Solicitor Careers

Work Environment:

Being a solicitor it'd be your task to give advice to clients regarding the law, and work on your clients behalf in legal issues, and these clients can include public associations, individuals, firms or groups of people.

As a solicitor, you can work in various settings, comprising:

• Crown Prosecution Service: scrutinizing evidence to determine whether to take cases to court
• commercial practice: giving advice and working for businesses within fields comprising company sales and mergers, employment law, contract law and tax
• private practice: where you'd give various legal services like civil and family law, conveyancing, criminal law, probate, personal injury and litigation
• legal advice: for regional authorities, firms or the government

You'd often decide to do specialization in a specific field of law.

Your tasks would change in accordance with the setting, although might usually comprise:

• drafting documents for court
• studying parallel cases to lead your present work
• acting on behalf of clients within court, or guiding advocates or barristers to represent your clients
• maintaining financial records
• giving advice to clients regarding legal issues
• attending negotiations and meetings
• drawing up documents, letters and contracts

Qualification, Education and Experience:

You should first fulfill the required academic requirements, and then you should accomplish vocational training, to be a solicitor.

Within Wales and England, you could fulfill the academic requirements in any of the modes given as below:

• by getting a degree in law
• by gaining membership with the ILEX (Institution of Legal Executives)
• by getting a degree into other subjects, and then acquiring a postgraduate course in law, like the GDL (Graduate Diploma into Law), or CPE (Common Professional-Examination)

After fulfilling the academic requirements, you should then accomplish the LPC (Legal Practice Course). You could take the LPC for 2 years part time or 1 year full time.

See the websites of the Law Central Applications Board or Solicitors' Regulation Authority, for information about LPC courses

For further details and career case studies of successful solicitors, check the website of Law Society.

Within Northern-Ireland, you could accomplish the academic phase by:

• encompassing experience of related legal work
• getting an acknowledged degree in law, or having a degree into other subjects and showing that you've an appropriate standard of legal knowledge

Training Details:

Within Wales and England, when you've fulfilled the academic requirements and accomplished the LPC, you should get additional-training by:

• obtaining a training contract for 2 years with a company of solicitors
• completing the PSC (Professional-Skills Course) throughout your training-contract

If you're an entitled legal executive, you don't generally have to accomplish a training contract, although you should still complete the Professional-Skills Course.

When you've completely qualified, you should also participate in training and development programs every year all through your vocation. The Law-Societies execute obligatory CPD (Continuing-Professional Development) programs to assist member accomplish this.

For further details regarding the vocational phase and continuing professional development within Wales and England or in Northern Ireland, check the website of the related Law Society.

Skills and knowledge:

• mathematical skills to cope with financial and property work
• excellent written and verbal communication abilities
• the capability to work under-pressure and handle numerous cases simultaneously
• accuracy and concentration to details
• the capability to scrutinize large amounts of data
• empathy and tact
• the capability to clarify legal issues to non experts
• admiration for confidentiality
• a persuasive approach

Salary and Other Benefits:

• Salary on a training contract is £19,000 for a year within Wales and England.
• After qualifying, earnings can boost to around £26,000 to £72,000, based on the kind of employer and experience.
• And salaries for heads of legal divisions or partners within large company can get to around £110,000 for a year.

Working Conditions:

You'd generally work weekly for around 38 hours, although you might be required to work for longer hours. In few works, you may need to work on-call at bank holidays and weekends, or have to visit police-stations at anytime of the night or day.

You'd be working within an office. Sometimes you might be required to travel to attend meetings or meet clients. You'd employ much of your time in court, if you specialized into criminal law.

Different Opportunities:

The majority of solicitors work within private practice, for companies ranging from small firms to large law companies. You can also discover work chances with charities, central and regional government, businesses, the courts service, law centers, and Crown Prosecution.

Employment openings might be publicized by the legal, regional and national press, and legal recruitment organizations.

By experience, within private-practice you can ultimately get a partnership in a company of solicitors. And as a commercial solicitor you can administer an in-house legal division. Then again, you can decide to acquire additional training to be a barrister.

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