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 (90)
LH | 23-Feb-2012 9:26 am
I can't say I have scrolled through the 5 pages of comments so I apologise if I am about to repeat what has already been said.
As an individual who took the GDL/LPC route as opposed to an LLB, I disagree with this articles' extreme degradation of an LLB. As a final seat trainee I have had a good number of appraisals, and a common theme certainly in the earlier ones was that my underlying understanding of certain "basic" legal concepts was not perhaps as thorough or as deep as my peers who had completed an LLB. I would hasten to add that this isn't due to a lack of intelligence in my part - I hope - having a first class degree and commendations/distinctions at GDL/LPC. I am happy with the route I took, and don't think that in the long term there will be a significant difference as my exposure to legal concepts continues, but I do not think it's fair to state that LLBs are "less than useless", certainly as a trainee I can see the benefits that my colleagues are reaping from having done an LLB.
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Holly | 23-Feb-2012 1:26 pm
This is a welll worded debating piece. BUT
1. Costs issues are significant to the choice
2. The foundations laid down in a good law degree ARE very useful skills, easy to undervalue
3.As someone practising commercial lit and employment but who has had to swop specialisms within those fields it provides confidence to swop fields within the legal sector
4. I regularly read cases and articles. It is critical for what I do. I'm an advocate. My law degree was invaluable
5. I loved the study of law (decades ago) and it confirmed my decision to join the profession
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Anonymous | 23-Feb-2012 1:37 pm
I did the 1 year postgrad diploma and, apart from constitutional and jurisprudential aspects, found the whole thing deeply tedious as none of the statutory, caselaw and legal categories covered and crammed for were put into any kind of context (whether legal, political, social, economic, historical, or practical)...I'd like to think the full law degree gives more scope to do this..but probably not.
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Gary Yam | 23-Feb-2012 2:44 pm
By this rationale, it would be better to take on the sex workers with the LLBs. There would be a natural synergy when it comes to billing in £200 ph in blocks.
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Anonymous | 23-Feb-2012 2:54 pm
Obviously written by someone with below-average intelligence.
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Anonymous | 23-Feb-2012 5:14 pm
I think this gentleman overstates his case. Certainly being a good lawyer is not about whether you have a law degree or not. However, it is alarming how little many lawyers in this country know about the basic principles of law from jurisprudence to civil, criminal, tort, wills and probate etc. You may also note that UK non-law graduates are not automatically accepted in many jurisdictions for exams such as the New York and California Bar exams. In many common law countries, NZ, Australia, Nigeria a law degree is a must- and they make better, more grounded and more knowledgeable lawyers.
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Anonymous | 23-Feb-2012 9:16 pm
After reading this ridiculous article, I can tell a couple of things about the author. First, he has not read law at university. Second, he has not practiced law. The big flaw in his argument is when he outlines all the different elements and then recommends an alternative degree. What if an aspiring practitioner wants to do all of those things outlined whilst studying for a degree. In which case, the LL.B. is the only degree that can fulfil such an aspiration. Herein lies the worth of the Law Degree. It is the culmination and the diversity of skills that can be developed where the LL.B. shines.
On a final note, I'd love this prat to inform Oxford or Harvard that their law degree is pointless.
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Emma | 23-Feb-2012 10:16 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?"
From personal experience, I've found that firms who take on non-law graduates prefer those who've had legal work experience, thus demonstrating that they do in fact know that a career in law is what they wish to enter into.
Also, the expense which graduates put them through to complete the GDL and then the LP/BPTC shows dedication in my opinion - they're unlikely to invest so much time and money without really considering whether this is the career that they wish to pursue....
Most other graduate career paths don't have an associated degree, so people have no experience of those either....
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Spike | 24-Feb-2012 2:25 pm
What a load of tosh.
The knowledge I gained on my law degrees is something I have constantly used in practice - over 20 years.
It is occasionally noticeable that those who have qualified through cramming their way through a conversion course have sometimes quite astonishing gaps in their legal education. It wastes my time and my clients' money having to complete these second grade practioners' legal education.
As for never looking up a law report - how else could one understand a key judgment?
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Anonymous | 24-Feb-2012 2:27 pm
Is this a bit of a sweeping accusation? Perhaps this is true of many 'traditional' law LLBs, however, there are certainly LLBs available which do teach many of the more 'practical' elements which lawyers use on an everyday basis. The relatively new York Law School is a good example of this.
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