To wonder how smart do you actually have to be for some professions?

[Jigaliga]

Inspired by a comment on another thread...

Do you really have to be genuinely intelligent to be a doctor, lawyer, etc? Or is it just putting in the grind and a good education?

I guess to be an academic you would have to be intelligent. To be a barrister too, but maybe not to be a solicitor? What about accountants?

Nonsense! They still have to get the grades and to pass the separate entrance examinations.
Private schools give a small academic advantage- up to half a grade per subject once you control for other factors.

Isn’t it also likely, the children of professionals are going to inherit their intelligence and it’s intelligence that clusters in the professions?

All three of our DC were bright; and I’d say DGD is even brighter than her parents!

As a solicitor I'm offended that you think barristers need to be intelligent but solicitors don't 🙃

(I'm not really offended)

I would say generally my colleagues and others I meet in the profession are an intelligent bunch. I'm not suggesting everyone is a superhuman Sherlock type but broadly, yes, they're a clever group of people.

Lots of the less intellectually demanding aspects of law are now farmed out to paralegals. A lot of conveyancing, insurance claims, personal injury work etc is handled by paralegals with oversight from a solicitor. That type of work tends to be more formulaic and a lot of it is based on pre-existing styles which just need to be amended for the current circumstances. You still need to be reasonably intelligent to be a paralegal, but it's a less intellectually vigorous role.

Honestly, I have not been that impressed by barristers. They typically are all bravado but lack the attention to detail and quiet brilliance that many solicitors demonstrate.

(Of course there are extremely clever barristers as well, and perhaps the best barristers are truly the brightest of all)

Paralegals often have law degrees or conversion or are barristers via the exam but not qualifies to practice as they didn’t get pupillage. Others will be wanting to be solicitors and are waiting for the opening. Hence many are reasonably intelligent but just haven’t been the best so far.

@OrangeCrushesIt really depends on what you want the barrister to do! A tax barrister or commercial barrister will be a very different type of person from a criminal barrister. There’s all sorts in between. The top sets can afford to be very choosy. They pay upwards of £75,000 for the pupillage year and they don’t give that to just anyone. I’ve met barristers who have amazing recall, they know every nuance and are great advocates. It’s not a job for someone with low self esteem or lacking in confidence. Many top ones are very very intelligent. For the criminal end, you don’t have to be a brain box but you need all the other attributes and lots of people simply don’t have them.

ITA. We came across a barrister last year, who started off as a paralegal with Irwin Mitchell.