Law students doing BVC / LPC with no TC or pupillage

Back in the day this was common and many students didn't appear too stressed mainly because they were no uni fees / £1000 per year. Also, it wasn't that expensive to find somewhere to rent.

I don't know how / why students who don't have a TC or BVC lined up would want to take the risk, inparticular those with 2:2 from the newer universities. £50-60k debt from uni, incurring high interest and taking on another £15k of debt plus living costs only pays off if you land a decent job which often isn't the case. Are students told what the wage is likely to be for those not working in the city / commerial law firms?   

My friends who did it back in the late 90's were pretty stressed as they were taking on personal debt to fund the LPC and at least one wanted to work in high street law and knew that his first year's pay would be less than his loans for the LPC.

Even in the 90's I looked at classmates with 2:2's doing the LPC at new law schools nobody had heard of and wondered why they were bothering and not just going straight to some other graduate job.

They'll end up with something. As I continually point out on here, the number of LPC grads and TCs is almost exactly the same each year.

If you look at these high-street joke shops, most of their practitioners have a 4th in Plasticine Studies from Melton Mowbray Poly.

Dux last time I checked the statistics if you include people from previous years paralegaling and still looking for a TC there are lot more people than there are jobs.

If you apply to the smaller firms you find out what they pay.  I remember a major provincial firm being surprised when I turned them down because a firm 30 miles away in London was offering 75% more.

Good news. They won't have to do the LPC soon and UoL/BPP's cosy cartel will be broken up.

Now all we need to do is impose a 50% tax on private school fees, require parents meeting a means threshold whose child doesn't go to their closest school to pay £2500 a year in top up fees, and then use the cash to make sure disadvantaged children are given the means to compete with grammar crammers etc, and impose blind selection on universities, and we can be sure it's a level playing field for everyone entering the legal or any other profession. 

It is fckng criminal that these (all PE owned iirc) institutions are allowed to take dollar from people with no TC or any hope of getting one.  They also happily take cash from people who have no realistic prospect of being able to secure a work visa for a TC to secure a "qualification" that will be of no practical use to them wherever they end up

They end up at crap criminal and immigration law firms , above a launderette on stretham high road.

@tangent a few chambers now give income guarantees or loans against income in the early years. The decent civil and commercial sets you will earn plenty provided you work hard enough and aren’t lazy . Back in the day when I did the BVC one of my peers who became close friends with me billed 90k in his  first year at Old Square chambers . He said it was bloody hard work though. Court most days and paperwork and conferences in the evening/ weekend

It's laughable the panic inside BPP at the moment as they reach their "black cab" moment.

"Hi, Clifford Chance? You know how you had to send graduates to us, so we made a feeble attempt at pretending the collection of high street lawyers that make up our staff could teach them about your work types? Well there's been a change, but we'd still like you to send them to us and pay us, ooh, I don't know, £6k a year for us to teach them about the subjects your lawyers and PSLs are expert in that you already have lots of materials for. Hello!?"

 

 

require parents meeting a means threshold whose child doesn't go to their closest school to pay £2500 a year in top up fees

Eh?  Is this some kind of super london-centric view?

Why are you trying to reward parents for buying their way into catchment areas?  We need to randomise school places with a wider catchment area not make the whole catchment area problem even worse.

impose blind selection on universities

I'm pretty sure this would just penalise state school pupils TBH.  I don't think I would have got into the university I did based on blind selection.  Now maybe in a decade or so if you've completely reformed the schools system it starts to make sense - but for now your average / well performing private / grammar school students will look better on paper than your average / well performing state school students.

I finished the LPC about £11k in debt and earned £19k as a trainee. It was sh1t but being careful with money still enabled me to buy my first house. Just rent a very cheap room and forego avocado toast and lattes. It's really not that hard.

I speak to a lot of people who have done or are doing the LPC with very low hopes of a TC etc and the reasons I see are:

 

1. Lack of transparency about how hard it is - why would law schools want to be honest about this, they just want to sell places. Its scandalous in my opinion

2. Parental Pressure

3. A lack of transparency on salaries - i,e, they have no idea that a 6 PQE Res Prop lawyer is probably going to be on sub £30k and that realistically law is not pad that well unless you are in a top firm

4. A lack of visibility on other career paths

5. The knock on affect that a lot of the alternative legal careers now require the LPC - as far as I am concerned this is NOT because law firms REALLY need juniors who have passed the LPC, rather it is because there are so many that have done the LPC why not hire one of those

6. A significant number of these people seem to have just not done any research and because of 1-5 above there is nothing that is likely to come along to challenge any of their own incorrect assumptions. 

Most people I know who self funded qualified eventually. 

That said, I know a handful of people who are paralegaling 5 years+ after LPC. But they earn decent money £60k-70k for a no stress job, or they're working in the Caymans, making tax free $ and living on the beach...

