Barristers vs Solicitors!

[HBGKC]

Posting here for traffic - I told my son I'd pick the hive-brain of Mumsnet on his behalf.

He's in lower sixth currently, and thinking about possible career paths. He feels more drawn towards being a barrister (reasons: more interesting work, suits his skill-set, possibility to make a concrete difference), but is also thinking about degree apprenticeships to be a solicitor (reasons: getting paid a v decent wage whilst training, possibility to transition to barrister later on if he still thinks that's a better option, can make lots of contacts during his training that would be useful later as a barrister).

There's also the option to do a normal BA of his choice and then the law conversion course afterwards.

The degree apprenticeship would probably be the most difficult to get on to, as they're insanely competitive from what I've heard; though all law-related careers seem to like that!

I'd be very grateful for any tips/advice/words of wisdom/caution from any solicitors and barristers on here, particularly those who've qualified in the last 10-15 years. Thanks in advance

Your last line tells me a career in law isn’t for your son.

Noted, thank you.

Are there any areas of law that you'd particularly recommend, or would avoid? And why? Are certain areas more family-friendly in terms of work/life balance, or is that more a function of which role you work as?

He said he tried an LNAT (?) off the cuff, in a noisy room, and scored 22 (which means nothing to me, but he said it's not bad for a first attempt)..?

I agree - your son doesn't seem cut out to be a barrister.

I'm a solicitor. I specialise in litigation so instruct barristers all the time. I use London Chambers. All the barristers are Oxbridge. All were top of their year or won prizes. I know a lot who struggled as juniors because they are self employed.

Being a solicitor seems more likely for your son but I still have reservations. Get lots of work experience but I agree I agree a lot of places are snobby about apprenticeships so a decent upper 2:1 or first from a decent university essential. I did the conversion and I guarantee if your son if too lazy or concerned about that, law isn't for him.

If your son is reliant on advice obtained from Mumsnet via his mother then I don’t think either profession is for him. What an odd thread.

The solicitor route to qualification is changing I believe. Your son may want to research the SQE route to qualification. A colleague sat the exam in January and said it was brutal.

He's not reliant on me or this thread, @ClassicalChip, as I have already made clear.

Other than not-laziness, I'd be interested to hear what personal qualities would make for a good barrister.

Not sure if anywhere else does, but if he's interested in French as well Exeter do a course that's English and French law where you have a year in France and end up dual qualified.

Law has many options. In my view the key decision is not whether you want to be a solicitor or a barrister, it’s what area of law you want to work in. That changes the level of pay, the type of work you do day to day (contentious or non contentious, more or less advocacy etc etc) the hours (somewhat, I don’t know any lawyers who don’t work very hard indeed) and the people you work for and with.

On the law conversion course, it really isn’t as hard as people make out as long as you are reasonably smart and properly engaged. I found it pretty straightforward to be honest.

I knew exactly what field I wanted to work in and didn’t want to sit through 3 years of lectures on areas I had no interest in. So chose a degree I loved, then did the conversion course, the LPC (which they are phasing out) and got a training contract at a firm which did the area of work I wanted (it’s pretty niche). The really big difference between then and now is the cost. I went to uni when the fees were just being brought in so were only £1k a year. I got a loan, at a reasonable interest rate, to pay for my law conversion course and LPC. So a big question is can he/you afford to do it that way?

Not all barristers are Oxbridge. Far from it. And not all barristers (not even all very successful ones) are based in London 🙄

Just realised my post rather underplays that is very, very, difficult to get a training contract or pupillage. In fact, I am now routinely involved in recruiting trainees where I work. The standards are very high. I don’t think we even interviewed anyone with less than a first in the most recent recruiting round. Every single one of them also had lots of relevant experience too. It is really tough out there and your DS needs to be determined to get through.

I think this is not always the case, like many industries there are different experiences. I think location can be a huge factor. I am neither but started with a law degree and branched into something else. My DH, sister, BIL, cousin and most of my friends are still in the industry and their experiences differ vastly. Sis is in house now and has a very nice work life balance in a big city. Dh left a big city to a regional office and has good money and some stress but lots of time off. No one in his workplace works very long hours. BIL was trapped for a while in the toxic type environment you describe but is now in house in a multinational. About half the barristers I know moved into something else because they couldn't make a living. Many were in debt and these are people that don't come from money or connections. Those that did well were the very open friendly types that were kept afloat by their circle of newly qualified solicitor friends in their early years before really establishing themselves.

