Career advice required – Law – I have never got off the ground - Long post

Andypandyboy

Ombudsman services is a growing business and it is an investigative based service. Law graduates are sought after there for their analytical approach. There are good promotion prospects too. There are offices all over the country.

FBaby

I don't know anything about law, but I picked up on this from your OP:

Q- Is there something wrong with your C.V?
A – I have had employment agencies look at it and they told me it was fine.

Unfortunately, if you are going to try to get a job in a very competitive market, having a 'fine' CV might as well be a rubbish one. 'Fine' will not get you selected when they will be so many that are very good, brilliant, fantastic.

You somehow need to distinguish your self and sell yourself on that basis. Be it being original, using one feature of your personality to convince you are special, transform a plain experience into a change of lifetime. Whatever it is, that's the only way you might have a chance to get someone to think that there is nothing special about your education and skills, but something about your CV makes them want to meet you and get to know you better.

You will then need to keep it up, go to the interview with confidence and take a bolt attitude. Hopefully, you will strike a cord with someone who is tire of brilliant people with boring personalities and lack of imagination and who will want to take a chance on you.

Law_girl

sangie595 wrote: »

For goodness sake. You claim to be good at approaching a tangled situation, identifying key issues and coming up with solutions. And you expect people here to do that for you? For your career? All you have come up with here is why the advice doesn't suit you, or isn't what you want, but you will consider any options that someone else gives you provided you like them. If you cannot actually fathom this yourself, then I can see no future in any career that requires you to consider complex situations and resolve them. This isn't that complex. You cannot have what you want. What you have is an entry level administrative position. How do you apply yourself to moving from that entry level post to the next rung up the ladder? There is nothing menial about administration, and there are an entire array of routes to higher level jobs.

Or you could continue rubbishing the job you have, until you again have no job.

I have received several ideas and welcome more. If that to you is 'wanting other people to do it for me' then so be it. You seem to be criticising me for looking for alternative perspectives, while saying 'there is an array of options.' I am trying to have help quantifying that 'array'.

You say 'All you have come up with here is why the advice doesn't suit you, or isn't what you want, but you will consider any options that someone else gives you provided you like them.'
Example please.

What exactly would be a response that pleases you?
'Thanks for that idea. No more ideas please. I will go for that. Admin, close the thread.' ?!

You also criticise me for not applying legal principles to my own situation. As they say 'A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.' As any therapist will tell you, it is often the case that one's own situation is not easy to untangle for oneself.

You may consider it 'rubbishing the job I have' but while I have expressed thankfulness for being in employment I find the situation frustrating and am looking for ways to change it.

Your conclusion is 'you cannot have what you want.' That is your prerogative. I do not believe that we are all special snowflakes who 'can be anything they want' but I have worked hard and have respected qualifications. What I want is to progress and I am looking for ways to move forward and get that work to produce tangible results.

FBaby

Another idea is arbitration for rental deposit schemes.

PlutoinCapricorn

This site has some suggestions: it would give you an edge if you were very interested in a particular aspect. Have you ever had any legal problems yourself?

Landlord and tenant involves people if that is what you really want; compliance of some kind sounds interesting.

http://allaboutlaw.co.uk/stage/what-can-i-do-with-a-law-degree/careers-with-a-law-degree

TBagpuss

I think that you my have to lower your expectations. You mentioned in one of your posts that your grades are 'not terrible'. You're right. They're not terrible. In fact, if you compare the with average A level results, they are pretty good. But if you compare them to average A-Level for law students they are on the low side of average.
Similarly having a 2:1 and LPC pass are achievements, but they are achievements which everyone else looking for a training contract or paralegal work will have achieved, or exceeded.
In addition, your professional education is less up to date than most of your competitors and you don't have anything on your CV to counteract that.

What I would suggest is that you think about the specific elements of legal work, or law, which you enjoy and find interesting, and think about what other jobs might involve similar types of task
- for example, if you enjoy trying to review and extract salient information then look into roles which involve that skill - research, PA / admin roles where you might need to review reports etc to present the key points etc.

It's also worth bearing in mind that working as a lawyer has very little in common with studying law - give some thought to how much of the type of thing you enjoy are likely to come up in day to day work - narrowing issues and organising information is a useful skill if you are preparing a brief, for instance,but it is only one part of the job, and (depending on field) may be a pretty small part. What *type* of law do you want to do? What attracts you to that specific field?
Once you can narrow down the field you are interested in and the specific elements which appeal to you, you can then look into other possibilities to use those skills and interests.

