Ask those with MBA after their name what it was like combining high-level studying with a full-time job and they don’t pull any punches - ‘horrendous’, ‘hellish’, ‘think it will be hard and then multiply that 100 times’. But ask are they glad they did it, and the answer is equally blunt: ‘Without a shadow of a doubt.’

Lawyers have had a choice of doing a general MBA or a specialist course such as Nottingham Law School’s MBA in Legal Practice. However, NLS is not taking on any new students after the current cohort finishes while it reviews the course. Professor Andrea Nollent, dean of the law school, says the review is being conducted ‘against the backcloth of a changing legal sector and the different business challenges that may result’, with a view to aligning it with the MBA offered by Nottingham Business School.

A new opportunity is opening up next year when the University of Northumbria’s Law School launches its MBA in legal management. Fiona Fletcher, director of the Centre for Legal Management and Regulation, says changes in the market made it an obvious decision. The three-year, distance-learning course will cost £15,000. ‘We have had a range of interest from lawyers wanting to take advantage of the opportunities offered by alternative business structures; from new providers in the market who want to learn about the legal sector; and from practice managers at barristers’ chambers,’ she says. ‘We have also had interest from young lawyers, but we have set a minimum five years’ post-qualification experience because you need to bring some managerial experience to the table.’

So, when is the optimum time in your career to do an MBA? Since 2009, BPP has been running an MBA in legal services for trainees about to join City firm Simmons & Simmons. They spend a year at the business school before joining the firm in the second year, when they start their training contract while completing their research project, already knowing the firm’s four sectors in depth.

Katie Best, director of MBA programmes at BPP, which launched a general MBA in January, says: ‘Lots of firms are looking at how they can inject more business knowledge into their young trainees. Otherwise people reaching senior associate level can face a rapid scramble to backfill their business knowledge.

‘But financing it is an issue. It is a sensible investment for firms which want to have a role with clients as business advisers. But for firms which just want to be law firms, is it necessary for their younger lawyers to have the qualification?’ However, Best, who joins the London School of Economics next month, believes MBAs and similar business qualifications will become more common with the changes facing the legal sector because ‘the differentiating factor for individuals and firms won’t be their ability to do the law but their ability to provide business advice in a legal context’.

Clare Woodcock, who leads the MBA programme at Simmons & Simmons, says the firm was very clear that it wanted its trainees to spend most of their time on the course looking outwards to their clients’ businesses. ‘The cohorts formed close-knit groups, one of the positives of MBA-style learning, resulting in a ready-made internal network,’ she says. ‘Partners said they had much greater confidence around clients.

‘Is it the right time in their career to do it? This is more like the US model where MBAs are commonly done at graduate level. If you are more senior, you will have more experience under your belt but, from a practical point of view, it is harder to step off from a busy legal career or do it in parallel.’ Frances Stocks, one of the first trainees to do the course, says it was too good an opportunity to miss. It gave her a ‘head start’ in her career, with increased confidence and business acumen. Now back in the London litigation department after working in a corporate and ICT seat in the Dubai office, she says the knowledge she gained has been of ‘day-to-day value’.

Timing depends on personal circumstances, she says: ‘There are pros and cons to undertaking an MBA at any point in your career. If you do it early, you have limited experience but more time and energy to learn. If you do it later, you have the experience but may lack the motivation to go back to school.’ Fellow trainee David White, currently on client secondment, says the course taught him a new way of thinking - to start from the client’s business issue and work back to the legal solution rather than approaching a problem from an academic legal perspective.

When Antonia Balsom was offered the option of deferring the start of her training contract with SJ Berwin, she decided to do the MSc in law and finance at Oxford’s Saïd Business School, financing the course herself. This combined advanced law courses relevant to corporate finance and financial regulation with the finance components of an MBA. It does not contain the marketing and management components of a more general or legal MBA, so is less geared towards senior practitioners.

‘It was a fantastic year,’ she says. ‘I am realistic that, as a trainee, I won’t be playing the same role as I did in the deals I studied. But I will be looking at what goes on with more informed knowledge, with a view to drawing on that when I do have the responsibility to use it.’

When it comes to a legal MBA, strategy consultant Nick Jarrett-Kerr, visiting professor on the NLS course, says: ‘Probably the best time to do the course is when you are a partner or aspiring partner, or about to take on some team or departmental responsibility. You can get deep into the study of management, leadership and strategy on a very steep learning curve which takes others 10 years to learn in the school of hard knocks.’

Anne Compton, managing partner of regional practice Rickerbys, chose the NLS course. She says: ‘I was very conscious that law firms have come in for a lot of criticism that managing partners may be very good at client work but may not have the necessary management skills. When I became managing partner in 2005, I wanted to equip myself to take on my new role. I got a couple of years under my belt then decided it was time to learn more.’

It is about equipping your people with the right skills at the right time, she says. ‘I wouldn’t spend thousands on one of our trainees doing an MBA. I would prefer them to concentrate on being the best lawyers they can possibly be. The earliest I would recommend it to anyone in my firm is when they are on the verge of promotion to partnership.’

Fellow NLS student Paul Harding, a transactional corporate lawyer working as a consultant with a City law firm, waited till later in his career to do his MBA. ‘I would love to have done a general MBA in my late 20s/early 30s. But I chose to do the legal practice one now with the intention of changing career direction at a time when I have the luxury of doing it without excessive risk.’

He wants to take advantage of opportunities arising out of the Legal Services Act and has set up a consultancy, ABS Advisory Partners, which will act as a bridge between private equity houses and law firms seeking external investment. The legal practice MBA was, he says, an ‘obvious thing to do to give myself some additional substance to appeal to that market’. He did his dissertation on direct investment post-LSA, surveying the top law firms and private equity houses on their concerns and comparing the results.

Nick O’Neill, a partner with national personal injury and clinical negligence practice The Specter Partnership, was, at 38, one of the youngest of his cohort on the NLS course. ‘I perhaps did it a little early,’ he says. ‘I came back burning with ideas but the organisational structure here doesn’t let me do as much with it as I would have liked. I was maybe a little bit naive doing it when I did, but I could see the PI industry as a whole, post-Clementi, going down an extremely large chasm, and I thought it would be prudent to look at other avenues. Certainly having an MBA makes my CV look a lot better.’

Robert Rose wanted to broaden his horizons beyond his speciality of clinical negligence and be ready for the next stage of his career. Since completing the legal practice MBA, he has added the role of deputy managing partner of Leicester-based Harvey Ingram to his position as head of the firm’s PI and clinical negligence team. ‘I was always puzzled by the fact that, as I grew into various managerial roles, I received no training whatsoever before I took them on,’ he says. ‘It is useful as a young solicitor to have some understanding about the business but I am not sure doing an MBA so shortly after intense professional training is a good idea. I think you need to experience the business before taking a step back and analysing it.’

Barry Jennings, senior associate in the commercial department at London firm Bird & Bird, specialises in IT and outsourcing agreements. He joined the firm as a trainee and is now seven years’ PQE. He chose the Open University’s MSc in strategic management of information systems for his first year, but he has now switched to the OU’s general MBA course because he felt it was broader and more transferable.

‘I felt I had reached a stage where I understood my job well enough and wanted to learn something new,’ he says. ‘I was getting involved at a strategic level with clients and wanted to expand on that and formalise it as a marketing tool. I was also starting to get more involved in strategy and management within the firm and I felt it would help me develop a business case for partnership. Also, if I were ever to move in-house, being a lawyer with an MBA could be very valuable.’

Personal injury litigator Catrin Macleod, performance manager with Merseyside-based PI specialists Carpenters, was also looking for a challenge when she decided to do an MBA with the OU Business School.

‘I had been doing the job for six years and, frankly, I was a bit bored and was looking for an extra challenge which would help me manage my small team,’ she says. ‘For me it was the right time. Five or six years’ qualified, you know your craft well and you are possibly looking at partnership. Also a career isn’t necessarily for life - you need to expand your skill set so you are prepared if you are looking for change or have one forced on you.’

Toby Hornett, legal director with Canon Europe, was 28 when he decided to leave Clifford Chance, where he had been since law school, and take a year out doing an MBA at INSEAD in France. ‘This is not a course you do straight from law school. You have to have a minimum of three to four years’ experience,’ he says.

‘I wanted to work in-house to be closer to the business. Having an MBA isn’t essential for an in-house legal position but it has been very helpful to know more about the finance side and about softer subjects such as marketing and organisational behaviour.’

So, what are the pros and cons of doing a general MBA or a legal MBA? Allan Carton, director of Inpractice UK legal consultancy, did a general MBA at Manchester Business School. ‘It’s a sign of the conservatism within the legal sector that the vast majority of lawyers I meet in the UK with an MBA have done it within their comfort zone on a legal MBA. It involves only lawyers or managers already working within law firms, which dilutes the learning experience overall.

‘Doing a general MBA was critical to how I developed our consultancy because it convinced me that lawyers can benefit radically from input from people with non-legal experience - although it has been difficult until recently to get law firms to recognise or accept this.’

Guy Goodman, past chair of Solicitors in Local Government, is head of corporate services (solicitor and monitoring officer) at Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Combined Fire Authority. He did his MBA with the OU. ‘I regarded being a manager as a second profession and, as with any profession, I knew I needed to have the right theoretical underpinning,’ he says. ‘I felt it was important to do a general MBA to broaden my horizons, particularly as I was expecting to move into more general LA management over time.

‘I also chose the OU as their management courses are aimed at practising managers and you have the opportunity to use your working environment during the courses. I don’t think the team leaders in legal services at Leicester will ever forget the team-building exercises I made them do in the basement car park of the civic offices!’

He took the ‘slow route’, starting with the Certificate in Management, then the Diploma and finally the MBA. ‘I wanted to give myself the option to stop at the end of a phase and come away with a qualification if I chose to do so,’ he says. For Compton, the decision to take the legal practice MBA was simple. ‘My whole career has been in the law and I have no intention of changing that, so the more I could learn about management in a legal context the better,’ she says. ‘The fact that it is narrowed down to legal practice doesn’t diminish it in any way. It still reaches the academic level for an MBA.’

She did her dissertation on cross-selling, looking at how her practice could better integrate its two components of private client and commercial work. ‘For me, it was all about bringing as much value to the practice as I could. I didn’t feel I could do something that wasn’t relevant to it just to indulge myself.’ For Rose, the attraction was sharing quality time with people who were about to move into senior positions in their respective firms. ‘I think managing law firms does create particular challenges which a general MBA probably wouldn’t address.’

So, was it worth the cost in time and money? ‘It is priceless and an achievement of which I am immensely proud,’ says Goodman. ‘My employers funded the one-year certificate. After that I didn’t ask for further funding but paid for the rest myself. I felt strongly that I was doing this for me and I didn’t want to feel obligated or accountable in any way to a third party. However, the benefit to my employer is the quality of the management I hope I bring to my job.’

For Jennings, cost is a significant issue. ‘I paid £3,500 for the first year, which was definitely worth it - you get a lot from it plus the Diploma in Business Administration. The second year, which I start in November, will cost £4,500, which is one reason why I have taken a year out in between. I want to continue but life gets in the way.

‘Bird & Bird provides tailored MBA-style training within its associate development programmes but the full course is something I have had to fund myself, given the firm’s need to get the most benefit for all of its staff out of the training budget.’

Compton’s firm funded her course. ‘It is not that expensive given the amount of CPD you get out of it - you could easily spend £3,000 a year on that - and there is a value in it for firms,’ she says. She found a ‘complete mix’ of funding among her fellow students. ‘Some people were self-financing,’ she says. ‘Most people had at least a contribution from their firm. Our second year hit the credit crunch and some firms were pulling back from funding so quite a few had to drop out.’

Macleod started funding the course herself to see how the first year went. However, her firm took on the cost because ‘they could see the value of what I brought back to the firm’. On a personal level, she has been promoted to performance manager in charge of two teams. ‘We have lots of internal changes going on and there are new opportunities which are a further step away from the legal side,’ she says. ‘Having the MBA gives me the confidence to say this is going to be a challenge but I can do it and bring a lot to the table.’

It hasn’t had as much impact on O’Neill’s career as he hoped. ‘I am quite a high bill earner so they like me where I am,’ he says. ‘But I have had input into the management of the firm and my studies have enabled me to head the project team working on a new appraisal system.’ It gives you ‘a certain credibility’ when talking to internal clients, says Hornett. ‘But you need to be realistic that it won’t change you as a proposition for an employer that much - you are still a lawyer first.’

Since doing his MBA, Rose has taken on responsibility for a number of areas, including human resources management, knowledge management and the strategic direction of the firm - ‘in that sense the MBA has been invaluable’. His firm funded the course. ‘It is easily worth the cost and time. I did my thesis on the culture of the practice which I believe identified several issues which partly translated into the firm’s overall strategy, particularly a strategy for growth during the recession.’All commented on the huge value they found in the contacts they made with fellow students and lecturers. ‘There was a real bond between my group,’ says O’Neill. ‘We have kept in contact and if I have a problem they are my "go to" people.’

So, what advice would they give prospective students? ‘Make sure your other half is fully on board,’ says Compton, ‘because it eats into your personal time.’ Macleod, who has had two children since completing her MBA, agrees: ‘It is very intensive. I would say do it before you have children.’

‘I had to sacrifice a lot of my social life to get the level of grade I wanted,’ says Jennings. ‘But the studying is manageable as long as you keep on top of it.’

For those contemplating a full-time course before starting work, Simmons trainee Fraser Cocking, currently on client secondment, says: ‘Be prepared to think in new ways and see things differently. The breadth of areas covered in an MBA means that you will have to do some things which are out of your comfort zone but give them a try.’

‘Are you prepared for the blood, sweat and tears involved?’ asks Goodman. But he adds quickly: ‘I would still recommend it without hesitation.’

Grania Langdon-Down is a freelance journalist