Students lured by City-style work
Prospective lawyers are most interested in pursuing careers in City-style law, figures from legal careers website All About Law seen exclusively by the Gazette have suggested.
An analysis of the advice pages viewed by the 10,000 students registered on the site indicates a preference for corporate and commercial work.
Some 1,335 site users accessed pages on the site relating to careers in commercial law, and 1,250 viewed pages on corporate law jobs, compared with just 349 for personal injury law.
Human rights law (1,093 users), criminal law (1,078), and private client charity law (1,054) were the next most popular fields.
Pages offering advice in family law attracted 979 users, while employment law pages were viewed by 942 students.
The next most popular areas were: technology media telecommunications law (878 users); banking finance capital markets law (844); litigation dispute resolution law (807); sports media law (755); intellectual property law (687); alternative dispute resolution (560); environmental law (524); property real estate law (522); and public administrative law (522) made up the remaining fields listed on the website.
The areas of law which provoked the least interest were: travel law (312 users); personal injury law; shipping law (386); tax law (440) and construction building law (453).
Around 10,000 users are registered on the site. Users can select more than one field of interest.
Comments
LPC costs to blame
Many students may have wanted to go into other areas of law but it costs so much to qualify that they are forced into commercial work to pay off their debts..
don't be so naive
the typical student dreams of the riches of commercial law, magic circle firm, 6 figure salaries, selling ones soul etc its nothing to do with the cost of the LPA. its materialism every time.
Well they can dream
Well they can dream on..........
Anyone who self-funds the LPC is not going to make into the city!!
If they were able to make it into the city the LPC would be paid for.
It's shocking how stupid law graduates really are!
True true
True true
I tend to agree with you on
I tend to agree with you on this "the typical student dreams of the riches of commercial law, magic circle firm, 6 figure salaries, selling ones soul etc its nothing to do with the cost of the LPA. its materialism every time."
Magic circle vs. High street
Very true, it just a dream really - but students are allowed to aim high. You cant compare a magic circle firm to the local high street. With all the demands of studying a law degree and the LPC, one is allowed to have a goal (or dream) to get the largest paycheck. It's also the prestige of a sector, for some reason commercial law always tops such things as family or personal injury. Whatever the case, someone has to do it!
As a law student myself I
As a law student myself I would say the main reason for this is because the law firms we hear the most about are the big city law firms.
When doing my research for my training contract it is also the type of work that the majority of firms do that offer the highest number of training contracts.
It's not just the pay its the chances of qualifying and holding a job, yes maybe other firms also give good chances and maybe less competition by the looks of the figures but at the moment we want job security overall, in a field of law that will survive.
Dreamers
Perhaps the journalists in the Law Society Gazette would like to do a bit of reasearch themselves and tell us how many Training Contracts are provided by City of London firms and how many are granted prior to a successful candidate obtatining a Training Contract, then these dreamers can understand exactly how much competition they face.
Dreamers
Perhaps the journalists in the Law Society Gazette would like to do a bit of research themselves and tell us how many Training Contracts are provided by City of London firms and how many are granted prior to a successful candidate obtaining an LPC place then these dreamers can understand exactly how much competition they face.
The dreamers should do their
The dreamers should do their own research.
If they did then unemployment might well be lower.
It's not the law society's responsibility to tell people about the competition they will face.
Seriously law graduates having to be told what competition they face!!! How much lower do standards of individual responsibility have to go?? Should the law society also fill in the appliation forms for law graduates? Where do you draw the line?
For a long time now the economy has been sending out the message that there are too many people chasing law jobs. If people want well paid jobs then they need to look at the sectors that are in demand.
My brother works in management and they are desperate for more managers and willing to pay £40,000 plus benefits but there are no takers because law graduates are busy being unemployed and chasing low paid paralegal jobs.
GROW UP.
Personally I think your views
Personally I think your views are outrageous. After completing my first degree I decided that I needed some qualifications which would lead me directly into a specific career route, I chose law. Not because I wanted to earn the big bucks but because I thought my skills would suit that role, I wanted to help people and I thought it would make a secure and stable career for the future. I decided to do a conversion course into law and continued with the LPC, all funded via a bank loan. I worked hard every step of the way which earned me fantastic results but I am still yet to secure a training contract. This has been disheartening after all my hard work but to say that law student's aren't aware of the competition they face and that they don't have any responsibility is ridiculous.We are all aware.
