In praise of private client law

The Law Society has published a useful brochure about careers in private client law. The forward by Patricia Wass, chair of the society's Private Client Section, contains a revealing graph showing the age distribution of the group's membership. Unlike the profession as a whole, private client lawyers are generally older. While this presents no obvious disadvantage to today's clients who benefit from their combined years of experience, it is a little worrying for clients of the future. What will happen when the rump of the UK's private client lawyers retire? Right now, around 60% of them are over 50, and only 17% are under the age of 40. Given the UK's aging population, and the greater need for private client lawyers among (usually older) wealth owners, it's no surprise that the Law Society is trying to drum up interest among new entrants to the profession.

Over the past couple of decades, the private client career path has received less publicity than the commercial one. Again, this is not a surprise given the rampant growth in commercial activity over this period, particularly in the City. The years of strong growth in the commercial sector was brilliant news for the UK economy - English law is now an important export for the nation - but during this time there was also an exodus of private client lawyers from the City, despite the fact that the UK attracts private wealth from around the world. The City fees charged to commercial clients were simply too high for private clients, and during the 1990s it became commonplace for the biggest City firms to close down their less profitable private client practices and instead set up referral relationships with smaller more cost-effective firms, often outside London.

While there are still a number of thriving and well-known private client practices in Central London (sometimes called the divorce capital of the world for its attractiveness to separating parties from overseas), the majority of opportunities for new lawyers lie elsewhere. If you're wondering about embarking on the private client path this is something to consider at the outset. The Law Society's brochure will help you understand why you might find this particular field of work satisfying, but you'll still have plenty of thinking and deciding to do, not least about where you want to live and work. This will involve questions more complex than, "Where do my family and friends live?" because wealth is not distributed evenly across the UK and not all wealth is the same. Private client law on the South Coast, for example, might put you in contact with more clients from the Armed Services than in most other parts of the UK. And it's not difficult to understand why there are more landowners in the agricultural Southwest or East Anglia than wealthy sportsmen - a category of client that seems to have flocked to the Cheshire towns south of Manchester.

The trick is to spend enough time researching firms with private client practices and figuring out what sort of clients they act for. A good starting point is the LC.N search function, which will identify private client firms by location and then give you links to more detailed information.

In case you've not already looked at it, here's another link to the Law Society brochure, Private Client as a Career.