TOO MANY LAW GRADUATES AND TOO FEW PUPILLAGES MEANS MANY WILL NOT FIND JOBS
A leading barrister has accused law schools of duping thousands of young people into signing up for law degrees, knowing that many of them have little hope of finding a job at the end of it. As the number of law schools has multiplied, the number of law students now far exceeds the number of pupillages available at chambers, the training post they need in order to start their career.
Michael Todd QC, chairman of the Bar Council, accused law schools of “letting down” students who have paid them tens of thousands of pounds in tuition fees for degrees that they will not be able to use. He said:
“Too many students are emerging from law schools with £50,000-£60,000 of debt and no realistic prospect of pupillage. Law schools which are not giving those students an accurate picture of their chances are letting them down.
“It remains a great concern that law schools continue to produce far more graduates than there are pupillages available. This will do nothing to help the diversity and social mobility vital to ensuring our profession represents the society is serves.”
Todd’s comments follow the publication of figures which show that about 1,600 students a year now take the Bar Professional Training Course at British law schools. That is more than three times the number of pupillages available at barristers’ chambers – only 446 places were available last year.
But Sarah Hutchinson, a director at training course provider the College of Law claimed that Todd’s comments were “scaremongering” and insisted that a third of those taking legal courses were overseas students, many of whom had no intention of becoming barristers in the UK.
If Todd’s concerns are real, Graduate Fog has several questions. How are law schools manipulating their ‘destination’ figures to make it look like their courses are more successful then they are at getting graduates into jobs? Why aren’t prospective students being given better advice from their schools and universities about the reality of what a law degree will and won’t buy them? And if we know how many pupillages are available every year, should there be a cap on the number of young people who are studying law at any given time?
*ARE YOU STRUGGLING TO FIND WORK IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION?
Do you feel you were mis-sold your legal training, by your course provider? Were you led to believe your qualifications would guarantee you a job?
I would argue that we need greater diversity in the legal profession. If we can regionalise the profession more, then that improves the chances that we can create more pupilage opportunities, more widely.
“If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster” – Clint Eastwood
@Derrick
I see your point – but some would argue that a law degree is a just a very expensive toaster?! What I mean is, it’s a ‘thing’ that you ‘buy’ (or at least invest in)… so shouldn’t it come with some sort of promise? If I bought a car and it didn’t start, I wouldn’t be happy – and I’d definitely ask for my money back!
Of course graduates must take responsibility for finding work when they finish their course – but I also suspect that quite a few of these law schools are mis-selling their courses by massaging the figures. And that I have a big problem with… Would students really keep signing up to courses that cost £60,000 but only promised a 66% success rate? I doubt it.
Cars come with warranties for failure of mechanical parts, I think you are talking from a wider perspective that concerns life experiences.
There are no guarantees in life, only toasters offer that.
I’m not unsympathetic, its just that one can’t eradicate all risks during living.
Taking a broader perspective, we can question why the country is training so many law students at such high cost, when they will have no chance to use their skills.
Is the law school making a big profit, incentivising them to overtrain, or is it that as there are so many, some will be willing to work for free, and undermine wages in the profession?
I agree with Todd’s comments about the over-supply of Bar qualified graduates.
Graduates thinking about entering Law School should also research the chances of earning a decent living as a barrister. Some barristers are top earners but very many don’t earn enough to stay in the business. Current trends in law work – government cuts to legal aid services, solicitors having the right to speak in court, the rise in law practices going out of business – all make life harder for prospective barristers and solicitors.
I think that the over-training of those on LPCs and BVCs (or whatever the Bar course is called these days) is wrong, blatant profiteering. But I would resent anyone who believes that a law degree – alone – isn’t a great educational foundation.
Whether or not you’re looking to pursue a legal career, I’d say that an understanding of the law, in addition to the research and analysis required of law students (especially in business subjects, which are often multi-discipline), will prepare any person well for the challenges that await them in the work place.
Whether employers recognise this is another matter, however…
There is a very simple answer to this. A lot of law firms hire students before they go to law school and fund their studies as a result. If the ONLY way to enter law school (and by this I mean to do the Legal Practice Course, rather than taking a law degree) would be on the basis that the student had a job to go to at the end of it, there would no longer be a super-abundance of people with no real chance of a career wasting huge sums on meaningless studies.
I agree with Craig, it would be ignorant to call studying, especially studying law, ‘meaningless study’. I should hope a degree has more than a monetary value and not everyone who has ever studied law has gone on to become a lawyer. We shouldn’t dismiss the other career paths a law degree can take you without doing the LPC and BVC, which myself and other law friends could never afford to do in a million years. Even though I am struggling to find permanent work, I am still glad I did a law degree as it has taught me many valuable skills and is the only opportunity in my life I would get to study such an interesting and relevant subject. To be honest, the big con with law is the 12g LPC, my cousin in Portugal spends 5 years studying law so that he can specialise in an area, we don’t do this here so law graduates just end up with a generic degree, the same as any other graduate.
I haven’t found this to be the case at all, in fact there seem to be more opportunities for law students in other areas, for example working in corporations in the inhouse law teams. I’ve known many people who work as solicitors and other legal staff to large FTSE100 companies. Likewise, there are opportunities in lobbying groups, charities etc. I think a narrow view of courtroom legal proceedures isn’t realistic.
I got my graduate diploma in law just over a year and a half ago, and I’m not a particularly gifted individual, but I managed to find myself work fairly easily. It might help that my expectations weren’t set so massively high by the lure of the legal profession, but since then I’m on course to develop my career and choose to specialise in the near future if I want. If I held out for an elusive £100k job straight out of law school, I’d still be waiting.
Less lawyers the better
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