To consider retraining as a solicitor at 33?

[northernbella]

Hi all,

Just hoping for some advice about retraining as a solicitor (I'm most interested in immigration or human rights law). I am researching other sources too but thought I might try and tap into the huge wealth of experience on here!

I graduated 5 years ago (languages degree). I am now at civil service middle management level in a role I find very interesting with prospects.

However, i have been thinking seriously about law as a career since uni. I did a couple of internships with law firms (immigration) and free advice centres. I found the work really interesting and rewarding.

Also, lawyers I know personally have said that they think i would be well suited to the job (when asked for their objective advice on retraining, not fishing for compliments!!). I worked in some immigration roles with the civil service.

The reason I didn't train straight away was that I wanted some time out of studying for health reasons but this is largely stabilised.

Currently single but would like a family.

Does anyone have any experience or views on retraining at this point, is it realistically too late? It would need to be part time for financial reasons. Any advice on funding sources would be helpful.

Would law firms be likely to favour younger candidates for training contracts? Also my degree was a 2:2 as I had health issues during finals (I could prove this). Is this likely to put employers off?

Many thanks in advance!

I agree 100% with @Bellaposy, she's posted exactly what I was going to. Also, I agree with the others, considering how competitive the options are, I also think you stand very little chance with a 2:2. I am sorry.

I am a solicitor and do not want my dc to follow in my footsteps. I am one of the ‘lucky’ ones in that I qualified many years ago and have a decent job.
The legal profession is not the same anymore. As others have stated ,there are too many Law graduates , chasing few places. This is because the provision of legal education has become big business.
When I was training , the College of Law and BPP were the sole training providers for the LPC. Now everyone and his dog provides legal education. It’s all about the money.
Immigration and Human Rights Law have suffered cutbacks . In fact, Immigtation Law is being taken over by consultants, who may not even have legal training.
The reality is that Law is not necessarily well paid, unless you work in one of the big city firms.
However, if you really want to study Law, I would go down the CIlex route as a previous poster suggested.

If you want to chat about the CILEx route, feel free to PM me. I have nearly completed level 3 and plan on starting level 6 in 2019.

Don’t do it.

I wouldn't if it were me, have worked at a law firm (in Management not as a lawyer) and they were all stressed miserable and all but the partners weren't paid much at all

I agree with the advice of seeing if you can with with the government legal department. They do work experience placements in the summer (or they did back when I was a lad).

The home office taken on advocates in immigration cases who are not legally qualified. I don’t think I’d leave a civil service management post for this though.

As others have said, age is not an issue (I did my lpc on my 30s) but the 2.2. is. What you could do is start the GDL part time. If you can get a distinction in that you will be more successful in arguing the 2.2 was a blip. Are your a-levels strong?

I think you're unlikely to get the GDL or Lpc paid for going into immigration. I thi m you'll struggle at any of the big human rights firms with a 2.2.

I qualified late and I wouldn't put my kids off law. I've done far worse jobs. This has long hours but I'm rewarded for them and firms get more flexible every year. My current firm is very flexible.

Solicitor here. I wouldn't recommend you do it - I agree with the "no" comments above but if you want to pursue this definitely look at CILEX instead there are a lot of changes coming in and some of those are around admission to be a solicitor if the current SRA head has his way every man and his dog will qualify as a solicitor. It's hard work / long hours /brutal culture- very rare to find a solicitor these days who enjoys their job.

Hi op. I was in this area but had to transfer because money wasn't great and I had a young family to support. If I could go back to uni al over again I wouldn't have chosen to go down this route. I think that yes it is a very rewarding career path if you can find the right firm and you are not reliant on your salary as your sole source of income. I just couldn't sustain it any longer. PP posters are right about the huge financial outlay. If I were you I would look at the CIlex route or try finding a firm that does an apprenticeship. I don't know where you are but some larger firms have started down this route now and will pay you your fees to train. A lot of my colleagues are leaving the profession from all areas sadly. Rather than be vocational anymore they are all about bottom line profit! Hope that helps !

