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.
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