Studying law in UK

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would it make sense for an American to do a 3 year bachelor of law in the UK then go to a US law school? I’m thinking the main advantages might be (a) saving one year of college tuition and foregone income by doing a 3 year undergraduate degree and (b) an English law degree might make the candidate attractive if applying to international law firms.

I’m not a lawyer and am interested in hearing from lawyers whether this does or doesn’t make sense.

That makes no sense.

I am a lawyer who studied in England.

It would be more useful if you said why.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m dual qualified, started in the UK and then took the bar exam here. The LLB doesn’t in itself qualify you to practice law in England. Kid would need a further year of law school and then 2 years of trainee-ship in a law firm. If the end goal is practising in the US and to do a JD in the US, I don’t see any real value to it, and it might be very boring and repetitive as they would end up doing 6 years of law. If the plan is to qualify in the UK as outlined above and then move to the US and take bar, skipping the JD, that is doable but kid will find it much harder to find a job in the US because most firms only want to hire JDs. I don’t think a UK law degree on its own is of much interest to international law firms. Even being dual qualified, as I am, is of limited interest! If kid really wants to study in the UK, I suggest something other than law as undergrad.

Thanks. So the only real benefit is maybe saving one year of study costs and forgone income?

Is there any field of law (eg contract, international litigation) where qualifications from both countries is useful?

I’m the dual qualified PP. It has definitely helped me to be competitive for certain positions, and I think it’s useful in several areas of law - primarily international commercial like M&A, capital markets, international arbitration, privacy. But I would put it at the same level of usefulness as being fluent in a foreign language - it’s unlikely to be relevant in most jobs but there might be a few where that specific skill is very highly valued depending on the specific range of clients and work. Part of the reason it’s not as useful as you might think is that it is hard to build the expertise you need in each jurisdiction. It isn’t very valuable to be a newly qualified lawyer with no practical experience, and if you merely qualify in England and then never practice there, then you won’t really bring much to the table as an English lawyer.

Agree. In my experience, if a US law firm needs expertise in the UK, they hire an experienced lawyer, preferably a QC (or now KC, I guess). If you have expert English counsel, having a US attorney with a degree from there who had never practiced would be of limited utility.

[Anonymous]

I know someone who went to Cambridge for three years and then did a one year LLM at Harvard and got barred in NYC. He got a job at one of the Uber elite firms (DPW I think but I don’t remember). He does international banking law as a partner at some firm in Hong Kong now.

He is smarter than your kid though. And me. And pretty much everyone else at Cambridge and Harvard as I recall.

It doesn’t tend to work the same for mortals so if you try it you’ll want to be one of the top 2 or 3 kids in your class at Oxbridge. But it is a path that has worked at least once.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know someone who went to Cambridge for three years and then did a one year LLM at Harvard and got barred in NYC. He got a job at one of the Uber elite firms (DPW I think but I don’t remember). He does international banking law as a partner at some firm in Hong Kong now.

He is smarter than your kid though. And me. And pretty much everyone else at Cambridge and Harvard as I recall.

It doesn’t tend to work the same for mortals so if you try it you’ll want to be one of the top 2 or 3 kids in your class at Oxbridge. But it is a path that has worked at least once.

.

Btw, he wasn’t American though. He was basically some sort of international kid. Ethnic Chinese with perfect English that sounded slightly British to an American and slightly American to a Brit. I forget where he grew up, multiple places I think. Probably some Hong Kong or Singapore diaspora connections at one point. So he didn’t make this weird plan at 18, he just decided to spend some time in the USA after dominating his classmates in the UK. Presumably if DPW didn’t drop he would have happily gone back to London.

I gotta admit as a white guy I am just too lazy for all of that. He can be my boss’s boss as long as I can leave work at 5:30 and drive my kids to sports practice. We are who we are I guess.