Your path to practice

The Times has reported that 17,500 law graduates will be competing for 5,000 jobs in law. If you have chosen to read this polemic it is likely you are one of them.

It follows that for the vast majority, the chance to “get in the door” and prove oneself to be of merit to firms or chambers has never looked so bleak. Moreover, notwithstanding the televisual glamour of The Good Wife and Suits, which portray an enviable counterweight to our grim legal training landscape, the US graduate landscape is actually even worse.

It is important to note that many in practice feel that there are too many law schools and too many graduates. My starting point therefore must be that a degree does not hold the weight that it used to. I am not the first to argue this.

The alternative - a life less traditional

If you wish to practice law as a litigator (solicitor), not an advocate (barrister), there is an alternative route that has become very relevant in the past five years. The Chartered Institute of Legal Executives affords a budding lawyer the opportunity to both work and qualify at the same time.

Under the Legal Services Act 2007, chartered legal executives are ‘authorised persons’ undertaking ‘reserved legal activities’, alongside solicitors and barristers. A chartered Legal executive lawyer specialises in a particular area of law and will have been trained to the same standard as a solicitor in that area. A cautionary note would be that you are specialised from the beginning. The relevance of the limitation is a matter for the applicant, but in a legal landscape ever increasingly specialised at training level, this might well be now a moot consideration.

Over three years you would finalise academic training at foundation level, HND and then degree level (level 6); all the while earning and training simultaneously and most likely having your course work and exams paid for by your firm.

You may also now eventually cross qualify as a solicitor via practising as a Fellow of the Institute.

For those who have undertaken the LPC or BPTC, you can bypass the academic stage by paying the fee and become a graduate member immediately.

Conclusion

If you wish to, you can always undertake the traditional training, have a punt on a contract and then consider CILEx as the alternative.

But I would ask you to consider CILEx with equal merit to the LPC or BPTC route if you are keen and hardworking, but for whatever reason have a CV that is less than a safe bet.

I wish you every success. Work hard and enjoy your practice - whatever guise it comes in.

Neil Ronan is a litigation legal executive and a non-practising barrister at Bott & Co Solicitors.