It was an idle Monday afternoon. I had grown rapidly tired of the Daily Mail sidebar of shame. So I listened to legal journo Alex Aldridge's latest "round my kitchen table" podcast. His guests were an LPC student without a training contract (eek) and Kevin Poulter, a lawyer at Westminster's top non-merging law firm, Bircham Dyson Bell. Here's the transcript.

Everyone in the profession (although possibly not enough naive 18 year olds applying for university) know that almost 50% of training contracts go to non-LLB students. And Poulter - perhaps resentful of the time he spent slaving away on his LLB - drops a real clanger. Not only - if he had his university time again - would he do a history degree, but he'd do it because that's the easy option.

"Well again I’ll probably get criticised for this, but it’s easier, there’s a lot less time commitment, there is less pressure, you’re not necessarily learning something new. Whereas in History you’re learning a lot of stuff that you’ve already learnt at GCSE or A Level, law is completely new for most people starting University."






A history student yesterday







Fortunately, at my school we did actually cover the entirety of world history at A-Level, from Mesopotamia to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Which meant, during my degree, I just had to regurgiate a rote-learned list of facts which didn't ever require me to get out of bed.

Actually, that was the GDL.

Lord Bingham clearly just pissed around at university. Or, grasping for another name, how about RollOnFriday's own (over-worked) brief James Mather, a lazy sod with a double first and scholarship at Harvard. Before deciding to start his legal career. Here's his CV.

So, Kev, there's your criticism.

(Although, kudos for telling the LPC student that she's utterly, utterly wrong that "in order for litigation to not be boring and procedural and not face the same clients over and over again you do need to be in a larger firm with larger clients". RoF ex-litigators laughed bitterly and tearfully at that).