2004 Competition - Joint Winner

Is legal education working?

Victoria Ward (BPP Law School)

I have recently completed my Law degree and embarked on the BVC, it would certainly appear to me that the legal education system is working judging by the number of rejection letters I receive for Pupillages and Mini-Pupillages stating that the application standard has been extremely high!

The difference between studying law and studying any other subject is that it is still renowned as one of the best degrees you can have. From my class at University there are a few of us studying the BVC, many on the LPC, several who have gone into highly paid graduate schemes and a couple who have decided to get completely out of the legal system. None of us are without jobs or prospects because of the weight that having that LLB on your CV carries, it opens many doors and I feel is the subject which gives you the widest variety of prospects when you finish University. It never fails to impress people when I tell them I have a law degree, and for this reason I have had the opportunity to undertake work in a variety of areas both paid and voluntary, in a range of areas. Through my legal education I have the chance to debate, present, moot and meet with groups of people who are incredibly sociable. The range of skills I have acquired purely from studying compared to my friends on other courses is vast. I am the only one of my non-legal friends who would ever dream of getting up and speaking in front of a group of people, I can find practically anything from the internet or books, and I nearly always win arguments.

As you can see these skills are extremely transferable and that is why there are so many lawyers or former law students who end up in such powerful positions. Our legal education system outstrips any other area of education, because it is one of few subjects which can give you a good rounded start in whatever you intend to work in. Some people argue that the reason former lawyers go into such a range of areas of work and become successful is because they are all a particular ‘type’ of person but this simply isn’t true. If you walk onto a law course anywhere I guarantee that there will be a huge variety of people, even in my bar school class of 12 there is a range of work we intend to go into, I want to work in family and criminal law, another one of us will only consider criminal, another environmental law, another commercial and then within these broad areas people are even more specific. Very few other areas of education encourage such a range of prospects and tend to be more vocational, so the people you meet on the course are usually similar to you, a disadvantage in my opinion.

The reason the law attracts such a range of people is because it is so widespread, all of us come into contact with the law at some time, there is clearly an interest in the law given the many television programmes documenting the lives of lawyers and judges. Some argue that this means the legal education system fails because it does appeal to so many people and there simply are not enough jobs for everyone who wants to study it, and there is an argument for reducing the numbers of people who get taken on to do a degree as few of these find a place on the LPC or BVC courses, but looking at the numbers of people who do take on a law degree and go on to have a good career in any area it appears that this would be one of the best forms of education around.

So yes legal education is working.

Last Modified: 22 July 2010