During the 10 years I've been working since I finished my LPC I have noticed that people don't generally have a lot of sympathy for people in the legal profession. They seem to think our hourly rate is what we get paid (far from it I think I worked out I get paid about 1/10th of what I charge clients) and that many of us have some family trust fund. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Training to become a solicitor is one of the most soul destroying things in the world, I think. It involves an awful lot of hard work and an awful lot of money. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying this is unique to the legal profession, or that solicitors don't eventually earn good money. I'm saying if you manage to make it there you've probably bloody earned that money.
For those of you that don't know the "normal" route for qualifying as a solicitor is you do a 3 year degree, followed by a postgraduate course called LPC (or if you haven't done a law degree you do a different postgraduate course for a year then an LPC). The costs for that LPC were about £9,000 for the year when I did it. It's no doubt much more now. The cost of doing a university degree is pretty well known and varies depending on where you go (from really quite expensive to bloody hell how much).
Once you've done that you have to do a 2 year training contract to then become a qualified solicitor. There are various problems with training contracts:
1. There are never as many training contracts as there are LPC graduates meaning there will always be a number of people that don't get one.
2. Training contracts are not generally well paid. If you're lucky enough to get one that is (and trust me they are like the holy grail) then you're generally expected to give a pound of flesh in return. Many, many people are paid less than £20k (and sometimes far less than that) for their training contract. Trying to manage living costs (especially in London) and debt repayments on that salary is hard work.
3. There are firms who sadly exploit trainees looking for training contracts and will try to get them to do unpaid paralegal work for a vague promise that one day they will get a training contract.
I exchanged tweets with @fmfamilylaw the other day about the importance of a good mentor when you're training. Sadly not everyone gets this. It's a very hard profession to get into and it's a hard profession to survive in as well. Apparently 1 in 4 senior lawyers is not an alcoholic and that is a frightening statistic but I can see how it can happen. Training without good support and mentoring is seriously tough and it can take its toll on even the hardiest of people.
I was one of the people not to get a training contract. I got a 2:2 degree (by a very marginal percentage point - 1.3% off the 2:2 I recall) which meant my CV was being rejected very early on by the process many firms have to whittle down the hundreds and even thousands of applications they get. I applied for over 100 training contracts. I had a few interviews. At one firm I got down to the final 4 for 2 training contracts but still didn't get it. I had work experience and I'd worked in a firm of solicitors for a year between my degree and doing my LPC.
Being rejected by that many firms is really hard not to take to heart. For a long, long time it knocked my confidence and made me wonder if I would ever make it. I'd wanted to be a solicitor since I was 12 (!) and I had never thought about doing anything else.
After I'd finished my LPC I moved to London with a good friend and I took the first job I got offered as a family paralegal in a high street firm. I'd never wanted to do family law (I wanted to be an employment lawyer) but having a job seemed important and I felt it would at least be a start. That was 10 years ago last October. I've done nothing but family law since then.
I learnt an awful lot in that job. It was a legal aid firm and I learned how to turnover a high volume of work quickly. I learned about the differences between the law you learn in the classroom and the law you apply to people sitting in front of you with problems. I also learned that everybody has a limit and once you're up to that limit you can't do any more. The lady I worked with in the family department (we were the only fee earners) was in a similar position to where I'm at now (and believe it or not we're still friends). She had just come back off maternity leave having had her second child and was working part time. She was trying to manage being a working mother and also the fact that she suffered from depression. Therefore when faced with an enthusiastic paralegal saying "give me work", "I want to learn", "what can I do" she gave me lots of the work. Any trainee solicitor will tell you you get the dirty jobs and have to do a lot of the ground work. It's the way you learn. But after a while I started to get all the clients that complained and had to deal with angry clients who felt their work wasn't being dealt with quickly enough. When you're not very experienced dealing with lots of people who are angry with you (as you think they are) is pretty scary.
I never said no to anything which looking back seems a bit weird. Eventually I was stressed beyond belief (one day I came up with hives up my arm), exhausted and depressed and I could take no more. So I ended up on anti-depressants and I had 2 weeks off work. I went back because I wasn't going to quit but after a while I realised that I had enough experience to be able to get on in another job and that as long as I stayed there I would always be an assistant and therefore the prime target for all the crap jobs.
So then I moved firms and become the sole family lawyer at a new practice. That's pretty scary having no one to ask for help when you need it (particularly when 2 years in a firm is all the experience you've had). The principal of the firm wasn't bothered about anything. He didn't really want to still be working and the firm slowly slid into intervention (this finally happening 6 months after I left) during the time that I was there. Thankfully I got out there and did some networking and I met a great friend who also became a mentor to me and who really helped me at a time that I needed it. But whilst I was there I applied to be made a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives which I was able to do without doing any more exams because of what I'd done. Shortly after I left I applied to the Law Society for my training contract to be dispensed with which I was granted. So I became a solicitor in 2006 - 5 years after I finished my LPC without ever doing a training contract.
I then moved on to the firm that I'm at now where I started as a locum and became permanent in between having babies. It was nice to be part of a team until my colleague and then my boss left last year leaving just me and a trainee. It's still hard not having anyone to ask for help or to go to when there's a problem. Our senior partner monitors us but is not a family lawyer.
The whole process of being a lawyer can work brilliantly if you get in there and you get a great mentor but for so many people this really isn't the case. The whole process of applying for hundreds of training contracts and not getting any really knocks you. You do all the things you're supposed to like talking about your relevant experience and your enthusiasm (I have professed an interested in dental law in a vain attempt to get a training contract!). But the fact is that there are more LPC graduates than training contracts. This is not your fault!
If you can get a paralegal job then you get a foot in the door and if you impress people they may give you a training contract. But don't let unscrupulous lawyers exploit you for free labour. Yes you might have to be a paralegal for a bit before you get a training contract but they should pay you for your work (and a proper market pay) and you shouldn't have it held over your head forever.
I would also say that the job is not worth your health and your happiness. It's so hard to see when you're in the middle of it but it really, really isn't. If you do nothing but work, and you're ill and stressed then maybe it's time to move on and see what else is out there - either in the legal industry or maybe using your skills elsewhere.
Also try to remember that work is not all of your life and you might feel you're being rejected as a lawyer but that does not mean you are not a lovely, clever, sensible, amusing and wonderful person who other people love dearly. And tweet me @mummylawyer or leave me a comment because I really will try to help if I can.
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