My name is Graham Virgo.
I’m a member of the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge, and I want to provide
some answers to the question as to why you should study law at university if you want
to become a practising lawyer.
If you are thinking that you might eventually wish to pursue a career as a lawyer, whether
a solicitor or a barrister, there are two different ways of getting the necessary qualifications.
One is to study any subject at University other than Law, then do a one-year Law conversion
course and finally complete the relevant vocational course to become a solicitor or a barrister.
The other route is to study Law at University, typically for three years, and then take the
relevant vocational course.
There are various myths about which route you should adopt.
One myth is that employers prefer applicants who have not studied Law at University.
That is simply not the case.
Statistics indicate that half the successful applicants to the legal profession have taken
the conversion course and the other half have studied Law at University.
Studying a subject other than Law and then taking the conversion course is a perfectly
legitimate route to become a lawyer.
But so is studying Law at University.
If you are unsure which route to take, then one factor to bear in mind is that if you
really enjoy one of the subjects you are studying at school and wish to study it at University,
then do so.
Studying that subject will not bar your route to becoming a practising lawyer and it is
likely to enable you to develop skills which will be of benefit to work as a lawyer.
But studying Law at University will also enable you to acquire knowledge and develop skills
which will be of real benefit to your future career as a lawyer and indeed many other professions
as well.
So what are the advantages of studying Law at University generally and studying Law at
Cambridge specifically?
I think there are five particular advantages.
The first is acquiring breadth and depth of knowledge.
At Cambridge most Law students study 14 papers over three years.
Seven of these are the foundation papers which must be taken if you wish to become a practising
lawyer.
These papers are studied in a conversion course, but concentrated within the space of one year.
At Cambridge the foundation papers are studied in detail throughout the three year course,
but seven other papers are studied as well.
This means that you can choose to study a wide variety of subjects, ranging from Legal
History to Philosophy, from Commercial Law to Criminology, from Family Law to International
Law, and many other subjcts as well.
Consequently, studying Law at University enables you to gain depth and breadth in your understanding
of the law, which cannot be acquired during a law conversion coruse, and also enables
you to see how different legal subjects fit together.
The second advantage of studying law at university, is that it enables you to learn to think like
a lawyer.
Being able to study law in three years gives you the chance to develop your ability to
think and write like a lawyer, to use and understand technical vocabulary, to apply
the law to resolve difficult problems and to analyse and engage with a wide variety
of legal arguments.
The advantage of the small group teaching system at Cambridge means that you get a great
deal of support from your teachers in being able to think and analyse the law.
You also get a great deal of support in developing legal writing skills.
Thinking and writing about the law are not skills which necessarily come naturally, but
which take time to develop through practice.
Being able to study Law in three years gives you the opportunity to develop those skills.
A third advantage of studying law at university is that it encourages critical engagement.
Studying Law at University means that you are studying Law as an academic subject.
It follows that you are encouraged to reflect on the law, to think critically about the
law, to consider whether the law is satisfactory, to identify the policies which underpin particular
rules and to suggest alternatives.
This often requires you to engage with other academic disciplines, such as economics, social
policy, history and philosophy.
There are also opportunities to study Law in another European country and so gain the
benefit of developing language skills and to see how law is applied and developed in
a different legal system.
Having studied a Law degree might also enable you to pursue postgraduate legal studies either
in Cambridge, at another UK university or at a university abroad, such as a US law school
like Harvard, which is generally not possib le without a Law degree.
Fourthly, studying law at university enables you to develop other legal skills.
It enables you to develop other skills and gain other experiences which will be of real
benefit to a future career as a lawyer.
For example, it is possible to participate in mooting competitions and so gain experience
of presenting a legal argument in front of a judge, or to participate in pro bono work
and provide legal support to real people facing real problems.
A fifth advantage of studying law at university concerns cost.
By studying Law at Cambridge in three years and then proceeding to obtain professional
qualification means that you can become a practising lawyer without needing to do the
conversion course, because you will already have studied the seven foundation subjects
as part of your Law course.
This means that you do not need to pay for an additional year of study.
A significant number of people who study Law at Cambridge do not become practising lawyers,
and even some who do then move on to other careers, including business, politics, the
civil service, banking, journalism, in international organisations or the voluntary sector and
academia.
Also, if you are interested in studying a subject other than Law at Cambridge, you can
often change to Law at the end of your first or second year and study Law at Cambridge
for two years, during which you study 10 papers, seven of which are the foundation subjects.
But most people who study Law at Cambridge take the three year course and then proceed
to become a practising lawyer.
They find that the knowledge and skills they have acquired during their University legal
studies are of real benefit to their future career.
Genuinely, studying law at Cambridge enables you to think like a lawyer, and there’s
a lot more information about studying law at Cambridge on the Faculty of Law website.