Another solicitor here. I am another one who feels you should act with caution, not because you have a 2.2 because I do not think that this is as much of a barrier as others, it is at graduate level but definitely not when you have good management / work experience.

My main issue is that you say your current job has good / interesting prospects, I am not sure that these will be worth giving up. This is especially the case if you have civil service pension scheme, holidays and relatively short hours/ flexibility. These tend not to be replicated in the private sector.

If you must do this, I would also advise the CILEX route as this would result in not having to give up working altogether and the ability to earn as you train.

Good luck whatever you do decide.

Some really excellent advice here, thanks once again to each one of you.

On balance it seems that the 2:2 would make it a very risky idea to just forge ahead with self funding the GDL and LPC, I just don't have that kind of money to gamble, but it seems other options might not be closed to me entirely.

The government legal training scheme sounds like a great possibility (even if very competitive). I didnt realise it closed so soon but think i will try and get an application in this year for practice, I'd have nothing to lose.

Also, regarding CILEX, please forgive my complete ignorance in asking this question. I hope it doesn't seem rude to those studying it but is there any difference in employability or employer preference compared to the GLD/ LPC route?

I'm in that area and I like it, but no I wouldn't if I were you.

The pay is crap at least initially and it's going to take you ages to work up to anything decent- and by decent I mean something beginning with high 2 or 3. One of the worst paying areas of law. You're never going to get the sort of terms and conditions you'll get in the civil service, and there's not a lot of stability.

Also, as nobody else has pointed this out to you yet, I'm going to be honest: a small but significant minority of asylum lawyer types will, if your previous civil service immigration experience is with UKVI, regard you with suspicion. At best. If you have been in law centre environments I'd bet you've come across at least one of them, even if they didn't say as much. The more mainstream firms won't care, and there are some situations where it might even be an advantage. But if your interest is in some of the more campaigning organisations, which it sounds like it is, it's a taint you might struggle to escape.

I appreciate that this is a controversial perspective, and some people won't like reading it. It's still true though.

If you did want to do immigration law, I'd recommend trying to get OISC accreditation instead of going the GDL/LPC route. The downside is that you'd have to be sponsored by an organisation to do it, you can't just sign up and do it under your own steam like the GDL, but some places will get their volunteers through it.

For the most part, there is no real employability difference (at least with our firm) for CILEX/LPC. If anything, CILEX candidates are often preferable because to get to that point they are usually already working in practice (it is common for legal secretaries to train on CILEX if they want to advance) whereas you get LPC students with no knowledge straight out of university.

To be a fellow of CILEX you have a year or two full time work (from memory I think it used to be 2 and now it is 1) after you have graduated from the course running your own files. If you are already in a firm, lots will move the person on and give them files to do.

There are some things that a CILEX fellow can't do - certain activities are reserved to only solicitors, so there has to be an 'overseeing solicitor'. It isn't a problem where the CILEX member works in a solicitor firm but does make a difference if they want to set up on their own.

If you look at law job adverts, sometimes they will only advertise for solicitors (because they need that head role or someone who can do the 'reserved activity' of which there is very little), but most will be advertised as 'fee earner' or solicitor/legal executive' and they care more about the experience than the title.

Also, regarding CILEX, please forgive my complete ignorance in asking this question. I hope it doesn't seem rude to those studying it but is there any difference in employability or employer preference compared to the GLD/ LPC route?

Where I work 90%+ of the CILEX qualified lawyers are employed as legal execs on ~30k/year, compared to the solicitors who are all on at least £20k more.

It could just be that my firm treats the CILEX people badly though!

The big difference between CILEX and Solicitor used to be snobbery (it used to be looked down on by 'old school' solicitors). I don't think that is really the case anymore and I know some fantastic CILEX and bad solicitors, so it is more about how good you are at the job than what title you end up with.

Immigration law is one of the areas where being a solicitor matters least. I'm a solicitor but I know non-solicitor lawyers who'd basically outrank me in terms of knowledge, experience and reputation. It's really common for firms of solicitors to advertise for a solicitor but be willing to take a non-solicitor caseworker with the appropriate accreditation and experience. And if you want to work in legal aid then being a non-solicitor with the Law Society accreditation is more useful than being a solicitor without it.

