Tag Archives: Helena Kennedy QC

What Will Replace The Fading Dreams Of City Law Megabucks And Criminal Bar Glamour?

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This is the central question that the panel will be discussing at Legal Cheek's Google Campus event this evening.

The boom era narratives that attracted students to the law are fading. City law salaries are no longer spiralling; instead they're stagnant, with trainee numbers falling and many corporate firms desperately scouring the horizon for merger candidates.

Meanwhile, the Inns of Court-related glamour that has traditionally drawn students to the publicly-funded Bar is giving way to a sense that the hardship involved just isn't worth it.

Amid the gloom, however, there are some interesting new legal career options developing...

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Plan B: If You Can’t Get a TC Or Pupillage, Become An Entrepreneur

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The BBC’s Paul 'I’ve-lived-in-London-for-20-years-but-still-speak-like-a-miner' Mason is pessimistic about the future of conventional graduate jobs.

"The west's model is broken. It cannot deliver enough high-value work for its highly educated workforce," he wrote last week.

But Mason is encouraged by the initiative shown by the youth of today, who he believes could be saved by their innate capacity for entrepreneurship. "All those tests, drills, teach-to-exam lectures, and the relentless vocationality of education, has made this generation highly entrepreneurial," he added.

The trouble law graduates face as they bid to become the Richard Bransons of the legal world is, of course, that they need to have first completed a pupillage or training contract in order to be able to set up on their own as practising lawyers. Without the right to provide legal services, their options are limited. And as Legal Cheek has found out the hard way, placing adverts offering unregulated legal advice on internet sites like Fiverr (see above) doesn’t always yield results.

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Legal Education Review Chief Slams ‘Gross Inability’ Of BPTC Students

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Senior members of the legal profession have a tendency to shy away from telling it like it really is.

But every now and again their true feelings emerge.

Last week at a College of Law debate on diversity at the Bar, a student asked a question about whether the Bar Standards Board’s (BSB) proposal to bring in an aptitude test was fair.

Cue the usual bland responses from the panel of assembled experts, who included Helena Kennedy QC.

But something about the question hit a nerve in Sir Mark Potter, the former president of the family division and co-chair of the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR), who was sitting incognito in the audience. Rising unexpectedly from his seat, Potter requested a microphone...

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