Conversion from History to Law- Top law firms??

No.

Thank you for your reply. Please could you elaborate? I keep doing research yet a lot of the info is really conflicting

You shouldn't be coming across any conflicting information, to be honest. Generally speaking, there is a roughly even split of law and non-law grads who secure training contracts with the leading firms.
If you study history at a strong University, and do well at that and on the conversion course you should be at no disadvantage to those who study law.
What have you read to the contrary?

You shouldn't be coming across any conflicting information, to be honest. Generally speaking, there is a roughly even split of law and non-law grads who secure training contracts with the leading firms.
If you study history at a strong University, and do well at that and on the conversion course you should be at no disadvantage to those who study law.
What have you read to the contrary?

I have always loved history but want to pursue a career in law by doing a conversion course. Would top law firms look down on me if I did a conversion compared to a straight law degree?

Thank you for your elaboration. I have heard people say that doing a straight LLB Law degree can help with the later work you'll have to do and especially if you did history you'd have to a lot of reading around law to "catch up" which would be a disadvantage I suppose. But thank you for helping me see things more clearly

Which people have said that to you? Practising lawyers, law students, teachers?
The simple fact is that you'll use very little of what you learn on your law degree when you're in practice, especially if you end up in the larger corporate firms.
To your other question, yes LSE and UCL are strong universities but there are many others.

Hi Chalks, I have a question around a Law degree v other degree + conversion. It may sound like a silly question, but I don’t know the answer.
How can some do a Law degree for say 3 years, but others do a conversion for a year? Are we saying that the law degree is filled with stuff that will never be needed, and it can (really) be done in one year?
I’m struggling to understand why it’s 3 years v 1 year to gain the same level of understanding.
Hope that makes senses.

Hey there,
Law is an academic, not vocational, degree unlike say, dentistry. You study a wide range of legal subjects many of which will be wholly irrelevant to your life as a practising lawyer. The conversion course covers the "bare bones" of law, so that you understand the main areas before moving onto the vocational elements.
Does a Law degree give you a deeper understanding of the law? Absolutely. Does that matter when it comes to being a lawyer? No. The first ten years of my career were as a commercial litigator with SC and US firms here and overseas. Tort and contract were key to that, but I never needed to dredge up the details of what I'd learned in my Law degree - the work you do is so case-specific that you dive into the research when you need to. I certainly didn't ever need the EU law, criminology, land law, admin law etc modules that I'd studied. My wife was an environmental lawyer with SC/MC firms: she was very successful but studied history - it certainly didn't hold her back (naturally, I still say I'm the better lawyer....).
The short point is that to be a successful solicitor (note, it's a little different at the Bar), your skills aren't really about an encylopeadic knowledge of the law.

I have always loved history but want to pursue a career in law by doing a conversion course. Would top law firms look down on me if I did a conversion compared to a straight law degree?

Hey there,
Law is an academic, not vocational, degree unlike say, dentistry. You study a wide range of legal subjects many of which will be wholly irrelevant to your life as a practising lawyer. The conversion course covers the "bare bones" of law, so that you understand the main areas before moving onto the vocational elements.
Does a Law degree give you a deeper understanding of the law? Absolutely. Does that matter when it comes to being a lawyer? No. The first ten years of my career were as a commercial litigator with SC and US firms here and overseas. Tort and contract were key to that, but I never needed to dredge up the details of what I'd learned in my Law degree - the work you do is so case-specific that you dive into the research when you need to. I certainly didn't ever need the EU law, criminology, land law, admin law etc modules that I'd studied. My wife was an environmental lawyer with SC/MC firms: she was very successful but studied history - it certainly didn't hold her back (naturally, I still say I'm the better lawyer....).
The short point is that to be a successful solicitor (note, it's a little different at the Bar), your skills aren't really about an encylopeadic knowledge of the law.

Lots of excellent advice from @chalks - I'd just add that if you are hesitant about a 1-year conversion course then there are 2-year qualifying courses called 'MA Law' at several Unis that allow you to study in more depth and breadth than a 1-year course :
MA Law | Study at Bristol | University of Bristol
Law MA | 2026 | Postgraduate Sheffield

Hello,
As others have said, doing a history degree is absolutely not a barrier to pursuing a career in law! Law firms tend to recruit evenly between law and non-law students. I did a history degree, was successful in obtaining a training contract, and my trainee cohort is indeed a near-even split.
I am really glad I went this route. I loved my history degree, especially the amount of freedom I had throughout it to pick modules and do research into areas I was interested in. You develop very similar skills as you would doing a law degree – there is a lot of analysis and writing involved.
There is also an argument to be made that doing the conversion course can actually provide an advantage when sitting the Solicitors Qualifying Exams! The academic legal content is a lot fresher for me, having studied all of it last year, than for people who learned contract/tort etc in the first year of their undergraduate degree 3+ years ago. The level of detail you go into during the conversion course is more than sufficient for the purposes of passing the exams and working as a solicitor.
I hope this is helpful!
Layla
SQE LLM student

Hello again, please could you elaborate again what you mean by it being different at the Bar as I mostly would like to go down the route of practicing as a Barrister, Thank you

A barrister's key skillset is a deep understanding of their specialist area(s) of the law and related Court procedure. That doesn't mean that budding barristers should study Law at Uni, and a very large proportion do not. However, if you're considering a career which will involve being deeply immersed in a particular subject matter then you might want to study it at University to see whether you will have a passion for it. If, however, you have already come to that conclusion then by all means study a different subject at Uni and then convert - it will not hold you back, provided you excel. It's probably fair to say that Chambers place an even greater emphasis on academic excellence than law firms given the intellectual rigours of that branch of the profession.