Durham law student YouTube star set to forsake Zoella-style fame for the magic circle

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By Katie King on

Second year is a global social media hit — but wants to be a City solicitor

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An amateur lifestyle vlogger has amassed an impressive five-figure subscriber count on YouTube while juggling her law degree at a top Russell Group university.

And now she is torn between corporate law and YouTubing as a future career.

Katherine Baker, who is Allen & Overy‘s current Durham Uni ‘Campus Executive’, began making videos in October 2013 after meeting fellow bloggers JacksGap at a meet up. The second year now has an 11,000-strong following of predominantly teenage girls to her name.

With winter vac schemes on the horizon, you would think that Baker — who goes by the name BeautyByKat08 on YouTube — would be too stressed out by her work-intensive studies to keep up her vlogging, but she thinks it’s the “best thing” she’s ever done.

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Baker, who originally hails from from Essex, is an all-round lifestyle blogger. She makes videos on anything from make-up to relationship advice, food to fashion — and she seems just like a normal law student to us.

In one of her videos Baker documents her night-time routine; one which will be all too familiar to fellow uni students. The video shows her at a desk full of papers, taking employment law notes while drinking tea and eating a banana, and struggling to stay off Twitter while working on her criminal law module.

And while it might seem like humdrum viewing, Baker’s videos also give some useful advice to fellow students, such as how to make the most out of university and how to ace exams.

And we think she’s worth listening to — despite working for nine hours on each of her videos, the Durham student is on-track to smash her degree and earn a first-class mark.

But now it’s Baker that needs some advice: does she pursue a career in law, or keep up the vlogging and go pro?

There is big money to be made in the YouTube-world: just ask fellow lifestyle bloggers Zoella and Tanya Burr, worth an estimated £2 million and £1.5 million respectively.

And Baker knows this all too well. Speaking to The Tab, she recalls landing £200 from a fitness company for one of her videos, a sum comparable to a vac scheme payment at the regional office of a big national firm.

But, for Baker, money isn’t everything, and she takes a hard-headed approach to the sponsors she does and does not accept. She explains:

I won’t even do dedicated sponsored videos because I feel like it’s very fake, so I always integrate products.

Baker thinks that, ultimately, her integrity is the most important thing:

As I get bigger the sponsorship deals will be more worth it, so at the moment I’d rather not get paid as much and maintain my loyal audience.

On the flipside, Baker is pushing on with her law degree, which she describes as a “really, really good degree to have”, with hopes of forging a successful legal career for herself. She comments:

I would love to be a YouTuber, but at the same time I do want to be a lawyer.

And there’s no reason why she can’t be. Baker is a high academic-achiever who has shown notable commercial awareness by creating an online brand for herself via her YouTube account.

She has done work experience with big-name firms and chambers such as Allen & Overy, Linklaters, Slaughter and May, RPC and Doughty Street Chambers, to name but a few.

Baker also can be found on Twitter, Instagram and her blog.