The pointlessness of a law degree
What is a law degree for? What is the point of the LLB? Well, if one wants to be a law academic, it is a useful way to start.
It is also as good a degree as any other for doing a range of occupations: a pass in a law degree shows you can study, retain information, and answer exam questions.
Indeed, there are people with law degrees in all walks of life, from social workers to sex workers.
But the one thing a law degree is not particularly useful for is the practice of law. In fact, it may well be the last degree one should do if the ambition is to be a practising lawyer. There is little or nothing in a standard law degree which equips the average lawyer with the knowledge or skills of everyday legal work. Most professional lawyers have had no need to look up a law report for years. It would be odd that anyone actually paid to provide legal advice would ever read a learned journal article.
If one wants to learn how to use documentary evidence, then do a history degree. If one enjoys words then study and enjoy literature or languages.
If one really wants to draft complex contractual documents then learn to write computer code, which is a very similar activity. And if one wants to know how to construct a compelling argument then do a degree in philosophy. But do not waste three years of your life on a LLB, for there is nothing in answering the clever questions of law academics that will get you very far in in a courtroom or with a client.
A law degree can even be worse than useless. For the budding civil litigator, it provides the misleading impression that for a case to get to court and be “reported” is anything other than an anti-commercial disaster for all involved. Almost all civil litigation can and should be closed down before a judge should be bothered for his or her decisions. For the wannabe criminal lawyer, a law degree hides the fact that almost all cases will depend on the evidence and points of procedure, and not on what is said in Clarkson and Keating.
However, it is the non-contentious lawyers who suffer the most from wasting years on a LLB. For example, hardly anything a commercial solicitor does draws on their academic studies. The average contract law course for example tells one absolutely nothing about how to draft a clause or a schedule. Those weeks of studious navel-gazing about the postal acceptance rule or whether consideration means the same as an intention to create legal relations provide no assistance in putting together a sales or distribution agreement. The only thing an LLB contract course and typical contract drafting and negotiation have in common is the word “contract”.
The best reason for doing a law degree in the current economic climate is that it cuts out an expensive year of having to do the conversion General Diploma in Law. One may also impress a law firm or chambers at an earlier stage so that they will offer you funding for the vocational course. But the academic study of law is like reading sheet music without an instrument: one can more or less make it out, but as with music, law only comes alive in its performance.
David Allen Green is media correspondent of The Lawyer and writer of the Jack of Kent blog
View results 10 per page | 20 per page | 50 per page |
Readers' comments (89)
Michael | 17-Feb-2012 1:19 pm
Why does a degree have to be subject to post-hoc rationalisation and justification as to what relevance and use it bears to a career? I hope most people at the age of 18 aren't doing a degree because they feel it will benefit their career.
Obviously the increasing commercialisation of higher education has increased the chances of this, but as a general rule, 18 is a young age to be making decisions about your career (or maybe I'm just extremely immature and incapable of long-term planning...).
I studied law because I thought it would be an interesting subject, and wanted to learn more about the rules and regulations that impact upon so many different areas of life, particularly because of the broader range of subjects I studied on the LLB as opposed to the GDL.
On a side note, can anyone explain why the College of Law is able to issue LLBs to students who have done the GDL and the LPC with them? I realise that in reality no sensible person would pay any heed to an LLB from the institution but it still strikes me as a little odd.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Anonymous | 17-Feb-2012 1:20 pm
Agree with 99% of this and if only this sort of article was around when we were students. Only comments are: 1. For the bar as opposed to solicitor I would say still worth doing law degree; 2. the money point is a good one, i.e. conversion year must be v.expensive now; and 3. Amazed that all the typos and factual inaccuracies evaded the Lawyer's editors! Perhaps pedantry is one good thing the LLB Hons taught me.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Ex-lawyer | 17-Feb-2012 1:33 pm
Another contribution to an ongoing debate about the validity of university education as a whole....can I make the bold suggestion that one learns a lot more about the practice of law by ACTUALLY practising law under an engaged and interested mentor. Yes, I am suggesting an "apprenticeship", not training contract or pupillage. [Prepares for flames in comments]
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Phil J | 17-Feb-2012 1:39 pm
I too am in the final year of a law degree and, yes, certain aspects of it seem a bit far fetched to be of any practical use in the world of traditional practice (barrister or solicitor). However, H&S and HR officers, in addition to those who take a law degree as a method by which to learn to research in-depth, might well disagree.
Suggesting a law degree is pointless (or not fit for the legal profession) is missing the point entirely - the LPC / BPTC are what equip you for the practice of the law, at least in part. The LLB has, in my view, two purposes: (1) to demonstrate how to undertake detailed research, whether it be legal or otherwise and (2) to sort the wheat from the chaff at an early stage. Of the 160 (or so) students who started their law degrees at the same time as me, only 80 remain on my course... and it wouldn't surprise me if this story was repeated up and down the country.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Legal Observer | 17-Feb-2012 2:01 pm
This is purely an opinion piece and contains no evidence to back up it's contentious and spurious claims. The only thing it proves is that DAG has poor research skills.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Kim Evans | 17-Feb-2012 2:08 pm
I have no experience of degrees, law or otherwise but take a little issue with your point that most lawyers have no need to look up law reports. As a criminal lawyer I frequently update myself in relation to sentencing appeals. For example, it's important to know what judges find to be mitigating and aggravating factors in the commission of crimes. I relate that directly to my advice in the police station to clients. Read any appeal against sentence and you will find it packed with reference to case law. But maybe I'm missing your point...
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Anonymous | 17-Feb-2012 3:38 pm
It's nothing but hurdle jumping of the highest order, put in place by a protectionist profession.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Anonymous | 17-Feb-2012 3:58 pm
As a Scottish litigation solicitor who has spent the best part of the last three days reading cases in preparation for a hearing, those days being forced to read Donaghue v Stevenson or Smith v BOS were definitely worth it....
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Anonymous | 17-Feb-2012 4:37 pm
Good article. Worth noting that careers advisors and teachers have wides up to this and now positively encourage studying a non-law degree (that was the case for me 8 or so years ago). They emphasise how potential employers value expertise in other areas.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Anonymous | 17-Feb-2012 5:57 pm
I completely disagree with the majority of this article.
Firstly, this article seems to be almost entirely focused on solicitors in England, rather than those engaged as barristers, or perhaps as solicitors in Scotland who do a reasonable amount of advocacy. Most barristers that I have worked with spend a great deal of time tackling legislation and reading cases, even if just to make sure their knowledge is up-to-date. Whether it is writing an opinion, arguing in Court (especially beyond first instance) or doing research - barristers engage with the law every day. A law degree gives a good level of background knowledge and provides the requisite skills to use the law in a practical way.
Secondly, it is important to study something at University that you enjoy. I enjoyed studying law and my impression is that if you didn't enjoy it, you're not going to practise in it or you won't be very good at doing so. Therefore if you enjoy studying law - it is as useful a degree as any other.
Finally, studying law and reading widely on the subject tends to provide an enthusiasm and passion for the law that it is difficult to obtain from cramming the basics into a year long GDL. Reading high profile cases that make a huge difference to people's lives and wrestling with the philosophy behind the law is invaluable in this regard.
N.B the above is inapplicable to the study of Roman Law. Knowing about the 'animus revitendi' of a pigeon is indeed, useless.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment