Law degree A Level choices

[Cannotbelievepeoplecanbesojudgemental]

My DD is currently deciding upon her A Level choices. She wants to go onto university to study law. She is expected to get 8s and 9s.
This is really a question towards thise who have studied / are currently studying law. Which A Levels do you think would be best out of the following?
History
Sociology- this is her favourite GCSE currently.
Economics
English Literature
English Literature and Language combined
Law

Do you use AI @Araminta1003?

We and other City firms are already anticipating significant job losses, certainly at associate level, because AI is already better than associates in multiple respects. The perfect combination will be AI plus an experience senior associate / partner.

It will be hard to explain to clients why we are offering a slower, more expensive, human service. The pressure will come from them, and from competitors who undercut us by offering cheaper AI based solutions.

There’s a medium to long term question around how we produce the supervising partners if there are no associates in the pipeline. We’ll obviously need some, but nowhere near the number we house currently.

The market is going to become ridiculously competitive.

You will still need to train up plenty of trainees and associates to have the partners ultimately. Perhaps more focus on retention and keeping those there happy and on track to stay long term by using AI to manage their work load better? It is a difficult balance because nobody wants to be seen to be left behind in the AI arms race, but to go too strong is a big risk too and ultimately, all responsible governments will start cracking down on AI to replace humans, because they need people and society to have some work that pays (and also AI is very bad for the environment).
It will be typical UK and US to go AI crazy and then regret it. That is all I have to say on the matter. AI needs to be used as a tool to be productive just like the internet and emails were, but not to replace humans.

@Araminta1003 A1 certainly cannot give nuanced advice.

I don’t believe so many have all these high grades in one school when the 7 plus grade 9s is below 1300 for the whole country. I’ve attached the table.

i hope you are right! We have a Dd born with the perfect skills to be a solicitor currently studying law and a language at a RG university so have skin in the game admit it worries me.

@TheaBrandt1 Be a barrister then. AI in court when you are advocating for your client won’t be AI any time soon.

@OhDear111 - every single one of DD’s close friends has perfect Attainment 8 score. I am not sure the figures are published for all students with 90 points? To get into the sixth form they take a candidates top 9 subjects. They start with 81 points (9x9), then offer to 80 (8x9, plus 1x8), then 79. I think the cut off for over 100 kids this year was 78 points.

I ask you whether a candidate who has 9x9 plus two 8s and did 11 GCSEs in total, is better than a candidate who did 8 GCSEs in total and got 8x9 (but did not do the three extra)?
The Government statistics publishing just candidates with all 9s (across all subjects) do not tell us very much. A lot of DDs friends do have at least 8x9! And then maybe 2x8. Or 9x9 and 1x8. Or all 9s bar 1x7.
I mean DD has an attainment score of 90 and feels very average academically amongst the peer group.

@TheaBrandt1 - she will likely be fine. In the early 2000s the law firms sacked a lot of people during the dot com crash but then realised during the 2008 financial crash that it had been a mistake and whilst they sacked a few then, it was nowhere near as much as people expected. In the mid 2000s they had to hire laterals from all over the world to make up the shortfall.

Training a lawyer up to be a top partner is a very long term heavy investment and AI won’t be replacing at top level so how exactly they are going to do it, is a question mark, but they need to figure it out. So what if you cannot bill every trainee hour or junior associate hour to the client anymore. That is a structural billing issue. Recruitment for long term purposes is separate.

I’m in a similar job to a solicitor-slightly different but similar skill set and have a 2:1 LLB from a RG uni (plus professional exams and 20+ years of experience). Currently extricating myself from the profession.

It’s overrun by AI. Most of my days are spent effectively programming AI, noting every aspect of my decision making online. The official reason is to “create an audit trail” yet we all know it’s effectively setting out to a computer how to do our work. We are actively encouraged to used Co Pilot and tweak it,

There is no way on earth would encourage my child to go into any knowledge based professional services. I think there will be more limited roles in instructing and tailoring AI generated advice. Work filling out precedents, returns etc will completely disappear within a decade (being optimistic)

Knowledge is increasingly being devalued. Ability to solve problems in unique ways is increasingly being devalued. Everything should be predictable everything is a process.

