Legal Education in the United Kingdom: an Insider’s View

Artem Y. Gryadushchyy

The legal profession has long been one of the most sought after professions in the world one could choose. Mostly because being a lawyer has always been associated by the general public with stand-out qualities, such as dignity, integrity and honesty.

Interestingly, after the collapse of Soviet Union, not many people in Ukraine (or any other post-Soviet countries) actually realized what being a lawyer really meant. For most, it was the way of establishing themselves in the society, always being able to find some job with a law degree, because de facto, it was implied that they knew the law and were smart enough to grasp the essentials of any other easier profession if required. Therefore, students starting their law degree have not always understood what kind of job they would do as lawyers once they would have graduated. Some could probably see themselves making a career in the litigation, but not many dreamt about becoming corporate or real-estate lawyers as these practices were, although not unheard of, but unpopular in Ukraine and students were probably looking at other fields where they could compete upon their graduation.

It is true, that some lawyers could in fact establish a successful career outside law, as history knows a lot of such examples. Although not many would have become leading mathematic experts or biological break-through researchers, a lot of famous people have achieved successful careers or took place in the world history while holding law degree, most notably: Franz Kafka, Barack Obama, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and even the famous Mahatma Gandhi practiced law at one point of his life.

So, while in the middle of the nineties and at the beginning of the 21st century there was a surge in the demand for education in the legal profession a lot of students soon realized that finding the job in a prestigious law firm was extremely hard, due to the lack of the competitive market in Ukraine and consequent lack of vacancies available in the law firms. Fast forward to 2011, with the world becoming more globalised and other professions emerging, the legal education has somehow seen a decrease in popularity not only in the Ukrainian educational system, but even in other well established systems, such as the United Kingdom. There are many reasons why United Kingdom is under heavy criticism regarding its educational legal system, but in order to understand it, we need to look at the path how a student can become a lawyer in the UK.

Solicitors vs. barristers

The UK legal educational system is completely different to the European system. The potential student has a choice between becoming a solicitor or a barrister. The main difference between the two is that the barrister is in fact, an advocate, who represents clients in court. Barristers hardly ever work for law firms, as they “sit in inns” (for example in London there are four inns: Lincoln’s Inn, Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray`s Inn). To be clear (although not entirely accurate as that would involve going into historical tour of the UK education) the barristers are, in fact, self-employed advocates.

The solicitors on the other hand are the lawyers who do corporate, real estate, inheritance and other legal work at law firms. In order to become a solicitor or a barrister the potential student has to be qualified. For that, there is a certain path to qualification.

After school the lawyer-to-be goes to a college, where he has to pass within 2 years, his A-levels (i.e. the profound study of three to five subjects on any topics).

If a lawyer-to-be is a foreigner he can do a faster (6 months) and less challenging similar course, called the Foundation programme offered by some universities and colleges in the UK.

Afterwards a lawyer-to-be can either go to university to study for a bachelor’s law degree (the so-called LLB, which varies between 3 and 4 years) where he studies theory of 4 to 5 law subjects a year. After the university the newly graduated student is supposed to go to a professional college (which is different to the college offering A-Level programs) to complete the so-called Legal Practice Course (LPC) in order to become a solicitor or Bar Vocational Course (BVC) in order to become a barrister. Both are quite challenging and last one year, during which a lawyer-to-be will be studying the practical aspects of law, i.e. how to draft documents, speak to clients, act in courts and even learn the accounting principles of law firms. There are only few professional colleges that offer LPC or BVC, but that doesn’t mean that the competition to enter into one of them is high, as most of the colleges are happy to snap up law graduates from the universities.

After the completion of the LPC, provided that the student finds a job in the law firm (called the training contract), he starts his employment as a trainee and does, what many call the seats (i.e. works in different departments of the firm). In order to qualify as a solicitor, the trainee has to complete 4 different seats of 6 months each, presumably in different departments of the firm and only then, upon the completion of each seat, the trainee will be deemed to have enough experience to sit his final exams to qualify as a solicitor.

In order to qualify as a barrister, the student must complete 12 qualifying sessions at one of the Inns, after which he must find and complete the Pupilage (assisting a barrister for 12 months during which he must follow and “shadow” the barrister everywhere during the first 6 months period and during the second 6 months period the student will finally be able to accept clients on his own before eventually being admitted to the Bar).

The second route to becoming a solicitor or a barrister is completing a bachelor degree in absolutely any other field the student wishes. Therefore, after enjoying the bachelor degree in, for example history, literature or even astronomy, the student who decides that he wants to become a lawyer has to enroll into a college that provides LPC and BVC to study for the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) which lasts 1 year (provided student does full-time course) and covers 7 main core topics of the British legal system (Contracts, Tort, Criminal, Equity and Trusts, European Union Law, Land law and Public law which is basically comprised of Constitutional and Administrative law). After GDL, the student starts LPC or BVC, depending on personal preference.

