CISI Certificate - Useful for Lawyers?

hey, did you ever get a response about this? Just that I'm in a similar position in that I have graduated, didn't want to do the GDL due to the risk and the CISI Level 3 program would help in other careers as well in case the legal route was still unsuccessful following this upcoming round of application.

No response sadly

I went ahead and started the CISI Cert. in Securities anyway, purely out of interest. I am hoping to take the Unit 1 exam in the next two weeks, and then get started on Unit 2 (the technical unit). I completely self-studied.

Unit 1 is not especially hard at all, and is solely about UK Financial Regulation. Really good background/intro to FSMA and the FCA, which I think will be useful for when I start my training contrat. The technical unit looks much harder. GULP.

Ok thank you for your response!

I'm in a slightly different situation in that from the 1st of October I'm gonna be applying for vac schemes and TCs, so do you reckon the content of the course would be interesting/sellable to law firms? After graduating I didn't want to take the GDL or a masters due to the financial risk, but I reckon this is good course to do around my applications and part-time bar job?

I'm gonna contact my uni's careers service and law firm HRs about it, but would be interesting to know the perspective of someone who's actually doing the course! Also are you doing it directly with the CISI or via an accredited provider such as BPP/Kaplan?


Thanks for your info!!

A partner at a city law firm who contributes to the syllabus of some of the papers claimed that the CISI qualifications are more for finance people/bankers than lawyers. Though in my opinion the regulation papers may help understand some of the legal side. Im not sure if it would help more or not but at least it shows your actively out there trying to enhance your securities/finance knowledge.

A partner at a city law firm who contributes to the syllabus of some of the papers claimed that the CISI qualifications are more for finance people/bankers than lawyers. Though in my opinion the regulation papers may help understand some of the legal side. Im not sure if it would help more or not but at least it shows your actively out there trying to enhance your securities/finance knowledge.

I have begun to take the CISI Level 3 Capital Markets Programme, with just the material that CISI sends you as I'm hoping I won't need any extra help from Kaplan/BPP (aside from the fact its much cheaper doing it just with CISI).

At the moment I've completed the integrity matters test and I'm going through the UK Financial Regulation module's material on my own, doesn't seem too complicated too far and as stated it is quite regulatory based. I have a choice over which other "technical" module I need to do, so the moment I was thinking of doing the securities module but theres no particular rush to choose just yet.

Thanks for the info! For aspiring trainees do you by any chance know of any other similar qualifications? After doing some research the CISI Level 3 Capital Markets seemed from what I could find the most general but also applicable to a commercial law as well as not requiring years of study unlike a more advanced course.