DS 15 Law

[SureGar]

Dd is considering studying law at university but we have no background in the field and don't personally know any lawyers to ask for advice. She seems pretty set on the idea, but I’d love to get some insight from those with experience.

• What kind of personality or skills suit a career in law?
• Are there any practical steps she should take now (e.g., work experience, volunteering, Saturday job,)?
• What are realistic career options post-graduation?
• Does anyone have insights on the best universities for undergraduate study?
• How about a different degree with an eye to doing a conversion course later?
• What's the work/life balance like nowadays?
• Any book recommendations that might be useful
• If you are a lawyer, do you like/ love your job?

Thanks!

I found the degree mostly engaging, it's varied but there are some duller parts. My uni (RG) had a good mix of options to choose from.

On the day job I find it interesting and engaging - but I have positioned myself into the job I want and largely created my particular mix of practice myself and have control over what I do. I was lucky to have the benefit of that from early on thanks to supportive supervising partners etc, I was of course at their beck and call for the first few years but not for long as mostly they need you to develop and push on for yourself. A lot of lawyers can and do control their own destiny in what they end up doing, but definitely not all, some seem to get themselves pigeon holed or stay at the stage of doing the more routine parts of the work for longer - which can mean they actually have a calmer life but I'm a sucker for doing the more challenging stuff

for barristers, do you often pay your own legal training cost (except if you qualify for the very limited number of means tested bursaries and highly competitive scholarships)? As opposed to solicitors who get TCs towards the end of the degree and get paid by the firms for solicitor training?

@lighttherapy Those aiming for the Bar are liable for their own costs of studying but, in addition to the scholarships and bursaries you mention, those who have secured a pupillage can often draw down part of their pupillage award a year early in order to assist with those costs. The pupillage year is always paid, though the award varies across sectors of the Bar and across different Chambers. The going rate for the pupillage award in my area of law (company/commercial/chancery) is around the £80k mark for the coming year.

Studied law at Cambridge, which I found extremely difficult and incredibly hard work. Like others, have a perfect set of GCSEs and A level grades.

Now a lawyer in house working for a regulator.

I do not really enjoy it: many of my colleagues are unbelievable pedants and I become bored incredibly quickly. In retrospect, I think I'm much too creative and imaginative to be a lawyer. I also enjoyed the more "black and white" answers available in medicine and the natural sciences, which is perhaps what I should have studied. I find the "arguments in favour this" and "arguments against that" quite tedious.

But the forensic method of thinking law teaches is very useful and I've won many a consumer battle using my legal training.

How do you secure a pupillage prior to passing the bar exams?

By applying the year before. It’s a normal part of the process. Pupillage offers in May 2025 will be for Sep 2026, so you do the BPTC in between.

I am a solicitor with 4 solicitor children (the youngest 2, twins, qualified earlier this year) and they have law student cousins so the last few years has certainly been about law application and the like in this family.

I love my work and liked my LLB. I used sometimes to go to the local county court in my home city to sit in before university which was quite interesting (and free of charge). Traditionally A levels like English lit, History etc were good for law and still are as most of law is reading large amounts of information and writing which comes to the fore in those subjects. I did those two plus German. My youngest did Geography, history and one did economics and other classical civ A levels. The higher grades you can get the better. Once on a degree potential law firm employers want the grades in every module in each year of the degree including year 1 on application forms.

My number 1 question to anyone thinking of being a lawyer is - Do you love reading? I mean really love reading and language. Do they read 3 x as much as any of their friends? When they see an 800 page book does their heart sink or do they think “oooh, a huge book. I wonder what that’s about?”

if she doesn’t love reading, choose another subject. I read thousands of pages a week and write up to 20k words a week.

That's helpful to know @Delphigirl, reading is actually her number 1 hobby.

Excellent @suregar, that’s a very positive sign!

I agree. My son who is working upstairs today from home who does similar commercial law work to mine has always been interested in words, grammar, can flick between hundreds of pages of a contract on his screens, check things. He probably reads more online than in physical books but he does read and likes words a lot (and I spent my teens reading and reading)

Thanks everyone for such helpful advice. Can anyone explain how dd could go about finding a law related year 10 work experience placement?

Carpet bomb local firms with emails to a named person - HR or senior partner- one might stick!

Year 10 is just too young to do anything in a law firm but sitting in court is worthwhile.

Realistically the earliest you will get any meaningful work experience in a law firm is year 12/13

I’d agree with the sitting in court as a good window into the everyday world of the jobbing advocate - have a chat with an usher to see where the interesting cases are being heard

We'll give this a go, I'm sure it will be an interesting experience. So there are no opportunities for year 10 work experience at, say, solicitors or law firms, citizens advice or even places such as magistrate court etc.? What other work experiences might be a good idea in this case?

