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Police Officer to Solicitor…

I graduated from a top 30 university in 2016 with a 2:1 in Law (LLB). After graduating, I began working for the family business (manufacturing so completely irrelevant!) then in 2019 I became a police officer. I am now at a stage in my life where I’m regretting not continuing a legal career.

My question is, where do I go from here? I have an undergrad degree but no legal experience - apart from policing. I have a passion for both criminal law and employment law. I just have no idea how to move forward. My main barrier is finding. Any advice?

Reply 1

UniofLaw Student

Official Rep

Original post by gcvy

Hi @gcvy

The first thing to do is to obtain a PGDL (law conversion) if you are certain you wish to change to a legal career! This is a 9 month course and covers the legal basics that are normally obtained in a law undergrad. Put simply, it gets you to the same stage as having done a LLB undergrad in just one academic year (I know that sounds intimidating, but I did it last year and it was fine).
Once you have done your conversion, you would need to do your SQE exams. These can be sat without doing a course but due to the pass rate, I would v much recommend doing the course. Also, even alone the exams are very expensive so it is always good to do a course to save having to resit!
In terms of experience, policing will go a long way as showing law experience (particularly for criminal law) as it has lots of transferrable skills and knowledge. I would say, look into getting some experience shadowing at firms or chambers and perhaps do some public speaking such as mooting to start building your CV 🙂

I hope this helps and good luck!

Sophie