International student for Law. Job/visa opportunities?

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They passed a bill about international students but it's not yet enforced. Don't worry.
Use the website https://www.gov.uk/tier-4-general-visa to find out more.

This also might be useful -> http://www.ukcisa.org.uk/International-Students/The-next-stage/Working-after-your-studies/

The website talks about a visa for international students for studying.
I am not bothered about a student visa at all. I want to know about getting a visa after completing my studies there.
Thanks for your response

Apologies. I didn't see the second link before.
That does look good. However, it also says in the bottom that some of these schemes require the student to return to his homeland and apply for the visa from there. Do you have any idea if that is true for Tier 2 visa?

They only said that because they don't want to guarantee immediate success from someone switching from Tier 4 to Tier 2. Before the Tier 4 expires there should be a window where you will apply for Tier 2. Just allow extra time in applying for your Tier 2. Based on my judgment, they'll only ask the student to return to his homeland when the Tier 4 expires and then apply Tier 2 from there. I would advice looking/researching about law firms who are licensed for Tier 2 sponsorship.

1) There are only a number of firms who have the certificate of sponsorship to award tier 2 visas. They tend to be the more international firms paying higher salaries.

2) Even those firms that do have the ability to award visas, might choose to reserve theirs for more senior lawyers/staff rather than trainees.

It is possible to be employed and get a firm to support you with a tier 2 visa but it is an incredibly competitive market. Firms have to prove that they couldn't have recruited from within the EU first. Many firms do not have the ability to prove this, even if they do have the certificate of sponsorship. However, if a firm has got these processes in place, it is relatively easy.

Candidates do sometimes have to return home to obtain their visa. This particularly happens with candidates who finish their course (LPC post graduation) in the May/June but their training contract doesn't start until the following February/March. This isn't an issue for the firms, the main issue is the cost to the candidate of having to fly home and then fly back though.

The main challenge for candidates is securing a training contract in the first place, rather than the visa. They will have limited opportunities available to them, as they are limited by the firms that can sponsor Tier 2s. They then have to compete not only with domestic and EU students for those roles, but also all the international students also applying for those TCs. It is a competitive job market and therefore many international students find themselves having to go home once their tier 4 is up as they have failed to secure tier 2 sponsored work.

Not as it stands.... for the time being it is the following:

You do your LLB at undergraduate level.

Then you do the Legal Practice Course. This is a 6-9 month course that you have to complete before starting a training contract. You would get another tier 4 visa to cover you during this period of time.

At the moment there isn't a bar exam. This might change, as it is currently being reviewed as to whether something like the New York Bar would replace the LPC. This could happen by 2018-2020 (so by the time you would be looking to start a TC - it is something to keep an eye on anyway).

There isn't a website that states the law firms that do sponsor trainees or not. Even if there was a list, by the time you come round to apply to process could have changed completely anyway and getting a visa could be a lot tougher (or a lot easier).

If you get a training contract, you are employed. To be employed you have to have the visa. Without a visa you can't be employed.

I've recruited people from Leicester and Lancaster, although in much smaller numbers than other unis. It is not to say they are not good unis - both are great universities, they just don't have as strong links with the legal professions compared to other universities. Therefore recruiters see a lot less applications from them (particularly Lancaster) than from other unis.

Lancaster has a great careers service and reasonable law society (got much better in the past few years) but their law faculty isn't great at connecting with the legal recruiters. They struggle with campus visits a little more as Lancaster is quite far away from London.

Leicester has a fantastic careers service (although not geared up as much to law students) and their law society is much better at linking with law firms, although they probably benefit from a closer location to most cities than Lancaster.

Any international student attending those universities COULD get a training contract. There is nothing to suggest why they wouldn't based on those institutions.

However, the university you attend is not going to be the key deciding factor and no one can tell you what your chances are let alone whether they will be 75% or above. Anyone who attempts to has no idea of what they are talking about, and even if they did they won't know what the market will look like in 3-4 years time when you apply nor what the processes around tier 2 visas will be. We will be coming up to another general election by that time so god knows what will be going on around then in terms of immigration policy.

Yes that's what I thought too. I thought I could get a rough idea from you, but as you say, it is very difficult to judge the situation quite some time away.

However, I would stress that anyone's chances are unlikely to be 75% or above. Even the brightest candidate with a fantastic CV from Oxbridge probably hasn't got that "chance". You are entering a competitive job market where standards are exceptionally high. I rejected more Oxford candidates for one firm than I did for any other university (although I also recruited more Oxford candidates than from any other uni too...).

Firms have to have a bias towards EU students - its the way the legislation around immigration is based. As a recruiter I have to prove that I can't recruit within the EU first and therefore I am allowed to recruit international students from outside of the EU.

Many firms like to recruit international students though. Some see it as vital for their business, especially for those who background is in emerging markets like India. However, they tend to recruit directly from Indian Law Schools. For instance Linklaters have an Indian internship programme for which they then recruit trainees for, but all the recruitment for this is done in India rather than the UK.

Remember a UK LLB does not limit you to opportunities within the UK. I suspect it would help you considerably if you were to return to India and work there instead.

I don't know enough about other recruitment processes to comment on other countries with any real expertise. The issue with law though is it is very jurisdictional and therefore the knowledge you gain in one law degree does not necessarily allow you to build up the necessary knowledge required in another jurisdiction.

I'd still estimate it as less than 75% if you are going purely on the basis on high grades from one university.

As I said earlier, the profession has exceptionally high standards. Academics are just a small part of an application form for a training contract. You have to show a significant amount of other evidence which is probably more important than the academics. There are plenty of exceptionally bright people at top universities who don't have the skill set nor genuine motivation for the career but think they do. There's plenty of people outside of the top universities who DO have that skill set and motivation, and they are going to be recruited before someone with only an impressive academic background.

