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Is Law the most highly regarded non - STEM subject degree?

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By highly regarded we mean in terms of prestige, yes?

Then yeah. I'd say Law is more prestigious than some STEM degrees like biological/life/human sciences, and sciences like geology.
Original post by Blancosdos
That's interesting. When I did my placement all the solicitors(and I mean all) had LAW LLB degrees.

I must admit, perhaps doing a course like History and then the GDL makes someone more employable. However a GDL is expensive outright, and like the above poster 999tigger said, not many firms are willing to fund the GDL for prospective employees.

You seem salty in regards to Law students, were you rejected from a top Law school or what?

I also may add, polytechnics like BCU or Bradford offering Law degrees certainly lowers the prestige. But nevertheless a Law degree from a top university, Oxbridge, UCL,,lSE,Warwick,Notts,KCL etc certainly retains it's prestige.

Surely a degree from a top RG in Law(like the ones I mentioned above) is highly regarded.

To answer the OP, yes Law(alongside economics) imo is highly regarded from employers purely because of it's reputation.

EDIT: Silly me forgot Imperial didn't offer Law. Haha


I wasn't rejected from a top Law school because I never applied to study Law. Even if I did apply to Law I would hardly be rejected seeing as I had pretty good A-Level grades. I just find it mildly irritating how snobby Law students are when they look down on other Humanities degrees.

GDLs are expensive as is law degrees and then doing LPCS/BPTC. Training to be a solicitor/barrister is a very costly career but it is not impossible. You don't need a law firm to help you fund your GDL. You can spend a year working to save up the money. Working will also give you more experience to put down on your CV and it gives you more skills.

If you have the ambition and drive to achieve something there is nothing stopping you from doing it.
Original post by constantine2016
I wasn't rejected from a top Law school because I never applied to study Law. Even if I did apply to Law I would hardly be rejected seeing as I had pretty good A-Level grades. I just find it mildly irritating how snobby Law students are when they look down on other Humanities degrees.

GDLs are expensive as is law degrees and then doing LPCS/BPTC. Training to be a solicitor/barrister is a very costly career but it is not impossible. You don't need a law firm to help you fund your GDL. You can spend a year working to save up the money. Working will also give you more experience to put down on your CV and it gives you more skills.

If you have the ambition and drive to achieve something there is nothing stopping you from doing it.


What do you do now?If you don't mind me asking

Okay, what is your point? You used an anecdotal instance to crap on law degrees. A Law degree from a top university is highly regarded.
Original post by LostYouth
In the words of Lord Sumption, "Law is common sense with knobs on." I couldn't agree more with that. There is, after all, a reason why you can compress this 3-year degree into a 9-month conversion course, right? Much of what you learn in a Law degree is pretty irrelevant to legal practice and certainly not relevant to practice in other professions, so I don't see why many employers would be desperate to recruit Law students for their ability to solve complex problems.


Are you implying that Law degrees are technically overkill if you want to become a solicitor or a barrister? There are a few other legal careers that Law graduates end up in including legal research; campaign groups and human rights organisations; and 'legal eagles' in businesses without qualifying as a solicitor or a barrister, so they should be factored in as well although they are more peripheral and in some cases specialised.

It is true that a high proportion of solicitors spend their working lives doing 'bread and butter' type legal work with only a small fraction (like counter-terrorism and human rights lawyers) venturing into uncharted and dark corners of law. Therefore holders of a prestigious law degree could be spending their working lives carrying out conveyancing for buyers and sellers of houses, or dealing with broken marriages, rather than anything truly interesting or exciting.

I have the book OCR Law for AS that has made rounds in the local home education community. It's an easy to follow elementary overview of the English legal system that provides its readers with a foundation to build their knowledge of law to their own requirements in almost any way they want to. Most of the kids who have read it are not studying Law to AS Level, or have any plans to do so, but have instead read it purely for the knowledge for future life in the real world. Nobody is under any illusions that the book will make them lawyer or a legal expert although it details the procedures to become a solicitor or a barrister. The process of becoming a solicitor is changing in 2020. A similar book written by the same author Jacqueline Martin is the English Legal System which is more in-depth and intended to be used by students in higher education or legal training.
Original post by Arran90
Perhaps having shelves of Weekly Law Reports in the library is the first indicator of a quality law department.

