Conversion courses in law

[CyclingLegs]

Hi,

I wondered if I could ask about converson courses for aspiring lawyers?

My son is ASD and loves rules, but really doesn't like gore and nastiness. He's great at reading, asimilating information and writing articulately, but is not super-great as the social stuff.

I wondered if it would be possible for him to do something like a computer science degree, followed by a corporate law conversion course? I was think that that way he could just learn the sort of law that is needed for computer science companies, without having to learn a lot about crime and murders and whathave you.

I wondered if anybody would know whether that is possible?

Thanks!

If he's strongly rules driven he should be a regulator. Finance needs smart ones but there are regulators in lots of fields. And no expectation to beat the bushes and shmooze for clients - your clients need your approval.

www.fca.org.uk/careers/early-careers

They offer apprenticeships too if he doesn't want the expense of à conversion course, and also graduate schemes which don't require a law degree.

That sounds perfect! @Xiaoxiong

@Xiaoxiong how would we find out more about that?

By "law adjacent" I meant things like legal technology. There are companies dedicated to providing software to lawyers. Things like e-disclosure platforms, hearing platforms, drafting tools, legal project management tools. There is no doubt a load of AI based tech heading our way too. There is already machine learning in e-discovery where users "teach" the software what sort of things are disclosable in the litigation at hand and the software searches thousands of documents based on those parameters.

Companies like OpenText and Opus2 offer this sort of tech to the legal market.

Thank you very much. I get the feeling that he's more of a rules guy than a building-things guy. He's not that keen on technical lego and stuff like that, but very often has a view on the rights and wrongs of a situation. I think that being a regulator sounds quite good.

That's just the Financial Conduct Authority I listed there but there are 90+ regulatory bodies in the UK, like Ofwat, Ofcom, Ofgem, the Competition and Markets Authority, etc.

I can see from the link above that the FCA offers summer internships, apprenticeships (which you do instead of going to uni I think) and a graduate scheme which is likely not to care about what degree you did. But if you do a law or finance undergrad degree, that will help show interest in the area.

Of course there are some that are much more technical, like the Office for Nuclear Regulation, and others that hire through the civil service like the Serious Fraud Office, but others that assume no prior training and recruit directly like the FCA.

That's great, thank you very much. Is this groups like Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission then? Those are the two that I know about directly from my own experience.

If they are regulators would he need to go and visit people to test them, or would their be data analysis posts that are done in an office somewhere? Thanks!

Yes this, perhaps some sort of legal technology role? Or as an IT specialist in a large law firm.

Or the Bank of England?

www.bankofengland.co.uk/careers/early-careers

I think it's also worth considering how much of the internal culture of an organisation hinges on networking with colleagues to progress. It's not just clients - it's selling yourself to the hierarchy to get promoted, and being able to support /line manage more junior staff once you do.

ChatGPT is just a language model that gives you the most statistically likely combination of words for a natural-sounding response. You can't use it for research.

https://www.autism.org.uk/what-we-do/employment

Look at skills training, autism at work programmes, work experience / internships, virtual internships, talk to people in the jobs being considered, etc.

@user1846385927482658 I didn't even pick up on the ASD angle but then noticed that the FCA has a partnership with EmployAbility specifically to attract and support neurodiverse candidates: https://www.fca.org.uk/careers/early-careers#section-our-partnership-with-employability

Maybe looking for organisations that work with EmployAbility or Autism.org.uk will indicate those that will be set up to help someone who is neurodiverse succeed - I know autism comes in many forms but it does seem a strong indication that the kind of work and the workplace environment are set up to suit someone who is neurodiverse.

There's a list here: https://www.employ-ability.org.uk/employers/clients/

Yes those kinds of bodies. Though whether the role is "client facing" or not is likely to be completely dependent on the role itself. I think some regulators like to have people who are experienced practitioners (poachers turned gamekeepers, as it were) and others like to train from within (like the FCA).

Anyway, the main point is that there are lots of "rules driven" careers that your DS can look into that don't require a law degree, conversion course and then training contract - that's a long hard road if you're not going to enjoy the actual practice and don't intend to start as a lawyer at the end of it.