost always full time in my experience and you will be expected to work long hours as well as participating in many after work social events. They are also (of course) very hard to secure. If you do go down this route OP, I wish you all the very best of luck. However, I would definitely not choose to do this with two young children. Caveat: the bulk of my experience is of commercial law firms in London. It may be different in other sectors / regional firms. However, I do know others who work in less cut throat areas (eg family law) and in the regions and also find above to be true. Part time hours would only be available to senior / very well established lawyers and would significantly limit their career prospects. Part time partners are almost unheard of.

Another ex-solicitor here who hated law. Fell into it after uni and it was the worst time of my life. It’s a tough profession filled with a lot of shitty people, especially female lawyers, and I am thankful every day I don’t have to do it anymore.

Agree it sounds more like you want the things a Law career represents but the reality is nothing like Suits or Ally McBeal or The Good Wife.

I should add by way of correction to some other posters that training contracts are not unpaid! The law society sets a minimum level (don’t know what it currently is now but maybe £20k). Large regional / London firms pay £30k - £45k to trainees. American firms even more. Go for American firms if you want the big bucks but the hours will be even worse (think: 16 hour days as standard, working most weekends).

www.lawsociety.org.uk/support-services/advice/articles/recommended-minimum-salary-for-trainee-solicitors/

Law is one of the worst possible careers for working mothers. The hours are awful, even in family friendly jobs and the work life balance awful. I really wouldn’t do it to yourself or your family.

Have you thought about teaching? You can train on the job and/or do the teaching qualification. At least teachers can work mostly from home if they have to work outside normal hours (marking etc can be done in eve after kids sleep) and you’d have the school holidays with your children. It’s a good career and one to be proud of.

I work in a regional law firm, no flexible working permitted full stop, basic maternity, basic pension, earn about £40k after 12 years. Earned a lot more in London but moved for kids and salaries are very low here. I exceed financial target and get v small bonus. As people I’ve said on here - law is a business. Networking and selling your product is needed. 7 hours chargeable time must be recorded everyday. Not the lifestyle I assumed. Don’t see my kids much but don’t have the salary to justify the hours and expectations. Last weekend I worked until 3am on Friday night, Saturday afternoon and the Sunday afternoon.

Not every lawyer will have the same experience. I have friends in the public sector who work super flex hours and earn same as me. Some work in-house and again great salary and great hours.

I wish that when I had started out I had received advice on options to specialise in ie what will give me most flexibility to move in house or travel etc.

Good luck with whatever you choose.

I’m really shocked some firms haven’t even dipped their toe in the water when it comes to flexible working!
I work on massive commercial transactions but in-house. It’s never once been my end that’s slowed down a deal. I work school hours 9.30-2.30 plus almost every evening once the kids are in bed. A bit of effective delegation plus the odd phone call /email while I’m with the kids keeps things running during the afternoon

My counterparts on deals are normally senior partners in big regionals or partners in city firms, and they tend to be far less “available” that me due to partners meetings/ meetings with other clients/ golf sessions etc

NeverTwerkNaked Lucky old you. Try litigation. Urgent conferences with counsel who if they are any good cannot see you until after court. Offers to settle at 4.00 p.m. on the day before the trial and your client needs - really needs, I'm not being sarcastic - to discuss it at length and at once. Hearings moved to a court twenty miles away and no arguments, just be there. I spent eight years of my life in a case being fought in the USA - a lot of travel (which is not fun) and hours on the phone during East Coast business hours. My American colleagues (and my opponents) came to know DW's and DS's names and voices.

Family friendly it is not.

And law firms and other employers have to take care that being family friendly does not mean dumping on the people with no dependents or no family at all - they have private lives too!

That’s why I picked transactional work not litigation.
I’m not boasting, just saying I (and my colleagues) have shown it can work. I don’t “dump on” others, I work long hours when the kids are in bed.

NeverTwerkNaked - I'm sure you don't dump on others. MN is self-selected to be the people who don't dump. But I would be surprised if you have never met the types who must be at the nativity play or cannot possibly do the Saturday duty solicitor rota (still bitter about that nearly forty years on!) and expects others to pick up the slack.

emsyj37 do you mind me asking what you found to be the grim parts of law that led you to leave it? Just started my first year Law LLB

I think the advantage of coming into law later is employability, ability to move in house and likely working hours are something you can take into account. I work long hours (and when I'm not working long hours I stress about the fact there isn't enough work) but at 3 years PQE I'm already at the stage where generally I can predict when it's going to be bad most of the time.

My last job paid far, far less than law. Hours were also far less but if a child was sick I would have to take annual leave to cover. If I wanted to go to a school assembly, I'd have to take annual leave. Holiday would have to be booked weeks in advance. My current job is far far more flexible.

That said I'm in a slow patch at the moment so my opinion won't be quite the same next time I'm working until dawn regularly. I'm also travelling all of next week (including the weekend) and have to spend my spare time taking clients out to lunch/dinner rather than mooching at home. I haven't had an uninterrupted holiday in about five years.