There is fierce competition in every job sector now and why should students put there dreams aside and go for jobs that are in 'demand' if they don't have any interest in them. If people work hard and persevere with the current job market they will get where they want to one day.
Fascinating!! My comments are
Fascinating!!
My comments are "outrageous"? You may think that but what I'm saying is generally true.
I'm glad you are aware and hope you do get your training contract.
Let's hope it happens sooner rather than later. However if it doesn't what happens then?
When will you be free of debt and when will you be able to buy and house or have children?
Even if you do get a training contract then what? Do you really believe that a firm is going to offer you a salary that will justify what you have spent.? Why would a firm keep you on when you can be replaced by a desperate and cheap paralegal? Times have changed.
I guess it's to do with standards and what one expects out of life.
Your position would not be acceptable to me. There is absolutely no way I would have self-funded the LPC without the guarantee of a job. That's silly.
I'm all for going for your goals but not at any cost. I would love to be a grand prix driver but I'm not going to give up everything to go for that because obviously it's far too risky. I certainly wouldn't mortgage my life for it!!
But please go right ahead.
Unfortunately it is not that simple...
Although I have to agree that anyone who enters a profession without researching the reality of the situation should not be sympathised with, it is my experience that larger commerical firms (I will admit I don't have any experience of city firms) are increasingly rejecting candidates year on year until they commence their LPC. Recruiters have suggested to me that they are cautious about candidates who seem to demand funding before they will commence the LPC as they tend to be less committed to the profession and more likely looking only for those golden paved streets.
Self funding of the LPC has worked for me - I knew that I would be paying back a huge loan for 7.5 years and on most likely rather low wages for much of that time. I, luckily, secured a TC straight out of law school to commence 2 years later. Most of that time I was working as a paralegal and paying back my bank loan. However, I assessed the risks and rewards and decided it was worth it in the long run.
Each individual must assess what they value most. While I struggled financially before my TC started, I decided it was worth it if I could follow through with a career I enjoyed. For those who prioritise a higher standard of living, self funding would clearly be a much greater risk.
Good luck to everyone still looking for a TC!
Your Posting
I look forward to your posting which will tell me how many training contracts there are in the City of London, as your post implies that this information is available at a touch of a button.
Have research skills really sunk so low?
Anyone who can't work out with reasonable accuracy the number of City training contracts available shouldn't be a lawyer, let alone one in the City. There are numerous guides aimed at law students which list firms and the number of training places each has. Add the numbers together! Have research skills really sunk so low?
You can get this information
You can get this information from the Law Society but it doesn't matter.
If you have self-funded the LPC you will not get one. You are too late!!
City firms recruit trainees in the second year of the law degree and sponsor the LPC.
I have 7 years PQE so I think I know how the system works.
It's a pity law students don't think it through before wasting thousands of pounds.
No Morals
I have been a solicitor for 19 years but I have absolute contempt for those who say that LPC graduates have only themselves to blame if they cannot get a training contract and patronising idiots who advise me to "GROW UP". As the patronising poster seems to "know it all" perhaps he or she can tell me who was behind the vast expansion in LPC places and why that policy was adopted but I am forgetting that people like the patroniser never get involved in the governance of the profession. No money in it, you see. Whereas, there is a lot of money in LPC fees.
No Morals
I also have close to 20 years pqe and find your comment strange, to say the least. No one forces students to sign up for the LPC. I chose a law degree because I knew that it was well respected for a range of careers but didn't embark on further training (the LSF at the time) until I had a TC set up. As a 21 year old law graduate I was more than able to work out that the LSF (as with the LPC now) had only one use. Had I not got the TC I would have used my degree to pursue an alterative career in accountancy, management or whatever else was in demand. Switched on students should have contempt for you, as you clearly think them all a bit thick. Perhaps you would ban law graduates from car showrooms, in case some car salesman persuades them to buy a car they can't afford and which will be unsuitable for their purpose!
