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
Readers' comments (89)
Law Newbie | 22-Feb-2012 2:18 pm
Any degree is a good degree if you do it till yer bum hurts...Going to court for six weeks last summer brought it to life for me. Now I see the connections, the relevance, the application, the fault lines, the good advocate vs the incompetent one.
It's like most things in life you only get out of it what you put into it. Go LLBers... (2nd Yr LLB)
Yerravvinnerlarrff DAG - whats yer real motive for writing this banal insulting drivel?
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Anonymous | 22-Feb-2012 2:50 pm
I think what your column is actually saying is that there is not much law in the commercial practice of a law firm. Having practiced as a barrister and in an public sector role the meaningful understanding of how law is made, developed and interpreted, the relationship between different disciplines and their common themes that you (should) get from a law degree and in my experiance is not as evident from the GDL is vital to an advisory practice and would have quite neatly informed some of the commercial contracts that I have had to deal with in the past. I will note that one of the best lawyers I know was a GDL graduate but he also has a real appetite for the law and freely admits that he made up for gaps in his foundation through the most comprehensive and well maintained development of his skills through those law reports and journals that you suggest are meaningless.
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Anonymous | 22-Feb-2012 3:36 pm
This article doesn't reflect my experience of practice. I have and continue to have quite regular recouse to legal research in my work.
The problem with this article is it treats all areas of law as the same. Sure, if you're working in particular transactional areas where you are doing the same thing over and over again you probably don't need great research skills. But if you work in (as I do) construction disputes, you quite regularly find yourself having to research answers to complex areas of fact and law. I'm sure that applies to a lot of other contentious areas of practice as well.
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Alicia | 22-Feb-2012 9:02 pm
heaven forbid studying a subject where you have to think and question why we abide the rules we live by, why we punish people the way we do, why our legal system is structured the way it is, why you will be liable for causing others harm or losing them money and in which circumstances.
The saddest thing about a law degree is personified in this article - all it is now perceived as is a rung in the ladder to city slicker success.
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Anonymous | 22-Feb-2012 9:07 pm
A Law Degree would be even better if all the lecturers could speak and understand English. Time to investigate just what nonsense is being taught in some of the universities who should know better. why don't the inspectors sit in on some of the lectures.
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H.E miss Ntinda Mwiche1 | 22-Feb-2012 9:38 pm
“If one really wants to draft complex contractual documents then learn to write computer code, which is a very similar activity” – this is where the pointlessness of his article had me. Is he talking about programming? That drafting a complex contractual document is similar to the symbolic arrangement of the data & instructions in a computer program?
The breadth of knowledge in the LLB helps to develop skills and Lawyers have the abilities to work in different sectors
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Anonymous | 22-Feb-2012 10:41 pm
This may be true for non-contentious lawyers but as a litigation NQ at a City firm I very much disagree.
I regularly look up law reports. I have read numerous articles.
Skills gained during my law degree have been invaluable when drafting compelling legal arguments. Friends who've sat in contentious and niche departments have complained of feeling disadvantaged by having not done a law degree.
Above all else though, my law degree was incredibly interesting and stimulating. I couldn't disagree with the author more.
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Anna | 22-Feb-2012 11:32 pm
As a LLB student, and someone who took law at A Level, I feel get so annoyed the firms and chambers take on such a high percentage of non-law graduates.
How can a non law graduate know that they will enjoy or excel in a career in law if they have never studied it?
Maybe a LLB doesn't prepare you much more for a career in law than any other degree, but I think recruiters are blind if they think that the majority of non-law graduates have only applied for training contracts on the basis that they didn't really know what to do with their history degree and they saw a nice starting salary accompanied by sponsorship for postgraduate study.
I understand the need for diversity, but why such a huge percentage of non-law grads?
I have studied law for 6 years now (am now at the tail end of 4 year joint honors LLB) and I think I am in a much better position to start a legal career than a non-law grad. Even if only for the fact that I know it's definitely what I want to do with my life.
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Anna again | 22-Feb-2012 11:44 pm
It is especially unfair to put law degrees on the same level as other degree subjects when some degrees, such as maths, result in 30% of students getting first class degrees. For law (as far as I am aware) only around 6% of students get firsts. You cant really compare them.
As I said, I do a joint honors LLB and I can get grades in my philosophy modules of around 80 without trying very hard at all. I can spend months on a law essay and just scrape a first. For me at least, some subjects are easier. I have no doubt that had I done a BA in philosophy I could have got a first. Whereas add law and an LLB into the mix and despite my best efforts, I will probably still come out with a 2:1.
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Anonymous | 22-Feb-2012 11:46 pm
You could say that about any degree... but when you say do a history degree for this and a language degree for that... then you would be doing two degrees which would be a even bigger waste of time. Surely if you are going to argue this you should at least back it up with something like "law firms are more likely to consider someone with other degrees" which you have not. I'm sure most of the skills you learn and knowledge you gain is very useful and not pointless at all. What a very strange thing to say.
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