It's not for everyone and in the early years you need rock solid flexible child care. I'd also recommend training with a firm who already know you if possible (eg as a paralegal) as it means you have a bit more grace from day 1 (assuming you've shown yourself not to be a slacker).

potatoscowls the things I didn't like were a little bit different at the different firms I worked at. On the whole, the positive bits were working with clients (I did really enjoy client contact and working with different people), learning new things/research/advice, and the money. In the regional firms I worked at, the negative was overwhelmingly the chargeable hours and billing structure. You are not judged by how good you are at your work, but by how much you manage to bill. It makes it very difficult to feel that you are doing a good job when often a client will be quoted a fee that means you can only charge for a proportion of your time. This was absolutely NOT an issue in the magic circle firm I worked at - the issues there were different. So, to explain - let's say you are asked to draft a complex document and provide a note of advice to go with it. The partner in charge wants to quote a fee that the client will find attractive, so let's say the client is told it will cost £5,000 to do the work. The document requires you to spend about 3 days on it in total, plus a day for the advice not, plus a day of research - so a week. In one week, you would be expected to bill 7 chargeable hours a day, so 35 hours. If your charge out rate is £180 say, that makes a total of 35 x 180 = 6,300, which is a bit more than the partner promised - but you want to do a good job, so you spend that time. The partner then spends an hour looking at it and charges £500 for that hour, which he bills and recovers in full - leaving you with £4,500 billed out of £6,300 worth of hours worked. So your figures for that week look a bit rubbish. Never fear though, for there's plenty of work to go round! So you do a letter here and a conference call there, plus lots of admin that you can't charge for, and it all adds up to long days, many of which you spend too much time on non-chargeable work (such as business development, billing, compulsory training etc) - and your target of 7 hours a day looks totally unreachable. You're working hard and producing high quality work and you are quite quick in real terms (I am actually very quick at picking up new concepts and learning new things, and pretty quick at turning work around - I know this because it was noted and commented on frequently when I worked in London and since then at other non-legal workplaces) but the person who does a sloppy/adequate (but only just) job and bills more than you is seen as better. It is enormously frustrating.

Law is a commercial world and it suits some better than others. You need to be academic to get into it, but being academic is in many ways a negative for the commercial world in which solicitors operate. If you are very academic and really want to do law, I would only recommend doing it at the very top level - at a magic or silver circle firm, where the people you work with are really really clever and known their shit, and where being clever and understanding things quickly and doing excellent work is a valid way to be recognised. In any firm 'lesser' than that, you will be 100% judged on your billing and your billing will never reflect the amount of effort you put in. It is soul-destroying.
Working in a magic circle firm has its own issues though - the hours being the most obvious! I worked in a largely advisory team (mix of transactional and advice work, but at the time I was there we were mainly doing advice as mergers and acquisitions were limited due to the state of the economy at that time). The hours were by no means as bad as they were for those in other departments - e.g. insolvency, which was doing a roaring trade then - but they were a regular 9.30am to 8pm every day, with fairly frequent late nights up to say 10pm, and regular working at home into the night when something came up. I only worked 2 weekends in 2 years, which wasn't bad. I was lucky to be in a fairly regular hours type work area. It was no life though - I was very stressed as I had huge responsibility and very limited support. I also suffered a bit with impostor syndrome - never quite feeling good enough (as most of the people I worked with were Oxbridge graduates from fairly wealthy backgrounds and I was very much working-class - my father was illiterate, basically). When I handed my notice in, there was much shock expressed and I was told what a great lawyer I was (!!!) - too little, too late!! It is a very tough and unforgiving environment - but it is overall probably better than working in a smaller firm with the daily grind of chargeable hours targets.
That was long! It probably doesn't make much sense either - sorry!

Can I ask a probably very naive question? I'd love to study law, but only want to work for community law groups, refugee organisations, and other non-profits. If I can fund myself then woukd it be possible to qualify whilst avoiding the commercially pressured route?
(Am currently volunteering for CAB.)

Finding this thread very interesting - thank you OP and PPs.

You used to be able to get a comprehensive book from Chambers & Partners called something like the trainee solicitors guide - It had details of every firm/body offering training contracts, along with application details and a snapshot of the firm culture. I think it may also have listed number of places and number of applicants for the previous intake altho I could be wrong...
Wanting to work for a non-profit is likely to be more competitive than aiming for a magic circle or other large city firm, simply because bigger firms have more jobs. Working for that type of organisation will carry its own pressures and would not be either easier to get into (the opposite, more likely) or easier in terms of work/life balance.

Thank you emsyj37. I do understand that it would not be easier, just that that's where my motivation lies.

Useful info on here www.chambersstudent.co.uk/ - I think this is the current equivalent to the guide I mentioned above: www.tcph.co.uk/

Thank you emsyj37, that's fantastic.
What would you say the upper age limit is, realistically, for starting?
I have a science degree (2.1) and no kids.
(Sorry to intrude, OP.)

I think in general law is quite welcoming to older candidates, particularly those with relevant prior experience or a previous career that might be useful to an area of practice - e.g. former nurses/medics may be of special interest to firms with clinical negligence work etc. I suppose you need to consider how long you would be working post qualification as it costs a fair bit to train a new solicitor and it may be harder to break in if you won't have long to go til retirement. Certainly I would think if you are anywhere up to mid-40s you wouldn't be disadvantaged because of your age. Beyond that I couldn't say as I've not met any trainees older than that.