Over the past 20 years I’ve seen a stagnation in many professional services salaries. There used to be a large difference between solicitors and accountants and other professional salaries. Now, unless you reach the top levels not so much.

So many people seem to be leaving in droves, burnout is occurring at levels I’ve never seen before. Graduates are being taken on - you can see the active scraping to retain only a very few - ones who will work with AI for the aforementioned programming and checking and sales.

I think the billing per hour is a long out dated model - yet clung to by professional services as they lack the imagination. Professional services are going to have to just bill per job, building in the costs of running their business which inc the cost of training up the future partners (snd staff wastage who will never get there) for years they’ve tried to build this in to hourly charge out rates which have become increasingly ridiculous. Now clients are paying to doubling up of work load, they’re paying for the trading of AI. Accounting for every 6min of time is increasingly a work of fiction, with most time spent not client related at all.

It is seen by employers and recruitment agencies and a soft subject

Couldn’t agree more. I’d say at least 75% of law and other professional service roles, accountants, auditors, tax) will go in the next decade. Anything process driven, filling in forms or precedents (which, let’s face it is the majority of juniors through tho associates.managers roles) has effectively already disappeared but firms are keeping people doing those jobs in the short term because they need to figure out the issue you outline re future AI supervisor/customer interface role.

I can ask Co pilot to draft me a letter that will be a lot better than anything a junior will do. I don’t need to spend time briefing them, for them to write it, me review it, then make adjustments. I’m pressured on time - have recovery pressures. I’d love to spend the time coaching junior staff. It used to be really hard finding capacity in the junior ranks. Now many are sat twiddling thumbs / it’s wrong. But that’s the reality.

Whilst professional accounts inc WIP the partners are going to want to keep utilisation up as much as possible. If you move to a basis of ignoring WIP and just concentrate on contracted set fees AI will really take over.

I’ve never had an issue - no one has ever mentioned it. I’ve never heard anyone mention it before this thread. If you’re using it as a measure you’ve probably missed out on some really good candidates over the years - shame.

Some very old fashioned views here. I’m currently interviewing graduate positions right now for city law. I don’t need someone who excels in Maths. I don’t need the cleverest person in the room. I need someone commercially astute, who embraces and helps to embed innovation, can think on their feet and most importantly can listen, empathise, understand and connect with our clients who are, surprisingly, human beings and who can understand their needs and their motivations.That goes for proposing for work and doing the work. The ability the drive ethics and values is key too.

I have seen hundreds of clever people but I need them to understand human behaviour and show the ability to connect with our clients, internal stakeholders and critically think their way around a problem and communicate (verbally and in writing) efficiently and effectively and also negotiate.

Those that have studied broad social sciences (English, Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy, Politics, Economics) I’ve found are most able to do this. Most importantly those who have had actual work experience in the real world (retail, warehouses, call centres, volunteer work with vulnerable groups) are head and shoulders above their peers.

If law is going to ride the wave of AI then it’s the human understanding and connection, whatever discipline you are in, that will win it as AI simply can’t do that.

As PP have said I can get AI to do the majority of what our junior associates would have done 10 years ago. Their jobs are now far more interesting as a result and as such we need different people with broader skill sets. Maths v Sociology? Sociology for the win for me.

“Most importantly those who have had actual work experience in the real world (retail, warehouses, call centres, volunteer work with vulnerable groups) are head and shoulders above their peers.”

That is all interesting, but is AI not going to replace a lot of those work experience opportunities as well?

It's a balance isn't it. I went to a dinner party at the weekend and was sat next to someone who was saying how her DC is about to apply to do a self funded law conversion. Her DC apparently wants to be a lawyer because he has been told it's all about chatting to people and client entertainment and because he likes Suits. It sounds like a good way to waste £26,000 to me (£16k conversion year with SQE1, £5k SQE2, £5k SQE exam fees)..