There are also some firms doing immigration that are regulated by the OISC so they don't even necessarily need any solicitors (in practice they usually have some but it's not a given).

With this in mind, although I've only ever worked with CILEX people who were on the path to becoming solicitors and were clear about that, I don't think being a CILEX is a particular issue. It probably would be in some firms but not across the sector.

Hi OP I’m early 30s and finally qualified as a solicitor a few years ago. It was a long hard road and I don’t think I’d do it again. It’s also extremely expensive - I was lucky enough to have financial help from family as there’s no way I could have afforded it alone. I definitely wouldn’t embark on the GDL/LPC without a TC lined up - it’s just too risky.

The competitiveness is brutal. I had a first class degree and lots of relevant experience and still found it very hard to find a TC.

Have you thought about working as a paralegal? It’s not very well paid but great experience and there’s now a direct route to qualification through paralegal work, though admittedly I don’t think that’s a walk in the park either and you still have to do the academic side.

The other thing is, a lot of the bigger more ‘old school’ firms are pretty inflexible when it comes to work/ life balance. Long hours are expected. I’m currently on mat leave and probably won’t be returning because my firm simply don’t accept the part time hours I want (3 days). I also don’t think the long hours and stressful work are particularly compatible with family life. That’s a big factor to consider.

Good luck whatever you decide!

I agree with previous posters regarding CILEx (I've just finished Level 6 myself), your likelihood of getting a training contract with a 2:2 and extenuating circumstances (sorry, but there is probably someone with a 2:2, extenuating circumstances and better or more relevant experience. This is a cold, harsh truth of the numbers game involved when universities and law schools churn out tens of thousands of graduates each year).

I'd like to reiterate GLS as a possibility.

I also note that the career changers I have met who qualified as a solicitor usually had very useful experience in a relevant area (I knew a master mariner who re-trained as a shipping solicitor, a former quantity surveyor who re-trained as a construction solicitor) or would be useful because they had worked for a key client in a non-legal role but knew the client and its workings inside out.

Agree with burdog - the ones who make successful law transition as a second career would do best to build on the experience they have in their earlier life - that will put you ahead of all the Oxbridge graduates angling for the same training contracts. Say doctor doing med neg, or history of art MA grad in house lawyer at Christies. Always seems abit of a shame for people to entirely turn their backs on what they had been doing for years rather than using that as a selling point as it would really set you apart from the pack.

We both lawyers and agree we about 60 years too late think being a solicitor in the past seemed a good gig lots of respect, money and a relatively easy life now not so much.

Well that makes good sense, I thought that my immigration experience might help in my favour, even go some way to making up for the 2:2 as i have a working knowledge of the immigration rules and some case law already.

I had no idea that it could actually count against me as independentpersonquestion says!!

It won't necessarily. There are people who have moved from HO to representing clients and there are some situations in which it could be a USP. I have met a few of them. They're normally in more commercial firms rather than law centre types, is all. It sounded like the latter was more your thing.

Basically it depends whether the person looking at your application is someone who's looking at it thinking about how you could commercially advantage their firm and increase profits for their department, or whether they're a law as a tool for social change type. If you wanted to do business immigration the issue probably wouldn't arise.

Are you in a position where you could volunteer somewhere and get your OISC 1? If you're OISC 1, firms not run by hippies will probably at least interview you.

Just to reiterate, I wouldn’t outlay any money for a GDL and LPC with a 2:2 and no firm offer of a TC, especially with the introduction of the SQE in a couple of years.

I have no problem with CILEX and know some great ones but I echo a pp’s experiences of there being snobbery around them and they definitely get paid less where I am, unless they cross qual and get on the roll.

It seems also that immigration/ human rights is somewhat oversubscribed and underfunded. I wonder whether any of you would suggest a different area of the law as perhaps an easier entry point?

I'm not imagining that any area will be an easy ride, just looking for ideas. My strengths aren't finance related so for instance tax law would be a real uphill struggle.