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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. [/quote]

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?

[/quote]

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 [b]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. [/b][/quote]

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. [/quote]

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