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?

The mathematician i knew who moved into law had done English & History A levels alongside double maths.

Your logic is flawed here. Someone who studies Theology or English has to convince partners as to why they want to become a lawyer. That is much harder than for someone who hasn’t studied law. They typically have less understanding of the role as they have no experience so they have to be significantly more convincing. Do you know how much it costs a firm to put someone through the GDL and SQE and pay them maintenance grants and then train them for two years? They don’t pay that money, effectively out of their own pocket, for people they don’t think want to be lawyers.

@TeenToTwentiesA few dc do this but most do maths and sciences. Many of these dc drop essays like a stone!

@Sharpkat It’s inevitable a non law degree holder will have to persuade the firm or barristers why they are the best recruit. However many barristers sets do have non law grads but they don’t pay for the GDL. They don’t have to pay for the BPTC either but some pupilage awards will allow drawdown for this, but you cannot draw down earnings from second six! The big law firms are more generous but it’s because they want a more educationally diverse workforce. Plenty of students take out a loan for the masters GDL. When dd did the GDL this wasn’t possible and dc either worked or parents coughed up. Either way, many come out of the GDL with no decent career prospects.

@MeetMeOnTheCorner Oh I know! It was more of an example about how a maths graduate can plausibly become a lawyer. In general I agree most mathmos wouldn't want to touch it with a barge pole.

Obviously there are the super star all
rounders who are brilliant at everything.

Thinking about it imo history a level was the most analogous to legal
work. Analysing texts/ critiquing agenda /extracting relevant information. Dd1 has innate legal skills. Quite funny to watch in a small child!

I studied law at 45 (via a 2 year senior status degree, aimed at graduates) I really enjoyed it as a subject. I can’t imagine say land law being interesting when I was 18, whereas now I face rented and bought property and had mortgages. Likewise equity with its family wills and home ownership or tort and its employment negligence. Doing it at my age made it much more interesting and relevant compared to how abstract it would have been to me at 18. (Not that I think you need to be older to do it, just it’s interesting doing it later)

from Reddit posts on trying to get jobs it’s mostly having to self fund the sqe and taking low paid paralegal jobs for years to maybe get a training contract. Which seems daft to do with no guarantee of a job later on (particularly at the sort of big firm people want to work at)

What a silly idea.

The consequences of reducing competition is always going to be to get a lower quality of final output from the process by making it easier for lower-performing candidates to get through.

Looking at the top-performing practitioners of law in the elite of their fields and you will find plenty of people who didn't study law for their first degree. They are highly intelligent, versatile people, potentially with polymath tendencies to excell in numerous different areas of endeavour. The lower echelons of more mediocre practitioners have a higher concentration of people who have studied nothing but law at higher levels and don't have that breadth of talent across multiple areas.

Academic study in law only gets you so far, the real training starts when you stop studying and start actually doing. The overwhelming pressure of competition is part of the deal - only the strongest survive. If someone whose first degree was history or science or maths can hold their own and win out in that competition then they have every right to be there and they are a better candidate than someone less talented whose first degree was law. If the person whose first degree was law was more talented, they would have won.

The proposal in the OP is to try to exclude the highly talented from the competition in order that the more mediocre might thrive better. No thanks.