Law Students - Chat Thread

Hi,

Well I do have some sort of focus otherwise I wouldn't have made it this far! Well basically I know that most training contract application end at around January but the LPC is the thing that gives me a headache.

I have no idea which uni is the best to apply to and also how I would fund it and stuff. We have had a careers talk already but it's just confused me even more!

At the moment I suspect you are at base camp for a legal career and choosing your LPC provider is a bit like deciding which way round to put the flag on the ice pick!

I think I'd find watching paint dry more exciting than writing this essay on direct effect.

Just remember - Mangold is bad and increasing direct effect is bad (And, interestingly, when you come to do Art 267 References ... note Hartley's point that Mangold was probably a test case rather than a truly genuine dispute!)

Mangold was almost certainly a test case! I think increasing direct effect is good, or at least arguably good, actually (parties would at least know where they stand, and it would make the law clearer/more certain), but Mangold is a crap decision.

Where are you studying? What class of degree are you hoping to get?

Applications for most of the large London firms for 2013 closed some time ago (though my provincial firm is still accepting applications).

This is the thread for 2013 training contracts.

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1441488&page=52


You should probably look at the 2014 training contact thread as well.

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1779007


Did you do a vacation scheme during the long vacation between your 2nd and 3rd year?

I do not think you have any prospect of a funded LPC place for 2012 so the question is do you fund yourself (with or without a training contract) or try for a training contract in 2014 with a funded LPC place in 2013. Alternatively do you try and get a job and do a part-time LPC?

What legal (and other) work experience do you have? What legal extra curricular activities have you undertaken?

Frankly, the place you do your LPC doesn't matter very much.

At the moment I suspect you are at base camp for a legal career and choosing your LPC provider is a bit like deciding which way round to put the flag on the ice pick!

I mean horizontal effect Consider the implications given that most people barely know English law (and don't even know how our system works) let alone another flipping system and set of laws.

I'm not sure--while not all parties have legal advice, at the moment it's not always clear whether a body is a public body, whether national legislation can be interpreted to be compatible (and how that interpretation will work), whether the ECJ will "find" another general principle, and whether a provision of national law will be disapplied as incompatible. Given the Court's proclivity for doing all of these things, even well-advised parties can find it difficult to ascertain the law. Sure, not everyone will know what the European law on a position is--but at the moment advising a party properly requires understanding BOTH sets of laws, and a certain amount of guesswork about interpretation/general principles/etc. I think in some ways we'd be better off returning to Faccini Dori, abandoning Mangold, and using Francovich damages to compensate private parties who get shafted out of a remedy through non-implementation. Since that seems unlikely, however, giving horizontal direct effect would provide clarity and certainty.

In any case, I'm not sure the objection that people don't understand English law and therefore we should not add a layer of European law holds up. Parties' relationships are already subject to a tremendous amount of European law. Unless we leave the Union, the Court will continue to effect relations between private parties in uncertain ways. Admitting that EU law does and will alter private relations at a horizontal level would be intellectually honest. It is slightly more complicated than having domestic law only, of course, but substantially less complicated than the current position.

Your first argument misses my point - when you get to court, it is different. But the thing is, people need to go about their life knowing what the law is. Not all of it but the relevant parts. Take an area like agriculture for example. The law on quota etc will change on a weekly basis. In fact, regulations etc get discussed very quickly (please just trust me on this. My mother threatened to send me every discussion before the European Parliament which gets sent to the legal department where she works. Ministers in government get this information. Lay people don't unless they have mothers who get sent it who think they might want it). It's very harsh to inform someone that they're breaching a law they don't know about because of a technicality they weren't sent. If the whole system were to change, that's one thing. But simply increasing horizontal effect doesn't help. They say ignorance of the law is no excuse and in some cases this is clearly right. But in some cases, good faith counts for something and this must be right as well. I'd say it's the same principle.

Also consider that while a Member State can use certain defences, these are not open to a private party and in many cases, would go on to subvert the Member State's national system if they were so applied. For example, I am an employer and I refuse to let you work for me because you haven't got a Welsh GCSE. There is horizontal effect there (Angonese applied) but unlike a Member State, I cannot say "I have this Welsh GCSE requirement for public policy reasons". What public policy? I'm some random person, I can't create a public policy! So clearly this defence should not be extended to me anyway. In effect, you apply the same law to two separate groups but you'll create arbitrary confusion as some attempt to defend themselves and some can't. If we have horizontal effect in such a way, it should be somewhat equal. Considering the massive differences between the two potential groups, this can't be so.

Hi,

Thanks for the advice.

I'm at University of Westminster and am aiming for at least a 2:1.

I have just completed in this summer holidays 10 weeks of work experience in a local high street firm and have done 2 weeks in my a level years.

To be honest I never actually was aiming for the major firms. I was always more inclined towards the medium to small firms. I was told by careers that smaller firms also take applications only 1 year in advance. Is this true?

Thanks again!

I agree with you in principle--there's a lot to be said for the ability of people to rely on the law. At the moment, though, the cases applying exceptions to the "no horizontal direct effect" rule are instances where, often, the body acted on an assumption that domestic legislation applied. The comments Signalson et al made *would* have been legal and fair--CIA Security's security system didn't comply with Belgian law. Unless we require Signalson to figure out that the Belgian law as incompatible, and would therefore be disapplied, Signalson is in a disadvantageous position. The same is true of the grocer in Unilever Italia. Both defendants relied on national law. They ought to have been able to so rely on national law. Yet the Court overturned their (I would argue reasonable) reliance, and deprived both of a defence. The same is true in Pfeiffer. The employment contracts were, to all intents and purposes, legal under German law. It was only when the rescue workers discovered a different position in Community law that everything was upset.

The system we have doesn't work--though it's possible you're right and more horizontal direct effect isn't the answer.


I take your point here. There's actually a further problem with horizontal direct effect. British Gas, for example, couldn't really raise public policy either--it's not self-evident that a corporation of its sort can implement public policy. Nonetheless, it was treated as a public body against which direct effect could be claimed. The employees of a nationalised corporation are treated differently from the employees of a private corporation, and I think the court's reasoning justifying this is pretty shoddy. There are arguably more differences between a nationalised corporation qua employer and a central government body (the Home Office in Van Duyn, for example) than between a nationalised corporation qua employer and a private body qua employer. The present system also has arbitrary distinctions and leads to confusion--just in a different place. I'm not sure the present confusion is more principled than the confusion that giving directives horizontal direct effect would produce.

Long story short, I think there just isn't a simple answer here.

That awkward moment when you download Kuwait Airways Corporation v Iraqi Airways Co (No 6) and discover it's 240 pp long...



Just to clarify: don't have to read remotely near all of it. Only the parts dealing with conversion...

I do, on the other hand, have to read all of OBG v Allan and Revenue and Customs Commissioners v Total Network SL.

I skimmed OBG ... possibly I shouldn't have...

Crap thing about old conversion cases: they're really badly written/unclear. Thinking I might go to bed early tonight as I feel pretty crap and none of this is going in.

Aaaw, get well soon

I've just looked at my plan for my conflicts essay again. The fact that I've written, in all seriousness, "Is there a branch or agency argument here? Look into it, Batman!" is somewhat worrying and possibly an indication of my inevitable decline into insanity...

Feel better soon!

There's a 3 page article in the Edinburgh Law Review about OBG! Might help... I discovered this after reading the whole thing...

Reading the first Vandervell case for Equity/Trusts. I don't really understand this because its all over the plaace. But i want formalities to be something i'm especially prepared for because it looks bad tbh.

2nd year is a bitch, but i've actually been working hard all throughout so far.