Lord Sumption: A non-law degree makes for a better lawyer
09 Monday Jul 2012
Cathryn Hopkins News Articles
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In an interview given to Counsel magazine, and reported by The Telegraph here, Lord Sumption has said that he thinks that “it is best not to read law as an undergraduate“, suggesting that those hoping to pursue a career as a barrister or solicitor study history or classics, which will teach the analysis of evidence, or mathematics, which “comes close to pure logic“. Lord Sumption suggests that the study of these degrees would be “at least as valuable a preparation for legal practice as the study of law” and questions the usefulness of current law degrees in training students to fit legal principles to particular facts, without which “you are going to find it difficult to practise“.
6 comments
Adam Gill said:
11/12/2012 at 10:15
I am totally Agreed with Lord Sumption. i have read his articles and know him closely. he is like friend to me.
James said:
10/02/2013 at 15:26
This is one non-law graduate’s opinion. Sumption did a history degree, he doesn’t know the rigours and analytical qualities a law degree teaches you. I don’t agree with non-law students that they are equally qualified as law students to practise law. Law firms do not discriminate against non-law students but maybe they should.
Anita Davies said:
11/02/2013 at 22:45
Personally, I don’t think that the whole ‘non-law degree vs law degree’ debate is enormously helpful. Yes, a law degree does teach analytical rigour, but so do a number of other subjects. For some, a three year law degree provides the depth and breadth that a law conversion course will not – for those with an academic interest in law a three year course will be preferred over a conversion. But one really is not categorically better than the other. It really does depend on the individual concerned and to what use they put their skills and degrees once they graduate.
James said:
13/02/2013 at 14:43
A law degree is tailor made for a legal career. Yes analytical skills are taught in other subjects as well but these skills are not law-specific. A historian might be good at conjuring up a historical explanation having assessed the evidence. But that is not how legal reasoning works. If someone were really interested in law and a legal career, asking them to demonstrate that interest by pursuing a law degree would be perfectly reasonable. I know too many who think on the lines of ‘what do I do with [eg history] degree? I don’t know. I’ll just try law. The GDL is just one year anyway.’ A one year GDL is nowhere near as hard as a three-year law degree.
Anita Davies said:
13/02/2013 at 21:09
I think anyone trying to enter a legal career is going to have to demonstrate an interest in law in a variety of ways. Yes, pursuing a law degree as a first degree is a very clear way of demonstrating an interest, but there are lots of other options. For example it is expected that any applicant to a law firm or chambers will have done legal work experience, extensive voluntary work and be able to demonstrate real commitment to legal work. Non-law graduates will probably have to do more of those things than law graduates in order to prove their interest.
The fact is, there are number of people who do not consider law as a career until after a first degree, and not all of them who decide later on do so just because they do not know what to do with an arts degree – many people decide to pursue a legal career because of professional work they have done that leads towards it. Both academic law degrees and conversion courses have a part to play in feeding into a diverse profession.
Pete said:
25/04/2013 at 16:23
The law vs. non-law debate doesn’t make much sense at this level of generality, but it does seem to me to be very obviously relevant as soon as you get into specific areas of law, some of which are far more fact-intensive than others.
Intellectual property law, for example, looks to me like an area where the facts are often far harder to follow than the law, so you probably are better off with an undergraduate science degree, rather than a pure law degree. In something like chancery, I’d imagine that the reverse is true.