I think it’s a myth that a law degree is “boring”. I have had a wide ranging career in law and still use knowledge and concepts I learned during my law degree 30 odd years later. You can also pair a law degree with another subject if you want.

Different skill set for barristers/ solicitors definitely for different personality types. Majority of lawyers are basically academic diligent conscientious types though. You need to be determined and very hard working. Being confident and having abit of a swagger won’t cut it. Less snobbery around law apprenticeships now. The solicitors I know prefer them as they work with the candidates so can see who is good and who isn’t - a cv won’t tell you that.

I’m a solicitor and did a law / French law degree at one of the unis you mentioned. I love my job and don’t agree it’s always as pressured as many people here have made out, though it can be.

I would say the bar is much harder to get into than qualifying as a solicitor. Personally I don’t see the appeal of the conversion course. It means you end up just doing the core modules without getting many electives. I don’t understand the reasoning that you should do a different degree that you find interesting and then convert - if you want to be a lawyer then it helps to find the law interesting. Of course for some practice areas it would be an advantage to convert - eg if you want to be a patent attorney, you’d be better off with a science degree and a conversion course.

There’s no need for him to decide now - he should get some work experience doing vacation placements and mini pupillages and try out both. It sounds like the bar will be more appealing to him, but like I said it’s much more competitive and you have to be able to deal with getting a brief the night before, or the morning of, a hearing and being able to prepare you case. Not for me, but if you thrive under pressure why not.

Regardless of the route he wants to go down the first priority should be getting into the best law school he can as that has a huge influence on your prospects.

On the barrister point, I am not an expert (solicitor with law degree), but if your son wants high pay for commercial law etc in London and doesn't come from a background where he knows barristers and can get experience, he might be quite well advised to study law. Reason being is that most good red brick universities will put on moots (barrister debating competitions) to give him the chance to do advocacy, which then really helps for CVs and interviews. And there are lots of essay competitions and other things that look good. You can enter these as a non lawyer, btw, you just need to be more committed to doing and researching them outside your subject iyswim. You do have an advantage as a lawyer who knows the case law well. But as against this a law degree is a bit dry, so if he is very passionate about another subject and would be happy working really hard at that and joining the law society etc and getting stuck in on the side, then it is totally possible.

If you're not looking to join a London inn of court, it's not quite so essential and fine to pick up on the bar course from what I understand.

Criminal law and family law have to be real passions - you can make good money, but it is nowadays quite a hard slog as a junior and you obviously need an ability to cope with being given a brief or change at the last minute and being told potentially harrowing details. In my view, the kinds of people who enjoy this are the kinds of people who enjoy emergency medicine - bright, able to go with the flow, able to compartmentalise, sense of public duty (criminal lawyers are often asked about how they defend people who they believe are guilty, but in my experience they find this straightforward because they feel a real weight of duty to ensure that the process is right - not everyone understands this)

I'm currently doing the LLM (law conversion masters) part-time whilst holding down a high-level professional full time career. I devote 8-10 hours a week to it and am on course for a distinction. That's tough to balance.

If I were doing it full time with no other commitments it would be a piece of piss, frankly. But my perspective is being a fulltime professional, not a student, which is clearly different.

The nature of the course is you turn up, you plug away consistently at the work each week, and the results churn out the end. In that sense it's much easier than my undergraduate dissertation, which required me to be self-motivated and keep on track over months with limited input. Unlike some of the comments above I've found it enjoyable and interesting.

I can't help with the barrister/lawyer decision but if the workload of a law conversion course is offputting then he's not cut out for a career in the law, because it's much easier than a full time job.

Avoid law if you have any tendency to laziness. All the lawyers (solicitors and barristers) I know (was one myself) work their socks off. Although, caveat is that they are mainly working for City/ International firms.

