A levels for law

[70smillie]

DD has straight 9s at GCSE. She's very keen on law and plans on doing History, English Lit & Geography at A level.

She's thinking about Oxbridge (I have reservations about this due to personality type but haven' expressed).

Anyway someone has suggested geography won't make her stand out if she decides to aim for Oxbridge and her 3rd A level should be something more obviously challenging on paper like maths or a language. DD isn't really concerned about geography, her favourites are Eng lit & history and then geography because she finds it easiest.

Assuming school can facilitate a change her choices now seem to be.

History, English lit, Maths - she could also then add further maths if there's a space.
History, English lit, Spanish or Latin
History, English lit, Geography.

Can anyone help her ? She's been looking online but is none the wiser.

Any advice

Our teen’s school (accustomed to trillions of successful Oxbridge applications every year) wouldn’t allow anyone with less than a 9 in Maths GCSE to proceed to A’ Level. They had a spreadsheet showing the results of people who started with ‘only’ an 8 ...

I’m at the Bar and sit on my Chambers ouillage committee. Honestly we rarely look at A level subjects or results. If she’s interested in the Bar (pupillage not a training contract - that’s solicitors’ training stage) then what’s needed is good degree or conversion course result plus Bar qualification (now BVS) plus a lot of evidence of enthusiasm (mini pupillage as/voluntary work/relevant extra curricular stuff). By the time they get to us A levels are largely irrelevant. So too can degrees be. Often the best candidates have NOT done a law degree and are a bit more well rounded and at least a year older having done the lost grad law conversion.

Post grad. Not lost grad 😂

Thanks everyone, this is really useful. She's decided she wants to do maths whatever and keep geography, dropping English lit. I'm a bit concerned as its such an about turn but its her decision. To PP there is no pressure whatsoever from me or her Dad re her A levels or degree, she's very self motivated and to be honest I'd prefer her to keep an open mind about her degree (both subject and destination). She was only 16 last week and it seems so early for her to have to narrow her choices like this.

Just to clarify she has never struggled with maths and she has a 9 in both maths and further maths (I know the latter isn't a full GCSE). Its just that she was told from an early age what a talented writer she was & wrote very high level essays from an early age, and she'd never doubted that she would do all essay subjects. She was thrown by the idea that geography wasn't a good idea and finally started thinking about what she actually enjoys and she's announced that now she thinks about it she actually hates reading classic novels and poetry and enjoys the logic of maths.

If that's what she likes then its a good idea to keep up with the maths. I'm an employment solicitor and I use maths all the time in my job.

DS1 is about to start English lit and the books for his exam board are certainly not to everyone's taste.

( If she’s interested in the Bar (pupillage not a training contract - that’s solicitors’ training stage) then what’s needed is ...

Heron, I often find I have to explain pupillage by relating it to a solicitor’s training contract.)

I went to Oxbridge and did law - a long time ago. I would also do Maths or a foreign language IF she is equally capable at those as she is at Geography.
As a City solicitor I would say maths can be quite useful in that most do secondments to banks at some point or go in-house (better hours). MFL like French, Spanish or German can also be very useful for international secondments. For the bar, Latin was a favourite in my times but that may have changed.

I think Maths, history and geography would be a fantastic combination too. Both for law - and if she changed her mind and wanted to do something different eg a geography or maths degree. I actually think she will be setting herself up fantastically for a lot of options!

I think a law degree is worth having but anyone should think long and hard about being a solicitor or barrister.

I qualified as a solicitor over 25 years ago, and while it was pretty competitive then to get a training place / pupillage it is now crazy.

What many solicitors' firms tend to do now is give people who would have been given traineeships when I qualified a paralegal role. This means they can pay them buttons, play them off against each other and dangle the carrot of a training contract. These are people with impressive Russell Group uni degrees.

My son has just got stellar A level grades and is going to an excellent university. I am pleased he has no interest in going into law.

Well she may end up an environmental law solicitor so Geography could be helpful 🤷‍♀️

I agree that History/Geography/Maths sounds an excellent set of choices to allow her to make strong applications to whatever courses appeal most in a year's time. If she starts exploring what law degrees are really about a bit more, what the training routes look like, she may decide that an alternative undergrad course appeals more, but will be well placed for a wide variety. Good luck to her!

(I've also got a just-turned-16 yr old, who I'm having to push to start thinking about what he might want to do at uni as this year will go quickly and then uni applications will be upon us. His options at the moment are very wide open. Having said that, I was only 17 when I started uni, albeit in a different country/system)