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corporate law

I was just wondering why law firms don't favour law students over non-law students with a gdl? Surely the knowledge, work experience and commitment to the subject should work in favour for them? This seems to be the case even in mc law firms, and I was just wondering how? Is it that a lot of what you learn isn't actually useful or??

Reply 1

BankaiGintoki

Original post

by Whocaresyyyy

They are equal.
Option 1: Someone doing a 3 year law degree.
Option 2: Some did a now-law degree (typically 3 years), with a 1 year graduate diploma in law.

Reply 2

Whocaresyyyy

Original post

by BankaiGintoki

They are equal.
Option 1: Someone doing a 3 year law degree.
Option 2: Some did a now-law degree (typically 3 years), with a 1 year graduate diploma in law.

huh? how are they equal?

Reply 3

BankaiGintoki

Original post

by Whocaresyyyy

huh? how are they equal?

A law degree and a Graduate diploma in law are both accredited by Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and the Bar Standards Board (BSB). Being accredited by the SRA and BSB enables the next step in progressing your law related career.

Reply 4

Crazy Jamie

Original post

by Whocaresyyyy

A law degree is the academic study of the law. Whilst it’s by no means useless, it’s very much different to practising as a lawyer. But even if it wasn’t, why would a Magic Circle firm value the fact that you’ve spent three years studying a larger number of modules, most of which are in different areas of law to the ones that you’ll be practising in with that firm?

Commitment to the law is grossly overrated by candidates, both in terms of how important it is and how you actually show it. There is no reason to think that someone who does a three year law degree is more committed than someone who does another subject and then does the GDL. None at all.

Work experience is important, but studying the law is, by definition, not work experience. I’m not sure why you’d expect firms to value a law degree on the assumption that a candidate will have more work experience when they can just… look at the work experience the candidate has.

Reply 5

Whocaresyyyy

Original post

by Crazy Jamie

A law degree is the academic study of the law. Whilst it’s by no means useless, it’s very much different to practising as a lawyer. But even if it wasn’t, why would a Magic Circle firm value the fact that you’ve spent three years studying a larger number of modules, most of which are in different areas of law to the ones that you’ll be practising in with that firm?
Commitment to the law is grossly overrated by candidates, both in terms of how important it is and how you actually show it. There is no reason to think that someone who does a three year law degree is more committed than someone who does another subject and then does the GDL. None at all.
Work experience is important, but studying the law is, by definition, not work experience. I’m not sure why you’d expect firms to value a law degree on the assumption that a candidate will have more work experience when they can just… look at the work experience the candidate has.

this is so helpful- thank you so much. With work experience, I meant universities offer law students to do internships, work with the legal clinic, attend summer programmes etc. so they get more exposure than those doing a different degree, so I figured that would be valuable, no?

(edited 9 months ago)

Reply 6

Stiffy Byng

Those in charge of recruiting for large law firms make hiring decisions which are calculated to enhance the profitability of the firm. If recruiters thought that candidates with law degrees are markedly more useful to the firm than those with non-law degrees and GDLs, this would be reflected in recruitment patterns.

There is much to be said for studying something other than the law before embarking on a legal career. That is the standard pathway in the USA. In the UK, each pathway is equally valid.

Law graduates don't have dibs on training contracts and pupillages. All candidates compete on equal terms. Non-law graduates can pick up work experience as they take the GDL and the professional exams.

Reply 7

Stiffy Byng

PS: As to commitment, someone who opts for a GDL commits to an additional year of study, an additional year of costs (which may or may not be funded), and an additional year of being broke (absent personal or family wealth). That person also takes on learning and passing exams on the seven core subjects in one academic year.

Law graduates and non-law graduates may be equally serious about commitment to becoming a lawyer.

There are some (but not many) legal recruiters who think that only those who can show that they have loved the law since they were eighteen can make the grade. There was a Silk in charge of pupillage at a well known chambers, a former Cambridge Law Don, who refused to consider anyone who did not have an Oxbridge first in law. He became a pernickety High Court Judge, and is now retired. His chambers have a different pupillage policy these days.

Reply 8

AMac86

In addition to the comments from Jamie & Stiffy above, corporate law is probably the specialism furthest away from the academic study of the law (or even frankly much to do with the law at all sometimes!), so a candidate's time spent studying legal academics isn't particularly important.

A junior corporate or finance lawyer in an MC or similar firm is mostly project managing and grinding out volumes of transaction documents with small tweaks to party names and numbers. When points of negotiation come up these are overwhelmingly commercial "market/industry" practice points, not legal.

Reply 9

Stiffy Byng

I have the impression that many of the people on TSR who for some reason wish to work in large law firms use "corporate" law to refer to commercial law in general. Many may be unfamiliar with what a corporate department does. As you observe, it involves a lot of paper pushing and not much law. When I was a litigation partner in a law firm, in a small outpost office overseas, whenever one of the corporate people, had a legal problem they would come and ask one of the litigators, because we were the only ones in the office who knew any law.

Reply 10

chalks

I think many lawyers, and firms, regularly use the term "Corporate" to also include commercial transactional work rather than only M&A, JVs, structuring and restructuring etc. It's common, for example, for tech transactional partners to sit within a firm's Corporate group.

But I fully agree that very many of the practice areas within City firms involve very little black letter law, the exceptions being areas such as Tax and Litigation. Even major complex litigation may not involve points of contention on the law, but be focused on disputes on the facts.

That doesn't mean that the lawyers at those firms aren't very good at what they do: managing a multi-jurisdictional complex merger, or vast project financing, with multiple parties is a huge undertaking but they're rarely reaching for their copy of Chitty. There's an apocryphal story of a lawyer giving a eulogy at a highly-regarded partner's funeral "Keith was the best lawyer I ever met, it's just a shame that he could have written all the law he ever knew on the back of a postage stamp with a black marker pen".

Reply 11

Crazy Jamie

Original post

by Whocaresyyyy

Those things that you mention may be helpful, but then any student who does them should be noting them separately on an application form. They are not obligatory, the actual opportunities very from university to university, and some opportunities are open to non law students too, so assuming a student does them based on them taking a law degree makes little sense.