Another solicitor here. He needs to do some shadowing and of the kind that isn’t simply going to court. Going to court is interesting, but even for a barrister, most of their working day will be spent reading and writing outside of court. The days are long and there’s a lot of work to be done before and after any appearances in court. It’s brutal - and that’s for the fortunate ones who’ve had pupillage, got tenancy and who are working.

I also did the Anglo-French course at King’s an am dual-qualified. It is an amazing course, incredibly intellectually demanding and carries with it a huge amount of work. It makes an ordinary law degree look light by comparison (a law degree is bloody hard work). Even in a class full of bright sparks, there were a lot of drop outs of people who couldn’t keep up and people who didn’t want to have to.

None of this should put him off - if it is what he really wants to do. But he should be fully conscious of what it entails and the way to do that is to speak to as many people who’ve done it, and do it, as possible.

If he's reluctant to work very hard then the new qualification route to being a solicitor may put him off. It's brutal. Roughly 50% of candidates pass the SQE.

Practical experience sounds like a good idea. It's hard to get vacation placements, but it's worth doing that before he commits.

The conversion is not that hard imo (I teach on it). Does it require hours of prep? Yes absolutely, but it's nowhere near as hard as the SQE. He can check out the SRA requirements online. Please ask him to do that. The amount of students who don't bother doing this is baffling.

In terms of characteristics I'd say most lawyers are interested in detail, they are diligent and driven.

I wouldn't encourage my kids to go into law.

This

I did a Law degree at 40, then the LLM. Qualified as a solicitor at 50. I work for local authorities in Community Care. My hours are generally 9-5 but work longer hours as needed. I work mainly from home so have an excellent work/life balance. However, it's really competitive getting training contracts and not suited to someone that isn't willing to work hard, especially when time is recorded in 6 minute increments for billing, with high daily targets. I loved my LLB degree and found it varied and interesting.

If you want to be a barrister you have to join a London Inn of court @ChatBFP no matter where you study or where you end up practising.

I feel the need to qualify the 'laziness' descriptor: what I mean by that is that he is a) very bright

b) very pragmatic
c) (and has autism - is at the v high-functioning end of the spectrum, but sees certain things in a very black-and-white way)

All of which means that he does the work that is necessary, but not much more. Because he is extremely bright, this 'necessary' amount of work doesn't take him much time or effort; when I say he's lazy I mean that he doesn't always put 100% effort into everything he does - because, frankly, he doesn't need to, and does very well without.

When he wants to do something, that he finds interesting, that he is personally motivated to do, he can become very focused and committed. The trick for him will be to find a career that he wants to work hard at. At the moment, being a barrister is winning.

@Chylka

Yes, sorry you are right, but you don't have to work/practise there, that's what I meant

Another solicitor here.

I honestly do get the sentiment behind the “I wouldn’t encourage law as a profession”. I would alter that slightly though and say for my daughters, I wouldn’t recommend it. It remains inherently misogynistic - I’ve experienced it myself and seen it countless times. I’ve been sexually harassed by partners and admin colleagues. Blocked for promotion purely because I had DC (HR overrode that one when I threatened to sue!). Assumptions made that I’m a secretary/coffee maker or just generally less important than the men folks at the same level.

If you’re a man (and frankly, if you are also a bit of a dickhead) it’s a great career. Fortunately I am quite feisty and direct and don’t stand for the aforementioned shite so I’ve done okay. But you need a tough skin!

Despite the negatives the work is great. No two days the same. Lots of job satisfaction. But I’ve often seen partnerships rotten to the core by pure greed. So it depends - if he’s cut throat enough to reach the top, go for it. But my barrister friends seem to be much more chilled out! Although their workloads are heavy if they want to make a good salary (juniors earn a paltry amount).

@ChatBFP you’re going to need the full CV of relevant work experience to get a pupillage anywhere. There is no London / provinces separation in that. I used to sit on the pupillage committee and every last candidate we’d interview would have debating, mooting, negotiating competitions, some variation of volunteering for Amicus, or the FRU or CAB, marshalling High Court judges…the list goes on. The Inns of Court have got bog all to do with it. You just have to get your dinners eaten there…🤣