 

I agree it is very short-sighted, but I suspect that they started out thinking that if they were good enough to get onto an LLB course, they were destined to end up as barristers/solicitors, and the way to do so was to do the LPC/BVC. It's probably only when you start applying for TC's that you realise how tough it actually is (unless you've nailed your LLB/work experience), and if you only start applying in year 2 of your undergraduate, you only have 2 years of failed applications before you're applying for the LPC/BVC

Sorry poorly chosen phrasing.

For those who get to go to the grammars its great for them that they get a leg up in life ahead of the vastly greater numbers of their peers who don't.  I'm honestly not sure where I stand on grammars beyond the fact that if you are going to stream in that way the catchments should always be wide.

My point was purely vis a vis blind selection.  I was the kid with the best grades at the closest to my house comp - and my application form looked mediocre compared to the people I was competing with from private schools and grammars.  Blind selection wouldn't have done me any favours at University.

Most people I know who self funded qualified eventually. 

That said, I know a handful of people who are paralegaling 5 years+ after LPC. But they earn decent money £60k-70k for a no stress job, or they're working in the Caymans, making tax free $ and living on the beach...

 

Paralegals make £60k per year?

 

"It is fckng criminal that these (all PE owned iirc) institutions are allowed to take dollar from people with no TC or any hope of getting one."

Wholeheartedly disagree. Not criminal at all. It's the market.

Typical attitude from millenials with no sense of agency - "ooh it's not my fault, I didn't research it properly the evil PE firm made me do it. Now I've got all this debt".

F*ck off - it is your fault.

Legal Alien

 

I think you are missing the point

 

Its not that they shouldnt offer their services, its more that it verges on misrep when you consider the prospects 

I finished the LPC about £11k in debt and earned £19k as a trainee. It was sh1t but being careful with money still enabled me to buy my first house. Just rent a very cheap room and forego avocado toast and lattes. It's really not that hard.

When did you finish the LPC, how much was your rent and how much was your first house?

These details kind of matter if you are implying that your experience is in any way relevant to students doing the LPC in 2019.

Personally I think universities and their career services could do a better job of helping people.  They should almost sit down with every student and look at their grades so far and their career plans and give them an honest appraisal of their chances and some suggestions for alternatives.

When did you finish the LPC, how much was your rent and how much was your first house?

These details kind of matter if you are implying that your experience is in any way relevant to students doing the LPC in 2019.

I finished my TC in 2011, £300/m and £110k. Have things really changed that much? No idea about rent but similar houses in the area are now selling for £160k.

People talk about rents in London going up but having looked for rental properties recently a two bed flat where I live is about £1,700 a month now against the £1,300 or so that my flatmate and I paid back in 2001 when I last rented.  Trainees are certainly paid more than the £28k I was earning back then.

No wang I'm not calling you a millenial - I know you're an old khunt.  I'm saying that viewpoint  typifies that of millenials.

"It's not my faaaaaaaauuuuuult."

I finished my TC in 2011, £300/m and £110k. Have things really changed that much? No idea about rent but similar houses in the area are now selling for £160k.

I take it you're not based in London then?

An ex of mine did a stint teaching at one of the "leading" London law schools. She said they'd take anyone who could pay, even if they were thick. One of her students failed, they then accepted him back the next year for another £15k.

It may have got harder, but in my day it was a piece of piss. I only knew one student who failed one module - advocacy - and I'm pretty sure that was owing to his undiagnosed autism (we didn't have that in my day).

Random allocation is fine as long as kids don't have to travel miles for school, but a surcharge for middle class parents obviously gaming the system would have a similar effect IMHO. Yes some would just pay it, but if all that money is going to help a "worse" school have the best equipment, behavioural experts and teachers then pretty soon they'll get sick of their kids learning in shoddy classrooms when their peers' children at the other school are doing just as well. 

"plenty of disadvantaged children" at grammar:

"On average 2.6% of grammar school children received free school meals compared with 13.4% of children across all state secondary schools"

Grammars are the new private school for middle class people that can no longer afford private fees but have the wherewithal to game a system. Some parents nowadays even drop their kids out of grammars at sixth form to get the full "comp" badge for university applications. 

Blind allocation at university could adjust for the school attended to produce an overall score combining grades and a score for the environment in which they were attained. 

Give the university a handful of free places to hand out to people that meet the minimum requirement outside of the rules, but make them charge £100k so that the Chinese and Russians grooming their kids to join the global elite have at least paid 100s of £ks in university admission fees and private school surcharges to help other kids succeed. 

a mate of mine did this. Probably wasnt too big a stretch as he came from a relatively well-heeled family, but the conclusion was that he couldn't find a TC for love nor money. I suggested he go into recruitment instead as he was always a bit sales-y. Anyway, he did that for a few years and made more than he would have done working in silver circle.