Law probably was one of the most prestigious degrees when it was only offered by high ranking universities and would not accept applicants with anything less than 3 A grades at A Level. Once every training college converted itself into a university and started offering law degrees then the overall prestige for the subject went downhill rapidly.

The unfortunate situation is if a student wants to focus on a specific area of law but the only course is offered from a less prestigious university then they face a dilemma of risking a less respected degree or studying a less interesting or relevant course at a higher ranking university.


What fascinates me is when you think this mythical golden age was?
Original post by nulli tertius
What fascinates me is when you think this mythical golden age was?


It certainly existed before the polytechnics were converted into universities in 1992 but when it ended is a grey area between the early 1990s and 2005ish when many less prestigious institutions had established their own law departments.
Original post by Arran90
It certainly existed before the polytechnics were converted into universities in 1992 but when it ended is a grey area between the early 1990s and 2005ish when many less prestigious institutions had established their own law departments.


I wil give you some hard data tonight, but you are wrong in a number of repects.

Your grade expectations are well out. In the era you are writing about AAA would have been unheard of as an offer grade with the exception of a small minority of Cambridge applicants who did not sit their entrance examination.

Most polytechnics were born offering law degrees. Indeed, the Law Society and bar would have been unable to aim for the all graduate profession in the mid 1970s without the additional supply of law graduates beyond the number produced by the universities.

Moreover the original plan did not envisage a conversion course. The original plan assumed non-law graduates would do a second undergraduate degree. It was due to the efforts of certain members of the bar and City of London Polytechnic (now London Met) with the Law Society joining in shortly afterwards, that a conversion course became availabe.

The Johnnie Come Latelies are not the ex-Polys. They are the universities created out of other colleges, mostly teacher training colleges since 1992 and those 1960s plate glass universites that were created on the basis that they would not teach law. What you are also significantly overlooking is the enormous increase in the number of places to read law offered in those pre-1992 universities that had law faculties in the 1970s and 1980s
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by nulli tertius
Your grade expectations are well out. In the era you are writing about AAA would have been unheard of as an offer grade with the exception of a small minority of Cambridge applicants who did not sit their entrance examination.


Are you sure about this? It was hard getting into a redbrick to study law without 3 A grades at A Level because of the large number of applicants even if they would accept lower grades on paper.

Most polytechnics were born offering law degrees. Indeed, the Law Society and bar would have been unable to aim for the all graduate profession in the mid 1970s without the additional supply of law graduates beyond the number produced by the universities.


I'm well aware that polytechnics offered law degrees although what you said about the Law Society and the Bar is new info to me.

The Johnnie Come Latelies are not the ex-Polys. They are the universities created out of other colleges, mostly teacher training colleges since 1992 and those 1960s plate glass universites that were created on the basis that they would not teach law. What you are also significantly overlooking is the enormous increase in the number of places to read law offered in those pre-1992 universities that had law faculties in the 1970s and 1980s


The real decline started when the Johnnie Come Latelies started offering law degrees but even many of the former polytechnics have expanded their law departments, because of consumer demand and easier A Level requirements, since their conversion to universities.
Original post by Arran90
Are you sure about this? It was hard getting into a redbrick to study law without 3 A grades at A Level because of the large number of applicants even if they would accept lower grades on paper.


I should say that in the 1980s universities were more or less full for law, year in and year out. For example in 1987 (the first year when clearing vacancies are openly published) the only universities that are in clearing for a straight three year law degree are UWIST, Dundee (which I think is their English law degree) and at least one of the London University colleges (I can't tell you which, though I suspect it was UCL as they cleared for their sandwich course). To put this in context, three London and two Scottish medical schools cleared that year and six dental schools cleared.

You are reading the present system into the past. Today, the vast majority of universities are only distinguishing on grades coupled with data about school performance. It is the only reliable information. It wasn't always like that.

The vast majority of universities and Polys interviewed the vast majority of candidates.

The number of applications was far, far lower. In 1988 Oxford had 958 applications for law.(for 234 places) and that had risen substantially during the 1980s. Last year (including law with studies in Europe not available in the 1980s ) it was 1672 for 271 offers.

Probably references were more reliable and honest, although that may be rose tinted spectacles.

