Law school/GDL in UK a good idea?

In the US, there are not a lot of medium sized firms with practices focusing on immigration and family law for queer families. There may not be any. Yeah. That's why it's my fantasy job and not "what I totally plan to do". I'd be happy if I could make a respectable salary and work less than 70 hours a week doing fairly basic employment cases or representing unions. I do plan to contact the firms who do the queer family/immigration stuff I'm most interested in in first though (they are not dedicated firms but they are the go-to places). Don't mean to thread sit. This is all really helpful.

I think what some people are reacting to is this idea that you think law is intellectually interesting -- and that rarely, if ever, survives practicing for any length of time. To the extent your question is purely about finances and job prospects, that doesn't apply, but to the extent your question is more broadly about whether this is a good idea, I think it's an important factor to consider. Try to keep an open mind about the experience people want to share.

http://ask.metafilter.com/217359/Law-schoolGDL-in-UK-a-good-idea#3138314: I get that. I misunderstood your interest, and I apologize, but my comment still holds from a slightly different perspective. This is a difficult answer to give from the side of someone who has practiced, but I try. My point is that it doesn't matter what field you are interested in...if you go to law school, you will be doing legal work. With the exception of a few specialized fields (mostly in the hard IP), you should know that the workaday world of law isn't really (or probably won't really be) very close to your area of interest. We work in the technical, not really in the practical. That said, if your're interested in the actual contract law, then that's a different ball game. If your interest lies with the law and not the subject matter, then you perhaps should consider law school (although not in the U.S.). As an aside, if you are specifically not interested in law as advocacy, then you should not go to law school, full stop. As an attorney or solicitor, you are an advocate. That's what we are. Also, if you don't want to spend all day with pedantic asses like me who point out things like "attorney are advocates", even though I had a pretty strong inclination that you were using the word "advocacy" in a specialized way with a slightly different meaning, then law also might not be for you! ;) Two more things, and these are guaranteed to be useful. 1) Do NOT go to law school in the U.S. There are no jobs, and there are too many qualified people. Law school in the U.S. is currently too expensive. If anyone tells you otherwise, for any reason, they are either lying, selling you something, justifying their own decision, or are misinformed. 2) Asking this question on places like MeFi is a really good idea. I don't know how transparent the job placement information is in the UK compared to the U.S., but before you make your decision you would probably be well-advised to read through some sites like Above the Law and Roll on Friday. ATL, especially, is tabloid and all that, but they have actually been on the front-line of the legal market crisis, and they offer some insights into overseas markets. ROF is good, and focused more on the UK. No matter which way you decide, best of luck to you!

I wanted to be a solicitor as a teenager before the class chip on my shoulder stopped me aspiring to much beyond admin assistant and then I moved to the US where I both found something I loved doing and law school became out of reach financially and logistically. I always thought about it though, and I loved the ways my union job had me interpreting contracts and labor law. I find thinking about things in that way easy and fun. I even enjoyed (in a sick way) navigating the in's and out's of immigration law twice over. I want a real qualification, and I don't want to job hop around the shrinking non-profit sector, which is what my non-union options look like unless I get a post-grad qualification of some kind. You sound a lot like a friend of mine (also from UK but now in Aust), teenage dreams, class chip and all. She left high school and became a forest feral and single mum and spent her days saving trees. Part of that involved dissecting legislation and developing cases to run through the environmental court. She really enjoyed that and so when the kid was school age she moved to town and got into a paralegal undergrad degree as a mature aged student. She did so well that five years later she graduated with a para and law degree with honours. She is now head solicitor for a successful environmental law firm. If you have a passion, which it sounds like you do, and the will to be a lawyer, I say go for it. Those things will get you through and help you rise to the top.

Yeah, on re-reading, just to re-emphasize because this is frustrating. When people ask me whether they should attend law school because, like you, they have a particular field of interest in which they want to "do good", Is not at all what I am asking.

My sense is that with a humanities degree and ten years of trade union experience that's essentially planning/negotiating/management/ interpreting law and contacts I need a trade school type qualification to have a path rather than just hoping someone in the non-profit sector will value what I've done in the past. To me, this is a very odd and narrow way to plan a career track. Skills that include "planning/negotiating/management/ interpreting" are very transferable. A grad degree can then qualify you to take those skills into a different job, in the public, non-profit or private sector.

Thanks 3200, it was still interesting, and the insight on immigration as the firm level was useful. I am specifically not trying to do law as advocacy though. I am interested in queer family law (and I am interested in a lot of other stuff too, I think people are getting way too stuck on this) because it's evolving in fascinating ways and affects a rapidly growing number of people. I'm talking about stuff like co-parenting contracts and disputes with known sperm donors, not the next supreme court challenge!

I am a U.S. attorney, but practiced with a very large, international firm. (Not technically a Magic Circle firm, but a U.S. based white shoe firm...one of the five biggest.) Although I do not know the economics of becoming a solicitor or barrister in the UK, I can say with some certainty that law school anywhere in the Commonwealth or the United States is generally a bad idea right now, unless you have a job lined up. Like lined up in stone. There are, actually, quite a great many mid-sized firms in the U.S. with both employment and immigration practices. I don't know of any with "queer family" practice niches, though, and this is because both employment and immigration practices at the firm level--whether large or mid-sized firms--have businesses as clients, and rarely do the type of advocacy that I think you are interested in. Immigration, in particular, is a strange beast--the big firms don't do much (except pro bono), but some mid-sized firms with industry-specific clients do immigration work. (Think "farm labor" and "meat packing".) I imagine the same holds true in the UK to a lesser extent, and I doubt that's the kind of immigration work you'd like to focus on, though I could be wrong. When people ask me whether they should attend law school because, like you, they have a particular field of interest in which they want to "do good", I advise strongly against it. Although legal training is great, there is no reason why you cannot advocate for your chosen constituency in other ways that you might find even more fulfilling. The fact of legal work is this: Whether you are drafting docs for a $5 billion dollar securitization (which doesn't happen anymore!) or working to get an immigrant a green card, you are doing the same type of work...legal work. Laywerin' is a trade, and a technical trade, at that. Many people go into law thinking that it will empower them to do greater good, only to find out that the training, the stigma, and often the debt, leave them in a position that actually lessens the amount of good advocacy they can do. Well, that was a long and almost specifically not requested response. Sorry.

Unless you already have a training program and/or job lined up this is a bad idea. The legal market is as bleak in the UK as in the US. Your interest area is marginal at best. And the conversion course is a piece of crap (you cannot cover the full content of a law degree in that timeframe). However getting in is not so hard ... the most important question is whether your payment clears.