Now he's a tree surgeon, and if his instagram is anything to go by, he's absolutely loving life.

Its a shame that so many grads seem to think a 'professional' life is for them. It certainly isn't for me. I've carved out a very well paid, but also very boring/unfulfilling, career in banking/tech but i wish i'd gone into something i enjoyed when i was 22. 

Suspect my parents would have just shipped me off to a school in the US or the like if you'd said they couldn't buy me an education here.

Overseas students are already getting reamed when it comes to uni fees as there's no cap on what they're charged.

"Now all we need to do is impose a 50% tax on private school fees"

And at the same time will you give them a rebate for not enjoying the "benefit" of the services provided by the State?

Of actual poverty yes. Of disadvantage absolutely not. 

Bananaman seems to categorise children into 

1. adorable workhouse scamps

2. evil capitalist running dogs 

 

Good point Dux

And are private pupils required to pay the cost of GCSEs when state pupils have their fees paid?

As if one hasn't paid enough fcking tax ,probably also paying for those state pupils 

Love that LA, who has minged on about the inequity (pun intended) of him not having completed a TC for 15 fooking years, moaning about the entitlement of millenials.  

"Of actual poverty yes. Of disadvantage absolutely not. 

Bananaman seems to categorise children into 

1. adorable workhouse scamps

2. evil capitalist running dogs"

What absolute cockrot. Poverty and disadvantage have clear overlaps. I appreciate this doesn't sit well with the grammar school pupils' self-delusion that they have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps while those that couldn't be bothered have only themselves to blame. 

I have not said anything about the children. The fact is all children, because they are children, should have equal opportunity. All research shows grammar schools do nothing to help with social mobility, and as far as I know anecdotal "I went to one and didn't have much" BS doesn't count as valid research. If parents, who are the ones I am categorising, want to play them game then they can properly pay to play. 

It's weird that nobody seems to have the same view of NHS care being better in one hospital than another and it being fair play if you manage to get into the good or outstanding one.

 

We could adopt the NHS approach and close the crap schools and send their kids to the better performing schools as centres of excellence.  There is some logic in that rather than each village having its own school complete with headteacher and hierarchy.

" appreciate this doesn't sit well with the grammar school pupils' self-delusion that they have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps while those that couldn't be bothered have only themselves to blame."

 

ok you just made that up because I don't know anyone that went to a grammar thinks that 

"Love that LA, who has minged on about the inequity (pun intended) of him not having completed a TC for 15 fooking years, moaning about the entitlement of millenials. "

 

Thank you for that intelligent input. I take responsibility for my past mistakes. I just don't think I should continue to be punished for them over 10 years on. The legal profession seems to take a different view, even though my actions broke no laws, and ultimately harmed nobody but myself.

It's weird that nobody seems to have the same view of NHS care being better in one hospital than another and it being fair play if you manage to get into the good or outstanding one.

FWIW we accidentally found out how to game the system and managed to get my youngest operated on in a lovely hospital (much nicer than our local ones) by a leading GOSH consultant despite being not particularly near either hospital. 

I have every intention of deliberately doing such gaming in the future to obtain the best standards of care for my family albeit that doesn't mean I think a system that lets you do that is actually a good one.

Similar as to why I think you need to fix catchment areas for schools.  If taxes went up on private schools I'd be using all my savings resulting from that to buy a nice house right next door to an excellent state school.  The idea that people can do that doesn't strike me as a great thing in terms of fairness though.

Also that comment by bananaman completely ignores that you do have a choice over what NHS hospital to use anyway and can specify where you want to be referred 

@ arbiterofgoodtaste - how did you game the NHS to get a good hospital and leading consultant for your child?

 

My child is also under the ongoing care of a local hospital. I have tried to get her treatment plan moved to a large hospital but to had no luck. When the consultant was on leave there was no-one to cover his work, the other consultants were atleast upfront about it 

We were planning on paying for it ourselves so booked in for a private consultation at GOSH. As expected the consultant said our insurance wasn’t going to cover it (as congenital).

Unexpectedly he suggested that he could write to our GP suggesting a referral into his own NHS clinic (out in Essex) despite it being in a different NHS Trust to us.

A degree of luck required in terms of the consultant and your local trust, but it worked out for us and enlightened me to the fact that a private consultation can refer into an NHS practice (even his own) albeit it has to go through your GP. 

Maybe harder when you’re already in the system but perhaps worth trying for the sake of a few hundred quid for the consultation? I’d be tempted to just be up front about it with their PA and see how you go. 

Slightly off-topic, but re. NHS-funded private healthcare, I’ve done something similar for a sports injury. An anaesthetist consultant friend recommended a relevant specialist consultant she knew, and my GP referred me to the later, despite them being out of the area. My impression was, and is, that if you present people (in this case, my GP) with a pre-planned solution as the path of least resistance, they are likely to go with it.