Blade receives an email from an old friend. It says: “I’ve been thinking about a change of career for ages and now seems as good a time as any. I’ve got a place at The College of Law to do a GDL with a view to then going on to a BVC. Am I insane? If you have a spare five minutes I’ve got a few questions and would really appreciate a candid view on whether this is the right thing to do.”
How best to answer? Should Blade alert his friend to this story from The Lawyer, highlighting the fact that even the Law Society is telling people to think twice before embarking on a career in the law? After all, the statistics make for grim reading: 7,000 people completed the Legal Practice Course (LPC) in 2008, but there are only 6,000 training contracts available this year.
Or should Blade counsel optimism and suggest that with the requisite degree of application, jobs in the law are still to be had?
Blade’s own experience might be useful. Over 15 years ago, in the lead up to the dread Law Society Finals (LSF), Blade fired off sundry missives seeking work with firms large, small and indeterminate. He was promptly rewarded with articles (as they were then known) with a leading libel firm. Blade’s good fortune was much envied by his colleagues on the LSF, but soon enough most of them had secured articles, too. Others were not so lucky, for Blade’s day was not a halcyon one. Back then the law was every bit as competitive as it is now and not every budding Rumpole would walk straight into a job. Indeed, two of the brightest stars on Blade’s course were the last to secure training contracts, and neither were with the creme de la creme.
All these years later the two stars demonstrated their ability and are now partners commanding substantial equity in household name law firms. Blade, meanwhile, left the law some time ago in favour of his first love, writing. The stars undoubtedly earn significantly more than Blade; all three of us would, Blade suspects, say that we’re happy with our respective fates.
The point is that there’s a long way to go in life, with or without the law. Studying it may not lead to an immediate legal career, or it might lead to a training contract with a City firm from the off. A few years later partnership may beckon or something else entirely.
It strikes Blade that in seeking to highlight the risks of undertaking study of the law, the Law Society has fallen prey to the kind of thinking that would seek to eliminate all risk from any venture that we ever take. Society is all too full of this absurd attitude. Blade’s advice to his old friend will be to go for it, with enthusiasm, diligence and commitment – and, of course, a weather eye on the risks.
Pictured courtesy of John McDonald: a putative lawyer realises that studying law isn’t always a bundle of laughs.
For a certain poet, an unspoiled stretch of seaside was like “the holy hush there is in the land on Christmas morning. The roads fairly empty, the sky almost free of aeroplanes and you begin to hear and see and smell once more”.
But who uttered these lines?
(It’s a Monday, and this is your starter for 10 – and yes, we’re fresh to the metropolis, from a coastal sojourn.)
The following words appeared in a Times article in 2003, about the paper’s recently departed Head of Legal, Alastair Brett. They’ve been doing the rounds in the wake of Brett’s sudden exit last week, though without attribution. Who, we wonder, wrote them? Two suspects present themselves – our own occasional scribe, Alex Wade, and Dominic Carman, son of the late, great George (an old mucker of Brett’s). Or was someone else the author? Whatever: the fact remains that Brett was a fearless, tenacious and excellent newspaper lawyer, a man whose commitment to press freedom coursed through every vein in his body. We don’t know the precise reasons for his departure, but he will be missed.
“[He] is known for his impassioned commitment to press freedom – so impassioned that he has been described as “certifiably insane”. Capable of an intimidatory snarl or two, and prepared to be stubborn, Brett is far from mad. He is erudite, charming (so the ladies say), and not known for sitting on the fence. If his sanity has, tongue firmly in cheek, been questioned, one thing not open to doubt is that Brett epitomises the old school Fleet Street lawyer”.
Pictured: Fleet Street - not the same as it used to be.
A curious observation leaps at us from Roy Greenslade’s piece about whether Conrad Black, shortly to roam the high-class hotels of the world again as a free man, will return to the UK and carry out his threat to sue his biographer, Tom Bower, for libel:
I somehow doubt that he would have the appetite, or the funds, to pursue a libel action, but Black marches to the sound of his own drummer, so he might just do that. Even if he did, my money would still be on Bower winning.
Hang on, Roy – what about suing via a no win, no fee deal? Funds or no funds, a CFA would see Conrad through – though maybe he’ll remember what happened to the last press baron who sued Bower. Anyone for Richard Desmond’s curious dalliance with libel?
Pictured: the kind of place in which Conrad Black may be spotted (if not at the Royal Courts of Justice).
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All OK for Desmond and Five
Heading for an airport tonight? Your experience may be different in future…
Released almost a year ago, Spada’s groundbreaking research report, British Professions Today, is available for free download
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In the latest of our series of white papers, Spada Research examines trends in environmental reporting.
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
Πλάτων, Greek philosopher.