But the big issue that has entirely disappeared was university vanity. In those days you ranked university choices in order and every university could see the other universities you had chosen.and universities turned you down because you listed them too low or because you listed them below a university which they considered they were a cut above.

I struggle to give asking grades because I don't have the data. For 1983 admission, Durham was seeking ABC and Kent (much more highly regarded then) was seeking BBC. In 1988 we get grades for clearing but the problem remains that so few law courses are in clearing. UWIST clears at BBB and Glasgow clears for Scots law at the same (but of course most applicants would have Highers). Bailiol by the Sea (AKA Sussex) clears for law and a language with a year abroad at BCC. Again by way of comparison, Edinburgh is clearing for medicine at ABB and KCL at BBB.


I'm well aware that polytechnics offered law degrees although what you said about the Law Society and the Bar is new info to me.


I don't have any data for grades for Poly courses but in 1988 the follow Polys cleared for law:-

Bristol
Lanchester
Leicester
Liverpool
City of London
North London
Thames
Middlesex
Newcastle
North East London
North Staffs
Plymouth
Sheffield
Wales
Wolverhampton

Then there were three colleges of HE:

Dorset
Essex
Ealing (Ealing is a bit special. Other than Birkbeck, it is the only night school)

Not formally in clearing but willing to take anyone with a pulse:

University of Buckingham (with a staggeringly expensive 2 year no vacation degrees)
Holborn Law Tutors

Notice the omissions which were clearly full:
OxPoly
Trent
Birmingham
Leeds
Manchester







The real decline started when the Johnnie Come Latelies started offering law degrees but even many of the former polytechnics have expanded their law departments, because of consumer demand and easier A Level requirements, since their conversion to universities.


The grades sought by the ex-Polys have clearly risen dramatically over the last 25 years. Whether they are worth the same is another question.


Yes, the Polys have expanded their law provision but nowhere near as much as the pre-92 universities. It is the universities before 1992 that had capped numbers of places. If the Principal of a Poly could persuade his local council to foot the bill, there was no limit to the places he could offer.
The grades on paper are the minimum grades that universities are willing to accept but are far from a guarantee that an applicant with them will be accepted even in the clearing. Law has always been an oversubscribed course so even if a former polytechnic accepts BBC in the clearing then an applicant with such grades will almost certainly have to compete for spaces with applicants who failed to get into Oxbridge with AAA or only achieved AAB and were instantly rejected.

I mentioned in #20 about the changes in technology when it comes to teaching law. Have computers made it significantly easier for students to study law compared to the years when everything was all pen and paper? I am aware that computers have revolutionised solicitors offices although many who specialise in property conveyancing are still operating like they were in the 1970s.
Original post by Arran90


I mentioned in #20 about the changes in technology when it comes to teaching law. Have computers made it significantly easier for students to study law compared to the years when everything was all pen and paper? I am aware that computers have revolutionised solicitors offices although many who specialise in property conveyancing are still operating like they were in the 1970s.


It is a very good question. Even though I have lived through the changes, I don't have a very good answer.

Case based teaching using real physical law reports has perhaps a 40 year history in England from some time in the 1950s to sometime in the 1990s. During that period easy access to a good law library was vital. Those who did not have it were at a serious disadvantage.

On the other hand, it has been known for over 900 years that commonplacing ; making your own notes from source materials is one of the best ways to acquire advanced knowledge. Electronic resources remove the need to do this. Obviously people can still make their own notes, but what most people do is acquire a corpus of original material. an electronic library, and merely owning a library doesn't make one a scholar.

The history of technology amongst practitioners rather than scholars is another story.
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by nulli tertius
It is a very good question. Even though I have lived through the changes, I don't have a very good answer.


It warrants further investigation. Remember that students, of all courses, have access to an array of technology that did not exist in the 1970s or even the 1990s. I think this is overlooked when it comes to grade inflation. Information I have is that it's much easier to study nowadays with a smartphone and 4G internet than it was in the 1990s with a desktop PC running Windows 95 and a dial-up internet connection.

One of the most powerful benefits that computers bring to law students is searching for information. What could have taken hours, or even days, with paper sources of information can now be accomplished in just seconds.

The history of technology amongst practitioners rather than scholars is another story.