This is starting to get overly complicated in terms of what you are asking and how you are interpreting it.

Put simply, for training contracts law firms have to prove they have advertised their roles extensively and thoroughly and provide evidence of the volume of applications they have received. They have to justify why they need to apply for a tier 2 visa for someone but it's easy to provide that evidence if you have had 2,000+ applications and you can justify the non-EU candidate is of a higher standard than the EU candidates.

It's not about qualifications and ultimately at that level the qualifications you need are a degree and GDL/LPC. No other qualifications are required for the job. So you are competing against 10,000s of potential applicants for approximately 5,500-6000 training contracts (roughly how many TCs are available each year across all firms).

International students will find it much tougher as they can probably only apply to less than a 1000 of those 5000 TC, as the vast majority of firms won't be able to get a tier 2 visa or choose not to for their trainees.

It doesn't mean it's impossible. As a recruiter approximately 10% of my trainee intake each year required a tier 2 visa (and that's across multiple firms). We applied for them and got them. There was never an issue with applying for them, but we always had the ability to say we had a huge amount of applications and the candidate has excelled during the recruitment process.

BUT as I said earlier who knows what it will be like in another 3-4 years time when you are looking to apply. Immigration rules could easily change and depending on what happens with the EU negotiations, there is a small risk that the rights of EU workers could dramatically change, which would have an even bigger impact on how people are recruited as trainees

Put simply, for training contracts law firms have to prove they have advertised their roles extensively and thoroughly and provide evidence of the volume of applications they have received.

t's easy to provide that evidence if you have had 2,000+ applications and you can justify the non-EU candidate is of a higher standard than the EU candidates.

We applied for them and got them. There was never an issue with applying for them, but we always had the ability to say we had a huge amount of applications and the candidate has excelled during the recruitment process.
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pinkisthefloyd - where you able to make a decision on this. My daughter is in same situation like yours.

That is quite feasible. They probably didn't have the right processes in place from the start to obtain the tier 2 visa and so had to retrospectively "re-advertise" the vacancy to ensure they were compliant.

Its a real pain in the backside to do it that way though and a lot of extra work. Having it all in place from the very beginning is a lot easier!

Sorry for the long response - I'm by no means a legal expert on this, can only see it from how it has worked for me in the past....

It depends on the quality of the applications received. If you get 1000s of applicants that are equal to the applicant you are trying to hire, then it would be more difficult. But it really depends how thorough your recruitment processes are - if you don't record basic details (like scores or reasons for rejecting) it can be more difficult. The main way you prove your ability to obtain a tier 2 though is to show you have advertised the role throughly. Most firms have to get letters from at least 3 universities to confirm campus activity, plus show their website + other job board advertising to show the role has been widely marketed.

The only difference between those who have a gap in their tier 4 to tier 2 is that they are part of a national quota for tier 2s. Those who move directly from tier 4 to tier 2 are not part of the quota. The process is identical though, the only other difference is that the person with a gap would have to return home to obtain their tier 2.

As far as I am aware the quota was only hit this time last year and they thought that was due to the high amounts of graduate programmes starting in September (http://www.workpermit.com/news/2015-06-20/uk-tier-2-visa-limit-reached-for-first-time). However even then, some firms applied again the following month when the new quota was available and still managed to get their visas in time. The monthly quota rolls over if it isn't used which has meant 99% of the time it's been an easy process to obtain a tier 2 (as long as you meet the basic criteria).

Based on this, a firm's theory that they cannot get a visa for someone if they are not directly transferring from another visa type is questionable. Maybe they just saw it as too risky somehow...

Like most organisations, an employment contract would state that any offer is subject to you obtaining the right to work in the UK. I guess firms might be concerned about losing a recruit weeks before a start date (firms with small intakes will be more worried about that), or the potential loss of money of training someone (LPC fees etc) who can't then start. They might not also want to additional costs of the candidate flying back to their home country (a lot of firms don't cover those costs anyway though and make it clear the candidate will have to cover it).

So to me any of those perceived risks are fairly minimal, especially where the quota has only been reached once in roughly 5 years.

But even if it did happen, my thought would be that as a firm you'd just reapply for the tier 2 and at worse move the person to the next trainee intake. That's what I have done before when there have been delays in the work permit process. The only way you wouldn't be able to do that is if you didn't meet the criteria for the work permit, but then that would be the same case if you were moving directly from a tier 4.

So I suspect the whole truth is not being explained by the firm in question.

They either haven't got a certificate of sponsorship in place (feasible but then they couldn't recruit any other non-EU person into any kind of role unless it was someone who already worked at the firm).

Or it is possible that their selection processes/recording of them are not robust enough to obtain the visa.

Or that the role does not meet the tier 2 criteria, which is usually only down to pay.

Or they are concerned about the additional risk + potential costs of someone being on the quota system.

But to say it is because of the tier 2 process because of an "exemption" is not quite accurate in my eyes. With the exception of the final reason (which to me is pretty weak anyway), the same would apply if you were transferring directly from a tier 4 to a tier 2. Unless things have changed recently that I am not aware of!


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You generally have a set of criteria, of which academics tend to be one. Other aspects could be other evidence like work experience, written style or understanding of the career/firm. Some firms may also include things like languages, although these tend to be for specific programmes where the training contract is split over multiple jurisdictions. Some firms will just state at an application stage whether the individual candidate meets their required standard or not, and let further assessments provide that evidence though.

So it isn't just the information in the applications stage - you'd also have to show a strong performance in any subsequent assessments (psychometric testing, exercises, interviews etc).