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The pointlessness of a law degree

I don't agree. I have found my LLB quite useful in practice. I feel that my legal knowledge is ahead of other junior associates and trainees who converted. As a trainee it took me a lot less time to get my head around the company law involved with corporate and finance practice and my work in litigation was rated extremely well. I definitely give some credit to my LLB. Doing an LLB gives you legal reasoning ability that other degrees don't. You learn to draw fine distinctions, you learn about how cases are decided and you learn about how and why things go wrong. You simply don't and can't get this on a course as short as the GDL. It does depend what field you are doing. If you are doing residential conveyancing or asset finance, an LLB isn't very useful. If you want to become a litigator then an LLB is extremely useful, because you need a good knowledge of complicated legal concepts, you need legal reasoning skills and you need the "lawyer's instinct" for how cases get decided in this jurisdiction. You also have a much better understanding of how the various parts of law fit together; someone who did the GDL is not going to understand the importance and operation of Agency law and Partnership law when drafting a Partnership Agreement because they only studied contract, without experience this will lead to more mistakes. There is no reason why GDLers can't develop this knowledge, but LLB students are definitely ahead both in their knowledge of different areas of law and legal reasoning skills. Its worth noting that LLBs are more recognised in other jurisdictions. The UK is one of the only jurisdictions that allows people to convert, most places in Europe/US/Canada/Asia require law degrees to train in that country.

20-Feb-2012

10:44 pm