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Chances
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
What are the chances of getting a job after studying Law? I remember something was said last year in my class about the amount of people who can't find a job.
Post edited by JustV on
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It is getting articles thats the hardest part of qualifying in law. there are a good number of jobs available for qualified lawyers.
do you mean a job as a lawyer?, or a job involving a good degree of legal knowledge?, or any job?
if your idea is just a career not specifically in the legal field, then your chances are pretty much the same as everyone else's.
if your idea is a job involving law - chances of getting a job or going onto postgraduate legal training is VERY intense indeed. and your chances of getting into such an area are rather daunting, unless, you're an exceptional candidate, as i think was said in the previous post.
so it all depends really...
A law degree is a good starting point for many other careers than law, however.
To say that without a 2:1+ you won't get anywhere is a fallacy; a contact of mine in criminal law got a 2:2 from manchester Poly and is doing very well for himself, ta muchly.
What you need to be doing is putting in work experience hours in vacation time, and building up contacts. With experience and contacts it is easier to get a training contract that will pay you through the one-year professional training course, and then get you established in a firm, but it is perfectly possible to do the one-year training course from personal funds and then try and find work.
A degree doesn't guarantee you a job unless you put in the unpaid hours to get experience and contacts in the industry.
I'm finding it hard to find work after getting a 2:2 from Durham, but that is mostly because I have little experience and I don't know what I want to do, except to know that I don't ever want to work in law.
melodie's advice, for the record, is needlessly pessimistic and borders on the wildly inaccurate.
If you want to become a barrister, you spend a year or two doing a pupillage at the bar, so you have to be admitted to a chambers to do that - and that's pretty competitive. The best way to do it I think is to build up lots of contacts, and do as many 'mini-pupillages' as you can, ie. one- or two-week periods of work experience with a barrister in that chambers.
If you want to join a law firm as a sollicitor, a lot of the big firms have a huge graduate intake each year and they have their own training programmes - also quite competitive, but once you're in you're in, with a pretty much guaranteed job, as they're already paying you once you start training. Work experience is v helpful for that too; you can get summer internships with these companies, usually in your 2nd year if you're studying law, or the penultimate year of any other degree.
That's all I know - I'm not studying law, but for I while I thought I wanted to become a lawyer so I've done a couple of mini-pupillages (property law and family law), and last summer I worked with a commercial sollicitors' firm - so I don't have lots and lots of knowledge but if you want to know about these areas then give me a pm!
Maybe so but that is only what I was told by several people...... maybe they said it to deter me, which it hasn't completely. But basically most of what you said ie: work experience I mentioned that part is more important than anything. Its all very well having the degrees but it seems to me they would like people with experience as so many people want to go into that feild. I am having another career as a back up because I don't want to put in loads of work into becoming a soliciter and when i've reached it, not get work and not have anything to fall back on!
If we ignore him he will go away - nect time he says something act like it isnt there - answer the previous poster...
l
Thanks for ruining this thread.
Oh, and for the record, the best degree to get into the legal industry is, in fact, a history one.
Fuck knows.
I'm currently pissing about in date entry/admin type jobs, trying to get office experience, because I'm burned out after uni and I haven't got a clue what I want to do, or enough CV experience to do it.
I know I don't want to work in the law, or in graduate finance, though. So that's a start.