Oh no they are not thick at
Oh no they are not thick at all, what they lack is commercial awarness and appreciation of the level of competition they face. Unfortuantely they are far too optimistic.
You imply that law students are careful in their choice. If that is the case why do so many complain that they weren't told the truth about their prospects?
Though I do not blame them as they can only listen to the misinformation given by the education system itself (namely the LPC providers)
misinformation
The simple solution to misinformation is the SRA requiring all LPC providers to publish the percentage of their LPC graduates who have a TC within 6 months. These figures should be based upon positive responses only, so a failure to respond by a student equates to the assumption that they don't have a TC.
Mystic Meg
So, you can predict the affect of ABSs on the profession as a whole, can you? If you can then, like me, you will no longer be practising but will be doing something else. You have been told that ABSs will not affect the profession and you believe that they will not, so you soldier on, just like those law students who think they will get a TC because they have been told, by cynical money grubbing LPC providers, that they will find a TC. Your arrogance is betrayed by the fact that you equate the LSF with the LPC. The former was used to remove vast numbers of possible entrants to the profession. The latter is a slave to money and it is not good business to make such a course too hard.
Mystic Meg. I suggest that
Mystic Meg. I suggest that you re-read my post, as you clearly didn't read it carefully first time. I make no comparison between LSF and LPC other than to say that they both only had/have one purpose - to prepare a student for the TC. A student without a TC spending money s/he can't afford to lose is being foolish.
Done up like a kipper
What preparation for the TC? I think you will find that things have changed in the 19 years since we qualified. Trainees are now supposed to be fee earners rather than trainees and the LPC is half the examination the LSF was. The LPC is a preparation for life as a paralegal, which will be the fate of most who take it. I wonder what you did to fight ABSs and the loss of our democratic right to rule ourselves? Nothing, I suppose. Too busy saying that everyone should do their own research to think of collective action. "New Labour" saw you coming and you and all other practising solicitors were "done up like a kipper"
Right you are. I am planning
Right you are.
I am planning my exit and so are many I would hope.
It is pointless to remain in a job which will see continous wage deflation in real terms.
Four factors: massive oversupply of labour, outsourcing, commoditisation and ABS
This is obvious.
The US
In the United States the Law Schools understand that to survive they have to find jobs for their graduates. The offcials of those schools are not junketing or carousing with their fellow teachers all year round. They are finding places for their graduates.Nor can they afford to have the sneering attitude towards law firms that I remember so well from my college days. Judging by this survey the current advice is "get into the City, that is where the money is." If this is correct then there has to be a plan to get large number of people into training contracts in the City of London but of course, there is no such plan. The cynical situation today will not be sustainable tomorrow. The Law Society, SRA, LSB and colleges should take note.
The dreamers should do their
The dreamers should do their own research.
If they did then unemployment might well be lower.
It's not the law society's responsibility to tell people about the competition they will face.
Seriously law graduates having to be told what competition they face!!! How much lower do standards of individual responsibility have to go?? Should the law society also fill in the appliation forms for law graduates? Where do you draw the line?
For a long time now the economy has been sending out the message that there are too many people chasing law jobs. If people want well paid jobs then they need to look at the sectors that are in demand.
My brother works in management and they are desperate for more managers and willing to pay £40,000 plus benefits but there are no takers because law graduates are busy being unemployed and chasing low paid paralegal jobs.
GROW UP.
High risk?
Research would also tell some of the City dreamers that it isn't always a golden opportunity. Give me a decent steady income for a full working life rather than some of the alternatives.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23620269-work-pressure-be...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-436076/Stressed-City-lawyer-plun...
High risk indeed. But the
High risk indeed.
But the pressure generally comes from having to religiously meet fee targets.
If business drops and you can't meet your fee target then you get fired.
The absence of job security means that young lawyers will fret about taking mortgages or making any financial commitments.
Couple that with outsourcing and commoditisation of work, it's a disaster.
Lower wages and job insecurity are the future of legal services.
It's a sorry state of affairs. As soon as India and China open up their labour markets to permit legal work to be done by foreign firms then the game's over.