"Solicitors" and "law firms" are the same thing. Highly unlikely that you will find work experience unless you have a senior contact there or you are an important client. It's just way too young I'm afraid, plus they will need to sign confidentiality agreements etc which is difficult with someone so young. There is lots of time though and to be honest work experience as a year 10 isn't going to boost her CV anyway since everyone will know she wouldn't have been able to do anything.

Just go to court. Anyone can go and sit to watch what is going on and you will be able to sit with her.

That's helpful to know@user9086572 - just to clarify, work experience in year 10 (state school) is mandatory, they have to do it for 5 days, so a working week. Is there any kind of business or charity that would be a good idea to approach for this? I mean she could do work experience at her old primary school but wondering if there are less random options. Sadly, we don't know anyone senior in a firm or really any lawyers at all.

SureGar, I am a solicitor. One of my children in a private school had the same thing - age 16 work experience week and it can be hard to find anyone who wants to have someone hanging around at that age. One of my lawyer children found a very kind parent at school who let the child go into a high street law firm where the parent worked, even sent her off to collect people due in court - if I remember correctly she even had to clean up child sick from the floor of the court hallway from one of the children attending of the client (so lots of hands on experience even if just in clearing up human vomit). As I work entirely alone and cannot concentrate with anyone in the room I have never been able to help anyone out with legal work experience for teenagers.

Just keep asking lots of people in case you are lucky. It won't make any difference to law applications but it might give the teenager a chance to see what a law firm is like and what the work is like, something I didn't do until the summer holidays after year 1 of my law degree when I did 2 weeks in a local firm in my home town in NE England. These days there are formal first year schemes (first yhear of LLB) and then for those in year 2 of an LLB "vacation schemes" -= about 2 weeks of paid work experience paid at about £500 a week but they are very competitive on which to win places.

There are also various schemes for people from deprived backgrounds, free school meals, minorities etc that university students often consider. Forage comes to mind.

Best advice I can give is to get involved in debating- school debating society, mock trial competitions, model UN etc. It really helps in honing analytical skills and clear articulation of arguments. Has been invaluable for me

Confidentiality is an issue with all these and under 18’s can’t legally be bound by a contract

Honestly in Y10 the work experience doesn’t need to be (and rarely will be) career focussed. Anything you can get is fine, sweeping the floor in a hair salon, mucking out horses, washing dishes…..it’s about reliability, routine, responsibility etc not getting a taste of a potential future career

My advice would be to take the opportunity at the primary school. Lots of life experience and transferrable skills to be found there. I explained way upthread that we (in a barristers’ chambers) simply cannot have anyone in who isn’t old enough to be bound by a confidentiality agreement. My own DD couldn’t come either, at the same stage.

If she does the primary school role then she should have some time in the afternoons to research the legal profession. Attend court hearings if that is possible. When the Supreme Court is sitting it streams its hearings direct from its website, so is accessible to anyone anywhere with an internet connection.

Also streamed: the Covid inquiry. My DD found this absolutely fascinating when I took her for a day, but it’s also very accessible online. You see a judge-led process about a subject this generation of teenagers really knows first hand (the pandemic). Helpfully, and in contrast to most court hearings, you can see the documents they are asking questions about as they are put up on the screen.

We went on a day where a very senior politician was grilled about preparedness before the pandemic, and then I got DD to watch PMQs and think about political accountability in the Commons versus the inquiry chamber. Having watched a particularly pointless PMQs she quickly grasped why we need public inquiries! The law doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and it’s good for young people to see how it can interact with the political world and current affairs.

@JessyCarr ’s advice is good. The court of appeal also livestreams. The trouble about those (CA and Supreme Court) is that there is no live evidence, and they are appeals on points of law so may not be interesting for a 15 year old. A bit dry. The CA is hearing (and I think streaming) a trade mark appeal about Aldi making lookalike products and upsetting the big brands by being too similar to their trade marks next week which might be interesting - the product in question is Thatchers lemon Cider - but otherwise it is much more interesting to go to your local court and see people being cross-examined, probably in the crown court. Just make sure she doesn’t wander into some awful rape or sexual abuse case that she isn’t ready for.

some solicitors firms do work experience at this age so it is worth sending round a cv and nice email request, but I think work experience week is more about learning how to get out of bed, dressed appropriately, to work on time, follow directions for 8 hours, rinse and repeat. An intro to working life rather than very careers focussed. So the primary school sounds very good to me.