In the second year of university, you are reminded constantly that now is the time to start looking at what you want to do after you graduate and that the time to apply for graduate programmes are drawing very near. Luckily my degree lends itself to a series of career paths, but it generally tends to produce lawyers therefore I thought it necessary to research the different avenues within the legal sector as well as the option of teaching law.
My initial research into the legal sector surprised me; I didn't realise how many different things could be done with a law degree. The degree doesn't limit you to the solicitor or barrister role, however becoming a solicitor has been my intention since I applied to college and my research only reinforced this desire. According to my research the skills and experience I have gained through past work align with those skills required to become a solicitor. Through further research I also learnt that post graduation I am required to complete an industry specific qualification to begin my career pathway. This is followed by a two year training contract placement in a law firm before becoming a fully qualified solicitor. Initially this seemed like a long journey to my end goal especially considering my late entry into higher education and all I kept thinking was, why didn't I start this earlier in life? But then I realised that if I had in fact gone to University when I was 19 I wouldn’t be who I am now, with all the experience I have or the determination to make this dream a reality.
With renewed motivation my subsequent research was specific. I needed to understand the long road ahead, so I turned to the Law Society's Website. The information there has been tailored to those wishing to enter the legal profession, with great attention paid to the dedication and determination required as well as ensuring that the realities of the profession are understood, one of which I was not prepared for...the cost of the legal practice course (LPC). With the price being between £8,000 and £12,000 for the one year course, my first thought was I should give up now! How can someone ever afford this?
However, I am not easily dissuaded from my goals, so this only spurred me into finding a method of funding my LPC. My first option is to receive sponsorship from a law firm by being selected to complete my training contract with them, however these training contracts are very competitive and highly sought after, so this would be the perfect answer to my funding issue. Unfortunately these training contracts are highly sought and very competitive, so if I want one I will have to make my application STAND OUT, something I have yet to work out how to do well. My main issue is my lack of work experience within the legal sector itself, as this is an important factor to firms, but with a lack of legal contacts and so far no response to my letters to local firms asking for unpaid work experience, I was worried that I will not get this important experience and that my chances of attaining of a training contract will be dramatically reduced.
Luckily, it maybe that some law firms have given me a chance to gain legal work experience with their vacation placements and open days. These placements will give me a great idea of what it will be like to work in law, but most importantly they will give me the chance to show firms my skills and personality with many of the firms using the vacation placements as a section of the selection process for training contracts. Again though these vacation placements are highly sought after and have a very rigorous application process, but this isn't going to stop me.
Throughout the years I have learnt that having a plan B is always the best way to achieve anything because you can guarantee especially when it is me that nothing will ever go exactly to plan. My research lead to me to three possible alternatives:
Should I try and fund my LPC without a training contract?
- Some High Street Banks including Barclays and The Cooperative Bank also offer a Professional and Career Development Loan for up to £10,000 which is repaid at a lower interest rate and the Government pay the interest whilst your studying.
- BPP Law School exclusively offer a Law Loan to their LPC, BPTC and GDL students for up to £25,000 from Investec Bank with competitive interest rates.
Choose a different route into the legal sector?
Or become a paralegal or legal assistant?
Knowing how competitive training contracts are I have decided that if by the end of my degree I still have not managed to guarantee a training contract I will not try to fund my LPC myself, as the cost outweighs the chance of attaining a training contract at the end of the course. In stead I will try to go down the paralegal route especially when firms such as Freeth Cartwright are offering graduates the chances to gain extensive legal experience and then potentially securing a place in their training contract programme. Although the ILEX route into law is a brilliant option, with the advantage of working within the law sector during your qualification, I wish I had known about the route prior to starting my degree because it would have been high on my list of options but I feel that it is not well publicised. I wish I had researched my career path better prior to my entry into university as I would have had a better understanding of the realities of the career but also the many different routes into the profession, but this has not deterred me from achieving my goal, I just ensure that I research thoroughly in future.
After my careers research, originally I thought that I had a mountain to climb and that with my personal background I had many hurdles to overcome along the way and therefore was it all really worth the hassle? But, these were just my initial fears, which slowly disappeared with the careers research. Generally the information I was looking for was easy to find and the information I found was detailed and very useful, however there was a lot of basic information duplicated on different websites which made looking for specific information quite difficult, but I soon learnt that website such as the LawSociety, Junior LawyersDivision and Lawyer 2B were the best places to look for really useful information. I think I could have used the careers service at the university to better effect and also get more use from the contacts and events put on by Leicester University Law Society, especially when wanting answers to questions that I cannot find on the internet. Going forward from this research I will target any future research so that I can get the best information quickly and use the websites I have found to be helpful as a good starting point.
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