I do need people to be personable. They need to be able to get on with clients and win the work. But they also need to be extremely intelligent (and A level grades can be a useful short cut to assessing this) and eloquent, with good memories, the ability to think on their feet, make firm decisions to guide clients, be the type of person who pays attention to detail and can spot tiny errors or remember a small point in a large pile of documents etc . I also need them to have an excellent work ethic and be prepared for the fact that their work life balance will not be great, particularly at a more junior level.

To pass the SQE they need to be the type of person who is very good at exams under pressurised conditions. Not the type of person who needs coursework/open book to score highly.

DH is also a lawyer and he won't recruit any trainee who doesn't have actual real life work experience in a real job (not a vacation placement scheme). He uses it as his first sift given the volume of applications he gets from straight A/A* and 2.1/First students.

In terms of A levels I would advise History, English Lit and Economics out of the OP's list. However it doesn't really matter as long as you have an essay based subject in there. My DN is currently at Oxford studying Law and did English Lit, English Language and Drama. The key is to study the subjects you will get the highest grades in.

I did LLB Law at RG university with English Lit, Politics & Sociology back in the 90s. My best friend also did LLB at RG with History, Sociology & Maths.

DD is in Y12 and considering Law. She’s doing History, English Lit & Politics.

A few things to cover here.

On sociology v maths/economics, the key question is whether the candidate has demonstrated mathematical ability which is a crucial part of the job. Maths is an easy way to tick that box and I (in interviewing candidates and working with trainees) have seen far too many who don’t have sufficient aptitude.

But of course that’s a tiny part of the process. Of course we’re all looking for candidates who have a whole host of other skills. We all want drive, client facing skills, entrepreneurialism, common sense, yada yada. But that’s not what this thread is about. And of course there are plenty with softer A levels who get through the door.

But in a massively competitive environment, if I am asked to say whether maths/economics or sociology is a better choice, in good faith I would have to acknowledge the advantage that the first option would give over the other if all other things were equal.

Totally agreed though that practical, difficult work experience in retail, hospitality, dealing with difficult people etc is hugely valuable and genuinely improves the candidate.

As to AI, it is obviously completely speculative to say that someone with a sociology A level will be better placed! Who knows, frankly.

@SmearedLippie The key subjects you mention are the combo of History and maths, History and English Lit, and English Lit with Politics. The first 2 combinations tick the Cambridge (competitive course) A level box and your combo ticks 2 essay subjects! Of course these combinations are good enough!

What does soft mean to you?

Why is A level economics not soft? What is the opposite of soft?

I'll name the one subject that has a combo of open book and coursework:

English.

(I'm not opposed - but seeing as that was mentioned as anathema ).

Very few A levels subjects have coursework now.

I'd argue the subjects that do use more real life skills, to be honest.

Interestingly iGCSE (because it can) is going back to open book assessments for English Lit .

Is it only in academics (specifically law it seems) where soft = bad? It appears to be a euphemism for 'easy' or maybe ' not numbers' or 'not dates'. It's amazing English ahs survived this anti cultural tide, tbh.

Soft skills are prized in workplaces.

If you'e referring to my post I didn't mean that A levels with coursework are bad. History has coursework, English Lit has coursework. Both are good options for law.

But to pass SQE exams you need to be able to be good at exams and to be a detail person because all of the possible answers are deliberately very similar.

Yes, fine : no worries. It was maybe your context in that I assumed you bunged sociology in with the list of open books and coursework where it has nearly 9 hours of essay exams.

I think most lawyers who are well paid are academic but offer a hell of a lot more to an employer! They get their soft skills on the way and often learn good manners and confidence from parents. Also many will volunteer and do interesting hobbies as well as some work if they need to. There’s many options to prove they can mix with others and communicate well.

The main thing is that the best are quick accurate workers, grasp concepts quickly, can converse with others eloquently and fit into a team. Hard work is a given which is why hard academics matter and of course Oxbridge trains for this. However just academics is never enough!