Just to offer my two-cents
Just to offer my two-cents worth.... I work in legal research myself for a mid-sized firm in London. It was through my work in this field that I decided I wanted to pursue a career in Law. I am taking the GDL currently, but I thoroughly researched the outlook in the sector before committing myself; the thought of that much debt terrified me. It still does!
I am lucky enough to be starting off with experience of both MC and smaller sized firms in terms of legal experience; I still have not completed work experience directly related to solicitor work and it astounds me the amount of new graduates fresh out of University that do not have one iota of an inkling as to what the work of a solicitor involves, and still fork out the money for an LPC. I have formulated plan upon plan as to what to do should I not be able to acquire a training contract, including going on to do an LLM instead of an LPC and working in another area of law. I also know that, although I thrive in working in corporate MC environments, it just doesn't tally with wanting a family. I live in the Home Counties so I know if I look for training contracts I will be looking there; a tough decision, but I am under no illusion as to the balance I need personally to be a successful lawyer.
I do look at some younger 'wannabes' and worry that they don't know what they have let themselves in for... and I am a legal researcher! It took me a year and a half to make the decision, I wish that others would do their research.
Truth
Well, you know what you are doing but you have the decency to say that many do not. I think that a combination of old myths along the lines of "I've never met a poor solicitor." and politically correct madness "The way to open up the professions is to provide hundreds mre LPC places" attracts the young. The press has just about caught up with the fact that legal aid is a dead duck and criminal defence solicitors earn peanuts but the realities of commercial work are not reported. Consequently, legally orientated careers teachers are not discouraging students from entering the profession and cynical law school lecturers are often implying that there is a future in commercial law when for many there is not.
We are talking about LAW
We are talking about LAW GRADUATES! Some A level students may be misadvised and emabark upon a law degree thinking that the legal streets are always paved with gold (although a law degree should still be far more valuable than many others for alternative careers) but prospective LPC students have a degree or GDL/CPE. What is the point of this if it doesn't even equip them to carry out research for their own benefit? What is the point in being surrounded by law faculty and often having access to practising lawyers who have links with their law school if they don't even have the sense to ask for honest advice about career prospects in the law? Seems to me that those LPC students shouting loudest about the unfairness are the ones least suited to a career in law. After all, how can a client's best interests be served by someone incapable of looking after their own?
As a Law Librarian...
I can honestly say that in my position, as a librarian for a MC law firm, I am forever surprised by trainees who are willing to pay vast sums of money to our enquiry teams to do the simplest bit of research that they can do themselves in the Library. Many have not heard of Lexis, Westlaw or Lawtel and it is shocking! They have clearly come up through the ranks with a law degree/GDL/LPC or are on a training contract, so they bloody well SHOULD know how to search these databases. The amount of times that a trainee, after being at the firm for a while, comes and asks how to use these databases, even though they have a 3 day induction on them when they first start, is laughable. And to top it off, some trainees fob off their inadequacy in this area by saying they never had training in the first place!
Even the partners are coming round to how inadequate trainees are at even the simpest of research tasks (everything costs money these days and research costs soon mount up); if (some) trainees are incapable of performing the simplest research tasks for their own firm, I can't say I'm surprised about law students not being able to research their own career prospects.
I am a big believer in fate being in your own hands/making your own luck; maybe this should be the case in research skills too!
Good comment. I couldn't
Good comment. I couldn't agree more.
I think the problem is that law students are making the decision to pursue a career in law based on emotion and not logic or reason.
If anyone points out the reality of studying law all they say is "but this is what I want to do."
They seem unable to grap the concept that it is the market that will determine what they do not what they decide.
It's not necessarily an issue of intelligence but rather the weakness of human emotion.
Good comment. I couldn't
Good comment. I couldn't agree more.
I think the problem is that law students are making the decision to pursue a career in law based on emotion and not logic or reason.
If anyone points out the reality of studying law all they say is "but this is what I want to do."
They seem unable to grap the concept that it is the market that will determine what they do not what they decide.
It's not necessarily an issue of intelligence but rather the weakness of human emotion.
Define management?
What is defined as 'management' careers as per the post above about management positions crying out for Law graduates? Just out of interest....