Here's an old article from 1981 about how lawyers benefit from computers. It's American but most of it is applicable for Britain.

https://www.csmonitor.com/1981/0401/040134.html
Original post by Arran90
It warrants further investigation. Remember that students, of all courses, have access to an array of technology that did not exist in the 1970s or even the 1990s. I think this is overlooked when it comes to grade inflation. Information I have is that it's much easier to study nowadays with a smartphone and 4G internet than it was in the 1990s with a desktop PC running Windows 95 and a dial-up internet connection.


I think you may be right but not quite for the right reason. The saving in time is the time not spent on the bus! If studying does not involve traveling to the law library, it not only cuts out travel time but allows studying to be done more regularly and when less time is available.



One of the most powerful benefits that computers bring to law students is searching for information. What could have taken hours, or even days, with paper sources of information can now be accomplished in just seconds.


I think there are two fallacies mixed up together here; one might be called the undergraduate's fallacy; the other the trainee's fallacy. The undergraduate's fallacy is the fallacy that he or she is doing original research when in fact he or she is being taught to research within a very narrow compass of material contained in reading lists and in a narrow set of material outside that reading list. Law students are part of The Matrix. Now indeed, in many cases, students are not even searching among the raw electronic materials at all but within a body of material which the university has paid to copy to make available electronically to students.

The trainee's fallacy is the inability to research anything without editorial support. The person who manages our online subscriptions today contacted me because a trainee wanted access to an electronic resource to which we do not subscribe and I basically told her to reply in those terms. The trainee doesn't know it but what she is researching is essentially wanted for me. I don't know the answer to the problem but I know we have access to enough resources to find the answer. I suspect the trainee will come back to the person who asked her to do the research to announce failure or she might "phone a friend" and get the information from someone who has access to the resource she wants to look at. As far as the trainee is concerned, conducting research means being given the answer on a platter. I will find the answer in less than half an hour with the electronic resources to which we have access. In a decent law library, it would probably take me a couple of hours. But to the digitally native trainee, the question is unanswerable unless someone gives her the answer. This isn't an attack on her. It is a comment on how the skill of actually researching a legal question is being lost.

I used to puzzle at conversations with junior staff that went along these lines- "Please look up X. You will probably find the answer in Y", Y being an electronic resource. The following day the staff member reports back either to admit failure or to tell me the answer to W is so and so, because if you can't find the answer to the question you have been asked, it is always helpful to give the answer to a question you have not been asked! Then I say, "Did you look in Y?" and the answer comes back "no" and I used to think to myself "you have failed to find the answer, yet have not looked exactly where you have been told the answer is likely to be found". I eventually realised that we have a generation that will only use the research tools they have been taught to use. They will not teach themselves to use something even though they know the answer may be found within.


Here's an old article from 1981 about how lawyers benefit from computers. It's American but most of it is applicable for Britain.

https://www.csmonitor.com/1981/0401/040134.html


What is amazing is how truly wrong he was! I had a demonstration of the UK version of Lexis in about 1984. The Bodleian Law Library was given a free subscription to try and entice sales to future lawyers. The interface was crap in 1984 as it is crap today, but hey ho.

However computers didn't enter the legal world through access to legal information. Computers came in to run accounts and time-based costing as the latter developed in the 1970s. Law firms had switched from ledger based to card-based accounts systems decades before, but as firms grew in size the manpower necessary to run manual accounts became impossible. Firms turned to the first generations of micro-computers to run their accounts.

At a similar time you have other developments. Firms start to acquire high quality inkjet printers which are linked to word processors. That is the death-knell for hotmetal legal printing. The word processors also took the engrossing of legal documents away from the the typists who had taken over from the engrossing clerks decades before. That left the typist producing correspondence on electric typewriters that were gaining memory capabilities.

Ultimately, these devices merge. The typists get word-processors; printers replace typewriters, the dedicated word processor operator disappears, and these word-processors get access to accounts data. Remote electronic access comes to law firms to enable these integrated machines to be maintained and upgraded "down the wires". These now networked systems spread out from the accounts department and secretarial rooms because they allow fee earners to access documents and accounts data and once fee earners have them on their desks, the first case management software (essentially an automated diary and precedent bank) becomes available.

All this time, trainees are busy filing looseleaf binders in the firms' library.

