This week students at London Law School were invited to provide feedback on their experiences on the LPC. Despite the fact that the majority of my fellow students compare the LPC to the equally-pleasant experience of having one's eyelashes plucked off one at a time with sharp, heated tweezers, while a 2-tonne weight is balanced on their right foot, I have actually enjoyed it. A lot. I can't wait to be a lawyer.
But how do I know if I'll be any good? How does anyone?
One spends hours labouring over application forms, telling firms about excellent communication skills, team-work, attention for detail, commercial awareness... you get the idea. Then they invite you for interview and it is more of the same, with well-thought out illustrative examples from a previous life. However, that is just practice, learning what questions could come up and what answers make firms bend over backwards to offer you a position. So how is one supposed to know whether one will be a great lawyer - an Atticus Finch or Denny Crane? Or whether one will become a statistic, one of the 1.5 people in professional conduct class who apparently WILL be struck off.
For one, the LPC is very artificial in many ways, consider Practical Legal Research or Interviewing and Advising. Will any of the skills* learned actually translate themselves to being useful in practice? Short of "that guy paying your fees with a suitcase full of cash covered in white powder is not suffering from extensive dandruff, he is money-laundering" - how much of the LPC will actually be relevant to real life law? Will budding lawyers not just learn many things by Mr Supervisor barking at them how to do things when after an all-nighter in the office it turns out they got the whole task completely backwards?
It is a slight fear of mine that I will not be a good lawyer. I love it, I can't wait to do it, but what if it turns out I am genuinely completely abysmal at it? I am doing well on the LPC, I have good academics, I have work experience... but what if I'm simply missing the lawyer-gene which no amount of hard work can substitute? Then what?
*Of course the same applies much less to actual law, since obviously one will need to understand the ins and outs of share issue and conveyancing to be able to get started as a lawyer... but still?
3 comments:
There are thousands of lawyers working in London. There are many, many more across the world. It's not like an extreme specialism where only some people can do it. It's a fairly common thing to do with one's life. It does not require its own gene. You are, as I write, being shaped by the cookie-cutters, and you'll end up just about fine, along with the 2500+ others who will finish the LPC in London alone this year.
Since you're going into corporate law, for the first few years, it basically just matters if you can do what you're told, carefully and accurately, even if it's just page-turning, and manage well under pressure and without as much sleep as you'd like. You need to be able to say that you don't mind cancelling your plans. I speak from experience. No special skills required, honest. You'll be fine!
Thank you for your kind encouragement Anomymous.
Perhaps the most relevant thing to pick up on here is that I don't want to be 'just fine'. I want to be fantastic! :)
"Then What?"
Well - then you go and teach at Law School, surely?
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