You don't say what type of images it was which you had problems with -was it crime or medical negligence? Did you get any other feedback about your time in that job? The reason I ask is that even in the fields of criminal law or medical negligence, seeing gory pictures is only a very small part of a small proportion of the cases you'd be likely to deal with, and most people would get used to it. I wonder whether they were trying to let you down lightly - did you get any other feedback?

What I would suggest that you do is look at admin work in medium to large organisations which deal with some of the areas of work you have an interest in So if you are interested in crime, think about admin jobs in the Prison or Probation service, with the police, with services supporting offenders and ex offenders etc. If you are interested in medico-legal / personal injury work look for admin jobs in insurance companies, private health care, rehabilitation services, Health and Safety etc.

Larger organisations are more likely to offer opportunities for training and advancement.

good luck

Snakey

Widen your horizons. What leaps out at me is that you think law is the only career that will allow you to "approach a tangled situation, identify the key issues and provide someone with a solution". Which actually isn't what a lot of legal work is even about. The last firm of solicitors I dealt with in my personal capacity did the conveyancing for my flat. Zero technical research or problem-solving required there.

I have met several Law graduates who were frankly rubbish at applying legislation to facts and using it to actually help a client. Eight or ten pages of waffle, poorly laid out because they have no idea where they're going with it, only 30% of it relevant to the situation in front of them, and no answers at the end of it. They call that an "analysis", assume that both I and the client will be impressed with how bright they clearly are, and start making noises about how this sort of technical work is what they should be doing more of because they're wasted on the compliance stuff! God knows what they actually teach them on these courses. Writing academic essays and getting through exams, I suppose.

If you really can do what you think you can, then all you need is a foot in the door and - assuming you don't have any glaring defects that you haven't told us about - you'll be fine.

Which door, though? You're approaching this from the angle that there's a magic word or phrase that will give you a career in Law and you just need somebody to point you at it. I don't think that's the case. Excuse me being frank bordering on rude, but I can see that you're able to deal with plain speaking and I think it's more helpful than dancing around the edges not saying what I'm thinking for fear of hurting your feelings. If you were going to get a career in Law, it would have happened by now. We can rake over the coals and try to work out why it might have been, but I don't think that will do any good - you can't turn back the clock, and you'll most likely end up either arguing with everybody on here about how that's not how it was, or else beating yourself up over things that can't now be changed.

Try accountancy - it's not just accountancy but all of the other services that accountancy firms offer, which you won't know about until you're in there. It is all statute-based, and it is all about trying to find clever, client-focussed solutions. Firms of all sizes recruit at trainee level. I am sure there are loads in Watford, Milton Keynes and so on if coming in to London is too expensive. If you can't get through the door on a training contract, apply for admin or secretarial or general office assistant jobs - something that will get you sitting in the main open plan office with everybody else, and interacting with the professional staff - and then see what you can do once you're in there.

I only say accountancy because that's (broadly) the line of work I'm in and so that's what springs to mind for me. I am sure there are many other things involving sitting around trying to solve problems, come up with plans, mitigate disasters, manage risk, and all of the other stuff that makes life interesting. If you think of work-related situations where you need to do that kind of thing, the list is long. Even something like HR would give you that.

In short, time to think outside the box.

Law_girl

All, thank you again for the plain speaking and constructive advice. As I said I am going to take time to think about everything that has been raised and suggested and try to formulate a plan of action.

persa

Re accountancy, it can be very parent-friendly after you've qualified and racked up enough face time in a particular role, but the studying part (at least 3 years) can be really rough. You say you're a single parent - what help would you have with childcare? Do you have a supportive network of friends and family?

No one is going to tell you that you can't be an accountant because you're a single mum, but if you were sent away for months at a time to study full-time in a different city, how would you handle that? You need to have a plan.

I also need to point out that the exams are tough. Only you know if you're up to that, having already had a go at a professional qualification and not made it through the other side. Were you just not up to it? Or did circumstances get in the way?

On the positive side, as a qualified accountant, I spend a lot of time approaching tangled situations and reading legislation, so the work (if you made it that far) might suit your personality.

Law_girl

Persa, thanks for that.

Just a few bullets in response to your post.

• I am no longer a single parent, but my husband's work means that it is unlikely I would be able leave her with him to travel for work. I don't really have a network who could help with childcare.

• I did at one point think about accountancy. I came out with a C at GCSE maths and had a fear of the subject having been told 'you're no good at maths' it may be worth revisiting.

• When I failed the exams I was pretty much homeless (on a sofa) and only could study when my little one was asleep. I passed when I was able to study when she was at school. I think I could do it now that I am in better circumstances.