What if only Law Graduates could Practise Law?

[Femusia]

What would be the consequence if in the UK, non-law graduates were no longer able to convert to law and only those with a law degree (like in US) could practice law?

For one, this would reduce competition for law graduates. There are so many people who study subjects like History or English or even Music who then compete with law graduates for jobs.

Would there even be any negative consequences?

Yes training contracts still offered in some firms but they aren’t compulsory anymore so lots will now train via paralegal route.

I’ve been a lawyer for 30+ years (law grad). I have never seen any difference in ability from those who did an LLB and those who didn’t. I think there’s a lot to be said for having diversity of interest, background and specialism in the law.

I think the point from social mobility point of view is it’s often parent not the yp that has the knowledge and steers them.
Durham have their stats in a table on the website. Law 31% get an offer. Classic 96%, Theology 99%.
You can only have one masters loan so the ‘just do a conversion’ is a big amount to finance if you aren’t from a wealthy background. Yes some large firms may assist with funding or bar scholarships but many yp end up fully or part self financing.

The academic study of law and its vocational study are completely different endeavours. There are still, just, some barristers without degrees at all as they were only required from 1975. Obviously requiring a law degree would reduce competition but competition is a good thing.

The elephant in the room is the number of law jobs is not huge. No law grad 50 years ago had to worry about being a paralegal first. Now thousands of grads want to be solicitors and 3000 can apply for 100 or less training contracts with the big London firms. The bar recruitment has shrunk too. Less than 300 pupillage positions advertised via the Gateway last year. So dc need much more than a law degree or any other degree. It’s difficult to know how many in work solicitors are trained now. It used to be around 6000 a year getting training contracts. The new training regime has made many paralegals wait 5 or more years as they prove themselves worthy and then recent grads don’t get to train.

Close, though. I have a friend who majored in fashion design and merchandising who then went to Duke Law School (aka by some as the "Harvard of the South").

Many lawyers in the US tend to major in traditional liberal arts subjects like history and English literature, but math is also considered a good undergraduate major for lawyers.

I can see why law graduates might feel that way, but I’m not sure reducing the pool of people who can enter the profession would necessarily be a good thing.
People who come to law after studying History, English, languages, sciences etc can bring a different set of skills and perspectives. Some may have decided on law later and actually be very committed to it.
I’d also wonder whether it would really make much difference to competition overall. If there are more law graduates than available training contracts/jobs, restricting entry from other degrees would just mean those law graduates compete more heavily with each other.
And there’s the question of whether someone should have to choose law at 18 when they may not even know what career they want yet. The current route at least allows people to change direction later.

Any barrier to knowledge and training is implicitly negative. Establishing a cartel, or a closed shop for any profession went out literally in the Victorian age.

Not a good idea and demonstrates a very narroww understanding of how knowledge & training, and the workplace, operate.

I’m a law graduate, I was a lawyer for many years alongside both law and non law graduates. There was no correlation between who was the better lawyer and who had studied law. (Except me, obviously I was brilliant 😜)

@ainawatson It’s not “if”. There’s a massive over supply of law grads. This has been made a lot worse by the 1992 act which made polys and other colleges into universities. Many now offer law degrees and these courses almost certainly need a cull. They are flooding the jobs market with wannabes and I cannot see how this is helpful to the students. The Complete University Guide lists 113 universities offering law degrees. It’s ludicrous.

I know lots of very successful lawyers and none has a law degree. One of the most successful has an engineering degree and worked as an engineer before requalifying in law. I tend to think that aspiring lawyers should not do a law degree. It’s too limited. But stopping all undergraduate law degrees isn’t going to happen. There are other good reasons for studying law, but not with the aim
of becoming a lawyer.

The opening up of the postgraduate market had a massive impact.
Back in the day every solicitor did their Law Society Finals or later the Legal Practice course at the College of law - London, Guilford, Chester or York.
Now there’s so many postgraduate SQE prep options - BPP, University of Law, Barbari, Universities too.

@Moreholidaysthanjudithchalmers Yes. And they are all selling dreams. The city firms still have contracts with BPP or Uni of Law for their fast track trainees though.

@Femusia The young person I know who recently got a law training contract after getting a first class BSc in a STEM subject was presumably hired for her proven ability to understand complex scientific arguments - vital for many aspects of law, such as patents, regulation, medical litigation, etc etc.

We often encourage students to study something else first and then do a conversion course. It leads to a broader education and gives them time to think about whether it’s what they really want. Unless you’re a real law nerd there’s no need to do three years on it.

OP I take it you want solicitor apprenticeships banned as well, since they're also competing with law grads? Or is it only those mean history, Classics and modern languages grads that you resent so much?

This exactly. I've been a lawyer nearly 20 years and have never regretted not doing a law degree! Conversely, none of the people I knew at uni who were reading law went on to become solicitors or barristers (albeit that is a small and unusual sample).

Eta - they didn't want to be lawyers, not because their jobs were stolen by non-law grads!

I work in IT. I'd say the best people did other things first, rather than comp science thrschool and uni. I imagine law (and many other fields) similarly benefits from people having broader backgrounds.

We already specialise way too early educationally in the UK. It's unreasonable to expect people to set their futures in stone at 18. People end up in careers they weren't even aware were options when they were 18. Plus competition genera good thing. It means you're more likely to end up with the best.

Obviously if you cut down the paths into a career it cuts competition part way along that route (may increase competition for initial law degrees, though).

There are potentially a lot of negative consequences of doing so. Lower quality of entrants (normally a natural consequence of less competition); less diversity; fewer options for people generally; possibly higher costs for those who need lawyers (generally speaking, the more restrictions you put on entering a profession the more costly that profession becomes); more difficulty for the profession to adjust to a changing environment.

There was someone last year who posted multiple spurious threads about universities and studying Law, and whether to take up a place on a Cambridge Foundation Year. There were many replies of increasing exasperation from people who’d offered very good advice which the OP had ignored.

The style of writing in the OP, plus the multiple threads on similar themes on other boards over the last few days makes me wonder if this is the return of the same poster.

'Well known' is doing a lot of work in this post.

But I'm particularly interested in how it's different if you genuinely enjoyed the non-law subject you do undergrad in. Who decides what that means, what's the barometer and is there a requirement for people who do law degrees to genuinely like those too?

@ParksidePen Oh yes! I remember those!

@TrainyWainy Yes, I do believe most do enjoy their law degrees. It’s quite young at 17, to make up your mind which way you want to go if you are interested in law and other subjects. I’m absolutely certain few lawyers have studied Norse at Oxford but MFLs are good prep as the best courses are literature based and are fairly full on because you need to study language acquisition too. I think dc should choose an academic degree subject that interests them the most and a top university. That could well be law. However if they want law as a career, and don’t do law, they need to get their backsides into gear pretty quickly. They won’t be doing moots or joining the uni law society - well my DD couldn’t anyway. They can join debating societies, drama groups and gain relevant work experience though. Non law grads must get going on the cv fairly quickly. The ones who will be successful are very organised and plan from y1.

We knew a lawyer, who specialised in dealing with cleaning up contaminated land, for reuse. I have no idea, what his background was, but I can imagine a science degree might be useful?

ie they deliberately choose such a relatively easier degree so long as it’s Oxbridge then go into law.

In what sense is a history degree (or any other of the degrees that you have in mind) "easier" than a law degree? I's not as if it were maths or theoretical physics. Law at undergraduate level is quite a bog standard, skim-read-and-splurge-an-essay, humanities degree.

@MyThreeWordsDon't forget that some of those mathematicians run a mile from writing essays. They are just different types of people. Law would not be their thing at all.