Forget about TV’s The Apprentice if you really want to be one!

Making decisions about your career is tough. Knowing what you want to do at 37 or 38 can be difficult, but suppose you are 17 or 18 with no significant work experience to inform your choice. What should you make of the bewildering range of career options?

The media often doesn’t help, with its simplistic depictions of life as an apprentice or lawyer. Turn on the TV and there is someone telling Sir Alan that he or she is “passionate” about becoming his apprentice (no-one ever admits to desperation).

And what about lawyers? In TV-land, there’s courtroom drama of barristers advocating in knife-edge trials or lawyers ‘closing’ high-value cases every week in Suits. Is that really what the job entails?

Both examples are a bit of a parody of the real world. Your career decisions will need to be based on a cool-headed consideration of what you want to be and how to get there. It begins with deciding how to get onto the first rung of the career ladder to become a legal professional.

If you are reading this, then it’s probably because you have at least a passing interest in law. That’s good, but to succeed requires commitment. Law is of course a very competitive profession, so you have to be determined, and honestly think about whether your skills and personal characteristics are suitable for a legal career.

As a minimum for a paralegal apprenticeship, you need good A-level results, and in this regard there’s no substitute for hard graft. You should also ask yourself whether you possess the right behaviours that will enable you to progress in law, a point to which we will return.

So how does someone become a lawyer in the first place? Traditionally, intending lawyers go to university to study a law degree and then enrol on a postgraduate course, the LPC. They then spend a period working as a trainee. Non-law graduates follow a similar path, but must first complete an additional law conversion course, the GDL, before the LPC.

It’s a well-established route, so why not opt for university if you want to become a lawyer? One reason is student debt (usually in the region of £40,000 after completing a degree), which may lead you to conclude that studying a law degree could be a very expensive way of discovering that you are not cut out to be a lawyer.

Fortunately, as many students are realising, there is another way: through an apprenticeship. A legal apprenticeship enables you to study for a professional legal qualification at the same time as working. Sure, you lose some of the social dimension of being a full-time university student and not having Freshers’ Week or long holidays, but the upsides are considerable.

For example, you get paid to study and work at the same time. And you’ll know quickly if law is right for you, and you are right for it, without having committed to the expense of a full-time degree. Salaries range from £11,000 to £19,000 for legal apprentices and our apprentices can save to buy cars and book foreign holidays because they don’t have overwhelming debt. We invite apprentices to meet up with others in their area, so they have their own network.

Perhaps the greatest advantage - and something that I hear from our apprentices time and again - is that you acquire valuable work experience. This serves to distinguish you from the thousands of law graduates who leave university each year with mediocre job prospects and big debts.

The value of work experience gained during an apprenticeship cannot be overstated: many law graduates struggle to get their first legal job, despite knowing a lot about law! It’s the old Catch 22: graduates cannot get a job without experience, but cannot get experience without a job. An apprenticeship is a way around this dilemma for those who have decided not to go to university.

If your appetite is whetted by the prospect of a legal career without the debt burden of university, then you need to know how you become a legal apprentice and your prospects once in the role.

Starting with how to get your first role, you must appreciate that an apprenticeship is first and foremost a job. Like any job, you have to read the advertisement and apply as instructed. You can find current vacancies listed at http://www.cilexlawschool.ac.uk/Prospective_Students/Legal_apprenticeships/Legal_apprenticeship_vacancies and https://www.findapprenticeship.service.gov.uk/apprenticeshipsearch

Employers usually seek applicants with good academic qualifications at A level (typically three Cs or better), coupled with competence in English and maths. You will also need to show that you are ready to work.

Your readiness for work can be demonstrated by part-time employment while studying at school/college or a voluntary role. A position of responsibility at school/college also plays well with employers, especially if you have been a member of a sports team.

It might seem like a cliché, but having pastimes and hobbies that show a broad range of interests can help your application, particularly if they provide evidence of you taking the initiative and being able to work with others. After all, law is nothing if not a people business.

Entering the legal profession through the apprenticeship route affords lots of opportunities. The common starting point is as a paralegal apprentice. After completing the two-year apprenticeship you will be working independently as a technician-level employee, doing substantive legal work under supervision.

From there you might go on to qualify as a specialist chartered legal executive lawyer, again through the apprenticeship route. As a chartered legal executive you will be working at a high level and in charge of your own case files. Typically, it takes five years to reach this level of expertise

Another possibility is to study to become a solicitor through an apprenticeship route. You’ll gain a degree as you follow the six-year pathway to final qualification.

Now you have to do some thinking about where you see yourself in five years’ time. It’s a hard question to answer, but you might want to consider the apprenticeship route: it could set you off in the right direction. It’s a direction that lots of employers are considering too for their talent development, so the timing is ideal. Just watch how much coverage there is in National Apprenticeship Week and take your inspiration from that rather than from Lord Sugar.

Jenny Pelling is the director of business and apprenticeships at CILEx Law School.