GDL student Muhammad Majeed discusses converting to English law
“I always wanted to qualify as a barrister,” says Muhammad Majeed, a Pakistani-qualified lawyer now completing the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) with The College of Legal Practice. It is an ambition that stretches back to boarding school, where, aged around 11 or 12, he was already set on studying law and building a career in the profession.
Majeed then studied at Lahore’s oldest law schools for five years after which he qualified as an advocate in Pakistan. An interest in commercial law, corporate transactions and mergers and acquisitions then brought them to the UK for an LLM specialising in those areas.
After graduating, Majeed spent around a year working in London in public law, with a focus on human rights and immigration matters. The role involved appeal work, reviewing evidence and preparing skeleton arguments, experience which would later prove useful when returning to the classroom.
Despite already being legally qualified, completing the GDL was an important step towards Majeed’s long-term aim of practising at the bar. “The plan for the GDL was something really important because it was like a gateway for me to enter the legal field here in the UK,” he explains.
Why the barrister route? Whilst Majeed was initially unfamiliar with the solicitor-barrister split found in England and Wales (“I never knew that solicitors existed!”), explaining that, in his home jurisdiction, he understood advocates as both dealing with clients and representing them in court.
After moving to the UK, the distinction between the two roles became clear and for Majeed the choice was straightforward. Advocacy had always been the draw and therefore the barrister route was a no-brainer. “I think the reason I really want to be in the court is that I believe I am able to argue or to actually represent people,” he says.
With years of legal experience under his belt, Majeed did initially struggle with one assumption: why bother with the GDL at all? “I had been thinking, ‘Why should I do the GDL? I am a foreign-qualified lawyer and have been studying law since 2017,’” Majeed admits. Now well into his time at COLP, he’s had a change of heart, admitting that “after doing the programme, I learned that there is a lot to learn.”
So what was it that led him to choose the College of Legal Practice for his further studies? For Majeed, the GDL’s practical focus was a major factor in choosing to study at COLP. After having spent the lion’s share of his education in traditional classrooms, Majeed was looking for a change, something “really fast-paced and very practical”. The course, he explains, is built around factual scenarios, legal disputes and client advice rather than abstract learning alone.
There is also no denying that cost and accessibility were also something he seriously considered before making his choice as to where to study. When comparing online GDL providers, Majeed says the difference in fees was significant, but COLP still retained excellent student services and a faculty readily available for support, both important for building a future career. For foreign-qualified lawyers in particular, he believes the combination of pace, practical teaching and affordability is key.
Across the programme, students work through around 30 cases spanning seven core areas of law. Before each workshop, they receive case law, a detailed scenario, recommended reading and a workshop manual, with extensive preparation expected in advance. During the sessions, students discuss their analysis with classmates and a legal practitioner, identifying what works and where their reasoning could be improved.
“You get the scenario, the factual background, the law, and the legal disputes that you have to identify before you are able to advise the client,” Majeed explains. “In every workshop with The College of Legal Practice, we were trained to actually do all these things.”
Majeed has been particularly pleased with the input of legal practitioners throughout his course, something he has found really valuable to his training. Majeed says supervisors were predominantly solicitors, alongside some barristers, giving students access to people able to connect legal principles with the realities of practice. One-to-one supervision, scheduled once or twice a week, also provided tailored guidance which spanned both academic as well as professional advice and support.
Majeed was able to organise his studies around self-employed work, giving him the time to focus on the course. Rather than struggling with the return to student life, he found his previous appeal experience made the transition relatively smooth. “Reading is what I do and something I always enjoyed since boarding school,” he tells me, recalling borrowing history books from the library while still in the sixth grade.
Assessment follows the same practical approach. Students are presented with a legal problem and must identify the key facts, issues and relevant law before advising the client. The method mirrors the familiar IRAC structure: issue, rule, application and conclusion. In Majeed’s view, is “pretty much the same” as the analytical process lawyers use in practice.
Majeed is quite proud that he secured distinctions in six modules. The exception was trusts, a subject he found difficult to get to grips with. “I just didn’t understand how it was being done,” he admits. Any law student will know that there is always that one module that ends up stumping you!
Beyond the classroom, Majeed also served as both a student ambassador and course representative. The latter involved speaking to peers about problems ranging from managing classes to missing assessments because of difficult circumstances, before raising those concerns with staff. The role placed them between students and the College, communicating with both sides to help address issues.
Given his future plans, it is no surprise that Majeed enjoyed contract law in particular, aligning neatly with Majeed’s ambitions. “Commercial law and contracts are what I like,” he says, with a future practice in that area firmly in sight.
His advice to prospective GDL students is simple. The biggest misconception, he suggests, is that the course cannot be managed alongside work or after years in another career. Majeed points to classmates with two decades of experience in other fields who joined the programme and were happy to have made the change.
“If you really want to do it and change your career to get into law, you can,” he concludes. “You are able to manage it if you want to.”
Muhammad Majeed wil be speaking at tomorrow’s virtual student event ‘Changing direction: How to successfully convert into law — with The College of Legal Practice’. Secure one of the final few spots.
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