Whether solicitors get online accounts first for email or to view the cricket scores will differ firm to firm but it has nothing really to do with legal resources. The big London firms and barristers' chambers will have LexisNexis and/or LawTel subscriptions but they will be stand alone toys in the library. Electronic legal research tools come first to the fee earner's desk in the form of CD-Roms. The major publications, The Law Reports, Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents, Halsbury's Laws etc are published on disc and subscribers get sent a new disc for each one every month or two. It is the CD-Rom that destroys the longstanding pricing model for legal information.

Law libraries were major capital assets to be valued and sold on any change in the partnership. What was a set of barristers' chambers other than a library and a clerk? Current year subscriptions were cheap but subscriptions had to be kept up to maintain the value of the law library. The CD-Rom destroyed this. Henceforth all the value was in the latest material. Sweet & Maxwell would sell you an up to date copy of Woodfall on Landlord and Tenant for less than the cost of a year's updating subscription. Butterworths would give you a free bound All England Reports volume if you subscribed to the weekly parts. There was no longer a need to send the weekly parts to the bookbinder. If you bought the CD-Rom you had 140 years law reports for the price of a single year's subscription, but only for as long as you subscribed.

It is only when internet access speeds start matching what is available from a disc, that the author of your article's vision comes to pass 20 or more years late. Firms move from discs to internet database subscriptions.

It is around 2003 to 2005 that firms accept that electronic products are here to stay and many start stopping their hard copy subscriptions.
(edited 6 years ago)
To me, out of non-STEM, Economics and Finance are the most prestigious


Although PPE/HSPS at Oxbridge or LSE are very prestigious as well, so is Law from these universities I guess.


But if we are talking about a regular university like Nottingham or Leeds, then Economics and Finance > Law
Original post by Reality Check
haha - the demise of experts, and their attention to detail has led to econimics.

:lol:
Original post by CitiKONIECPOLSKI



Although PPE/HSPS at Oxbridge


There is a generational aspect to this. For people of my generation there was a very small, very intelligent group of (mostly) philosophers reading PPE and then there was a very much larger group who wanted to drink/doss/do something non-academic for 3 years so they read (or changed to) PPE.
Reply 56
Avatar for Doones
Doones
21
Original post by Reality Check
'Econimics'....


I missed this gem first time around.

PRSOM. :smile:
Original post by nulli tertius
There is a generational aspect to this. For people of my generation there was a very small, very intelligent group of (mostly) philosophers reading PPE and then there was a very much larger group who wanted to drink/doss/do something non-academic for 3 years so they read (or changed to) PPE.


Very true - and getting a 2i was a bit of a disappointment. Either first or a fourth.
Original post by Doonesbury
I missed this gem first time around.

PRSOM. :smile:


Thank you! It's almost a shame he's banned now - easy pickings.
Original post by nulli tertius
The Bodleian Law Library was given a free subscription to try and entice sales to future lawyers. The interface was crap in 1984 as it is crap today, but hey ho.

I can vaguely remember reading about Lexis at the Bod in the 1980s some time ago but it's a bit before my time. I have never used Lexis myself so I'm unable to comment on the user interface.

Whether solicitors get online accounts first for email or to view the cricket scores will differ firm to firm but it has nothing really to do with legal resources. The big London firms and barristers' chambers will have LexisNexis and/or LawTel subscriptions but they will be stand alone toys in the library. Electronic legal research tools come first to the fee earner's desk in the form of CD-Roms. The major publications, The Law Reports, Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents, Halsbury's Laws etc are published on disc and subscribers get sent a new disc for each one every month or two. It is the CD-Rom that destroys the longstanding pricing model for legal information.


I mentioned CD-ROMs back in #20 and how (in the 1990s and early 2000s at least) they revolutionised law by eliminating shelves of dead tree.

CD-ROMs were also responsible for the rise in the number of universities teaching law because they no longer had to invest in paper law reports and find room to store them.

It is only when internet access speeds start matching what is available from a disc, that the author of your article's vision comes to pass 20 or more years late. Firms move from discs to internet database subscriptions.


Remember that law is traditionally text based so computer networks for law can often successfully function using lower data transfer rates than those required by kids sharing videos on social media. I suspect that the author of the article overlooked the fact that outside of the US time metered telephone calls / dial-up internet are commonplace which hindered the development of online information sources for law until broadband became commonplace.

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