Career advice

Whats the route to becoming a lawyer? Is it a 6 year degree or a 3 year degree?

It honestly depends. The undergraduate degree is usually 3 years and after that it differs according to whether you become a solicitor or a barrister.

Reply 2

UniofLaw Student

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Original post by alikhan-123

Whats the route to becoming a lawyer? Is it a 6 year degree or a 3 year degree?

Hi @alikhan-123!

There are many different routes to becoming a lawyer. First, you will need to obtain a qualifying law degree, the most conventional route is to do an undergraduate LLB Law degree which takes three years to complete. Or, like myself, you can do an undergraduate degree in any subject and then choose to do a one-year Post Graduate Diploma in Law which gets you caught up to speed as if you had done an LLB.

Once you have a qualifying law degree (whether LLB or PGDL) then you will need to decide whether you want to become a Barrister or a solicitor. If you want to become a barrister, then you will need to complete the Bar Practice Course which is one-year long. Once you have completed this, you will be applying for Pupillage (the window for this is January every year). Once you have obtained Pupillage, you will then be a Pupil at a Chambers for a year which is paid work but as a trainee. Once this year has passed you will then be a fully practising Barrister if given tenancy.

If you want to become a solicitor there are many different routes after obtaining your qualifying law degree. Either you can attempt to get a Training Contract which will mean you sit your solicitor exams and do your qualifying work experience at a specific firm (these usually have to be applied for over a year in advance) or you can do the SQE exams either with self-study or through a course such as the SQE prep courses at ULaw or the LLM LPC (as the pass rate is only about 50% I would recommend doing a course for the prep of these exams). Once you have passed these exams you would then need to do qualifying work experience before qualifying as a solicitor.

Alternatively to the degree route, there are some firms and universities which offer an apprenticeship route to becoming a lawyer, however, these vary depending on the firm etc. so this requires more research into specific providers.

I hope this helps a bit and good luck :smile:

Sophie
Student Ambassador at the University of Law

Reply 3

17Student17

It is usually 6 years if you do a law degree (LLB) first. It would be LLB, SQE post grad course and exams - so that is together a total of 4 years studying. Then 2 years as a trainee solicitor/QWE before you qualify but you are working and paid in those last 2 years.

If you do not do an LLB first but a different degree that adds to the time as most bigger firms prefer you do a la conversion course/year before the SQE so the 6 years to qualification becomes 7.

Reply 4

UniofLaw Student

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Hi!

So the route to becoming a solicitor is that if you study your undergraduate course full-time then it is 3 years whereas if you study part-time then it is 6 years just for your undergraduate degree- after you complete your undergraduate degree you study your postgraduate degree- this is roughly from 1 year to 10 months, during this time you prepare for something called the SQE exams which are 2 exams and the stand for the Solicitors Qualifying exams, you must pass both exams and then you do your 2 years of qualified work experience with a law firm, an example of qualified work experience is paralegal work. After this you qualify as a solicitor. I hope this helps :smile:

Original post by alikhan-123

Whats the route to becoming a lawyer? Is it a 6 year degree or a 3 year degree?