The GDL is a very challenging course, however it is rewarding for several reasons. No matter what the student does at some point in his further career he can always re-qualify to another profession which would allow him to switch from the legal area of work to the area the student obtained his bachelor degree in. Another point worth mentioning is that in reality, a lot of students who start their LLB are excited about the prospect of studying the academic and theoretical side of the law, and many do not even intend on practicing the law in the future. These are the people that often end up in high profile jobs at the Law Commission of England and Wales or becoming professors at the universities.

Finally, as a general rule there is usually no need to study master’s degree (the so-called LLM) in order to qualify as a solicitor. While it can obviously help in further career, the positive side of the legal education in the UK is that by the age of 25 a student can already become a fully qualified solicitor (if he finishes A-Levels by the time he is eighteen, LLB and LPC can take 4 years plus 2 years of the training contract). So at the age of 25 years, a student is already a qualified solicitor earning quite a reasonable amount of money, but still, in most cases student will be stuck with big debts to pay.

Potential problems

Education in the United Kingdom is expensive. Universities generate quite a good income and quite logically have a good opportunity to earn money. In England for example, the fees for one year of legal education for EU citizens are approximately GBP 3,500, while for oversees students the fees go up to around GBP 12,000 a year (however, comparing to the cost of a legal education in the USA, the cost of the UK legal education is not much. The cost of one year at Boston University is around USD 40,000 and relatively less known Wisconsin University ranges from USD 18,000 to USD 40,000 depending on the student`s residency — but let’s stick to the UK). Needless to say, some universities are interested in attracting more oversees students and hence, they very often accept them at lower entry requirements. However, having said that, education in top universities is still subject to strict entrance rules and some universities, like Oxford, Cambridge or the London School of Economics, do not accept students who completed the Foundation programme mentioned above.

The other difficulty with legal market and educational system in the UK is that a student has to apply for work several years in advance. This is due to many reasons, such as that the UK is a very popular destination for students and legal firms are constantly overloaded with job applications. For example, some firms offer training contracts that start in three or four years time. This means that even if a student has successfully signed a training contract at the third year of his LLB, he might have to deal with a whole gap year after the end of his LPC and before the start of the work. Many use this year to travel or do some charity work, however the reality is that such students are left with hefty debt and no income for some time after finishing their LPC.

Finally, when choosing the universities in the UK, potential students rely on the tables showing the ranking of universities when in fact such tables do not depict the reality very well. When looking at the CV of a student, the potential employer will look at the historical standing and background of university and not as much at the ranking of it in the table which is changing every year. For example, the LLM in Human Rights at Oxford University will always be viewed as much better by potential employers comparing to the identical LLM at the University of Essex, which is generally regarded as one of the strongest LLM Human Rights in Europe.

The system is quite hypocritical and while students who take the loans at the banks to finance their studies tend to use more efforts while studying, inevitably the questions are being posed as to why the education is only accessible to those who have money (whether EU or oversees based students). Some critics argue that law is a privileged profession and should only be accessible to those who make enough efforts to graduate from their universities. A view more than open to a shower of criticism, but when looking at some students in countries with free or cheap education and who are more than happy to stroll through their university years, it is inevitable that some may think that such view has the right to existence.

Is it worth it?

In reality, a lot of students will end up graduating from university with substantial debt and no future career employment being arranged. Some will have to go back living with their parents (something quite unimaginable in western hemisphere not so long ago), a lot will have to do only with part-time jobs and some lucky few will find a job as paralegals. It is also worth mentioning that due to the previous popularity of the legal profession, anyone who got below the average scores in their exam will probably never find a job in the legal field, because the competition will be so tight.

So how do universities and colleges manage to catch the attention of students who still have not decided which career path they would like to choose? The universities and colleges are being more and more accused of attracting the students by providing the data, regarding the employment after the graduation, based on what many call false statistics. The brochures attracting the potential students may claim for example, that around 80% of university students were employed within one year after graduating from the university. The data upon which such claim is based is collected by the university department and concerns absolutely any employment the student might have had within any period of one year.

For example, considering that 14 February of every year in the USA or the UK is one of most part-time employed days of the year — this would also count as being employed within the meaning of such statistics.

Consequently, when universities present such information, the potential students have to be very careful when analyzing data as it hardly ever represents the true figures on employment in the legal field.

Having said all that, after every downfall, there is a rise — and although the UK education system is quite old fashioned and tuition fees are over the roof, in the long run it will not stop students from choosing their career path in law. Firms realize that they have to adapt to the latest developments in the globalised market. Goldman Sachs and Barclays Bank are among the latest companies that have recently started providing training contracts to students, upon completion of which they can become qualified solicitors and can also be trained in other skills (e.g. investment banking). Many law firms are also sponsoring LPC or refund part of LPC expenses upon offering of the training contracts. Finally, despite some heavy criticism of the current education system that exists in the UK, there is no denying the fact that it remains one of the strongest and most established systems in the world.

We can hope that evolution of the legal education in Ukraine will avoid the mistakes the United Kingdom has encountered in the past couple of decades and will only take the positives from UK experience in order to improve and build upon the future of Ukrainian education.

Hope is the least we can do!