I am 51!

I am 51. Is it not too late to start studying for a law degree? I am contemplating going through the GDL?

I am 51. Is it not too late to start studying for a law degree? I am contemplating going through the GDL?

I am 51. Is it not too late to start studying for a law degree? I am contemplating going through the GDL?

It is not too late to start studying for a law degree. I completed my LLB a few months ago, aged 53.

The key question is what you want to do following an LLB or GDL. To practice law you will then have to take the LPC or BPTC (unless you want to go down the paralegal route). Either way you will likely be approaching mid 50's. As you cannot be discriminated against on the grounds of age it is difficult to get accurate advice on how firms would view you. Off the record advice which I received (bear in mind that you may get different advice from others) was that mid 50's was realistically too late to enter practice - mid 40's maybe, but that seemed to be where there was an imaginary cut-off point. This is on the basis that in offering a training contract and paying your LPC fees of around £12,000, a firm is making a financial investment in you. By the time I would have become fully qualified I would be hitting 56. That doesn't give a firm much time to recoup their investment. So in a vastly overcrowded and fiercely competitive legal job market, who would a firm be more likely to invest in? Me at mid 50's or a bright young 25 year old with a good 40 years of working life ahead of them. I know there's the argument about maturity and experience but the advice I received from a number of people was that it wasn't enough to tilt the balance. As I said, though, others might see things differently and offer conflicting advice.

The result was that I have taken an academic route. Maturity and experience have worked in my favour here allowing me to skip the Masters year and start a PhD in law straight from LLB. That maturity also means that I am beginning to do some part time teaching during the coming academic year with an understanding that I will be offered more as I progress through the PhD.

So while it is certainly not too late for you study law as an academic subject you might struggle to enter the profession once you have completed the vocational stages of training. But there are certainly other ways to utilize a law degree or diploma where age will not be a barrier and may well be a distinct advantage.

You might also want to post this question on the law forum of TSR. There are some practicing lawyers on there who might provide a different perspective for you.

Sorry just saw that I have repeated a lot of above post which was posted as I was writing this.