So how useless is your law degree?

It must be the time when exam results come out: exams are dumbing down, schools are failing, or, as in this article, a law degree is pointless. For a full range of reactions, the comments on this article are worth reading, but as someone who is currently in the middle of the anguish of “so what do you want to do when you leave school” I thought the article was particularly ill timed and the arguments not well articulated.

There are a couple of comments that are simply wrong. The first is:

“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.”

I struggle to think of a practising lawyer who would not look up a report of a recent case, or indeed older cases. I do it all the time (as does my team, and my colleagues).

What I think is meant is that the law degree perhaps doesn’t get you beyond a superficial understanding of the issues involved. A law degree doesn’t teach you about the reality of legal practice, such as understanding clients, the reality of running a business, and of working with other people.

The second assertion that is simply wrong is:

“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.”

The course may not teach students “how to draft”, but most courses will teach the basics of why contracts are drafted in certain ways. Most non-contentious lawyers need to have a firm grounding in “the basics” and that is what the LLB course should give them.

Behind the bluster though is a serious point. The business of law is changing fast, and there is a danger that those entering the LLB course think that the practice of law will look something like their experience in the LLB course. That is not the case. The LLB does not prepare students for the business of law. The business law is intensely commercial and highly competitive. But I would hope that most graduates, whether LLB or not, will know that. The real test comes in whether they can quickly adapt to life in the “real world” of law.

What do you think?