Your future in Law

Preparation for a career in Law

Our Department of Law is about teaching law in action. Whether you're studying at an undergraduate or postgraduate level, you'll gain practical experience and great skills to help you find your future career.

Placements

Placements are offered as an optional module across all programmes in the Department of Law. These placements give you the opportunity to put legal theory into practice, hone legal skills, and help you to find your future career path.

You'll be supported by the Department as well as Goldsmiths Careers Service to find the right opportunity for you. Placements take place in relevant legal organisations such as solicitor firms, barrister chambers, legal advice centres, social justice organisations and human rights NGOs.

This means that you'll graduate with the skills and confidence you need to step into a first-rate legal career.

Law and Policy clinics

Goldsmiths’ Law and Policy Clinics give students a unique opportunity to confront challenging societal issues through supervised legal research and public engagement activity. At the undergraduate level, these clinics cover topics such as immigration, counter-terrorism, financial wrongdoing and procedural rights. At the postgraduate level, students then have the opportunity to specialise in human rights or criminal justice.

Through these Clinics, you'll collaborate on research, advocacy, investigation, strategic litigation and campaign projects with charities and NGOs, and support the delivery of educational and advice workshops.  So, you'll not only gain future skills for your career, but you'll be helping the community at the same time.

Collaborating with industry

Based in London, one of the legal capitals of the world, our Department of Law has unique access to collaborations across the city. