As if trying to interview pavarotti on the day he had root canal treatment work done was not hard enough, Hilary Kingsley explains why she gave up journalism to become a mature law student

A nice, Sloaney girl called Harriet Harman first put the idea of studying for a legal qualification into my head. It was back in the mid-1970s and my husband met her in a ski-lift queue. She had jumped it and he felt it only reasonable to yank her to the back with a few sharp words.

Despite that, we all became pals and she told me how the two-part conversion course (which she had just done at the College of Law) was dry but fascinating, and that not all solicitors were boring Conservatives.

I looked into it, discovered articled clerks were then paid considerably less than I forked out for my children's nanny and stuck with my job as a journalist. She went on to work for the National Council For Civil Liberties with another nice girl called Patricia Hewitt. We lost touch. I wonder what happened to Harriet.

About 30 years later, when the courses had become far harder, longer and more expensive, and I'd got a Freedom Pass, I did them. Not at the College of Law, but my graduate diploma in law at the University of Westminster (I liked the Oxford Circus location) and then my legal practice course with BPP at Waterloo I'd heard the tutors were good).

Oh, that's, er, brave, said one friend, when I explained why I was not pounding out stories for papers and magazines any longer. 'Different!'; 'Amazing'; said others. What they clearly meant was: 'You're mad.'

I agreed with them, in a sense. Only one comment needled me. 'Oh, I see,' nodded a former tax lawyer who was now a company big-shot over dinner one evening, 'At your age, you're probably studying law for status.'

I nearly choked on my dessert. I had always admired the solicitors I met for many reasons, but I had not noticed much cap-doffing in their direction. I certainly did not feel my studies of occupiers' liability, ways to unpick an epitome or draft a claim form would impress people. Nor, as it happened, did I need to prove I could remember things and pass exams. With a decent English degree, I was not educationally challenged.

Besides, as a successful journalist on national newspapers and magazines, an occupation most people believe (mistakenly) to be glamorous and exciting, I felt I had a bit of status already. I certainly made money and, from time to time, threw my weight about.

So why did I do it? Well, I had loved being a hack, loved the company of irreverent, mischief-making colleagues. I enjoyed writing to amuse, grasping ideas out of the air, to a deadline. But I felt I had composed every kind of piece, been there (on expenses), done that (at the Hermitage hotel, Monte Carlo or the Splendido, Portofino) and got the designer T-shirt, free.

Besides, you can just go off some jobs, just as you go off vanilla yoghurt or platform heels. And back in 2005, if I had had to deal with one more so-called celebrity actress, singer, or sports personality; or his or her press agent, trying to manipulate a proposed interview, making ever-more absurd demands, I might have needed the services of a good lawyer after committing luvvie assault.

There are many reasons for becoming a mature student. If you're a middle-aged, comfortably-off woman, the usual route is a gentle and genteel course in literature, art or a language. For fun and often (I fear) just for something to talk about.

I wanted to learn the law because, as a person with a bit of experience of the world, I had spotted that the law was at the basis of almost everything, from going to war in Iraq, to regulating with whom we lived and to whom we leave our money, to whether we get a refund on a faulty kettle. Law is important.

I had been (and still am) a magistrate and seen something of how the criminal justice and family proceedings systems worked. I wanted to learn more about those and other legal areas. And then I wanted to do it, practise it. As a job. Nothing fancy, just some challenging, useful work.

But why? Mainly because I thought I would be quite good at it, being already quick at drafting letters and attendance notes, being accustomed to people who are nervous and muddled. If you have prised decent quotes out of Pavarotti, as I managed, on the day he had had root canal treatment and heard he owed millions of dollars in back tax, or interviewed battered wives or glue-sniffing children, as I also did, you have learned a bit of tact and persistence.

Admittedly, I could not help a firm win the lawyers' softball trophy. But I would not ask for maternity leave either. What did not occur to me was that the legal establishment would not weigh skills against age. More of that later.

What is it like studying for professional exams when you are old enough to be the mother of most of your fellow students and even some of the lecturers? In a word, great.

While 30-somethings may be eyeing up the 22-year-olds, worrying that they were, maybe, less fashionably dressed or coiffed, a wrinkly does not try to compete. Bare midriffs, tattoos and hair straightened to stair rods? Happy to pass on those.

So I sat back, watched and listened. And I asked, even if the questions turned out to be dumb. I also asked for help from my fellow students, who could show me, in a flash, how to navigate the internet for legal research and online assessments. They did not patronise me; why should they? Young people can sound shrill and shallow. But they never drone on about house prices, school fees and pensions. They can also be stimulating, direct and positive.

At both law schools, the students were from many different cultures and backgrounds. I was in awe at the French, Italian, Polish and Albanian young people with whom I shared classes. Imagine understanding equitable maxims when English is not your first language. A couple of Muslim students in my group took Ramadan seriously. Try managing to concentrate on converting a shelf company or analysing a Form E when you have not had a bite to eat since dawn.

Many I took coffee or drank wine with (and who have since sweetly listed me as a friend on Facebook) were uncertain about a future in the law. Their contemporaries from university were earning loads in banking, recruitment, hedge funds, PR or management companies and here they were, by comparison, still studying and running up more debt.

For me, it was easy to equate their problems with those I had had as an undergraduate and with those of my own children. So I advised them not to be lured by what may sound easier, more exciting work than a couple of years as a humble trainee in a law firm.

I tried to tell them that almost every job involved regular periods of tedium, and poisonous individuals stalked every office looking for victims. I, for instance, survived working for Anne Robinson and other Queen Bees. The scars heal, I assured them. Expect sex discrimination but take time off to have babies unapologetically, when it is right for you. Children can cope with working mothers. And so can bosses.

Did I lose the plot at any stage? There was a wobble or two. My younger daughter, who had taken the same legal path a few years earlier, was supposed to help me. I had actually planned that she would do many of my assignments and half my dissertation in payback for all the essays I had ghosted for her. But, dammit, she was usually too busy. 'Mother, you're all over the place. Focus!,' she snapped on one visit when I was revising for exams. I shrank but took note.

In the end, I passed everything at the first attempt, with a high commendation, distinctions in my dissertation on privacy, my elective subjects of family law, employment and criminal litigation and a few other gold stars here and there. It felt good to get the results. Objective proof of achievement. Better than transient praise from an editor any day. I must frame those certificates.

But then I have not had time. Since July, I have been trying to get a training contract but been met by a wall of silence. So I have taught myself media law and am now lecturing part-time to graduate trainee journalists.

I have called in to see a few solicitors, who have smiled and pointed out that even if I were lucky enough to find a firm to take a chance on me, I would be almost at retiring age by the time I finished my two years' traineeship.

Retiring age? Whose retiring age? Should Hillary Clinton wind down and put that presidential candidacy notion out of her head? People differ and I doubt that employing a few oldies would open the famous floodgates. Unlike many solicitors, burnt out by decades of 14-hour days, I am not jaded. Nor am I planning to spend my days golfing and gardening soon. Or ever.

Yes, I might conk out within the next 25 years. But I have to say, I look a lot less decrepit than many of the lawyers who appear before our magistrates' bench.

Would Harriet Harman land a training contract if she were applying now? Probably not. She's knocking on a bit, after all.

Hilary Kingsley was an author, journalist and critic (for The Daily Mirror, The Times, YOU magazine and many other magazines) before studying law. She lives in London, is married, with three grown children: two journalists and a lawyer. Email her at hkingsley@peak-time.com.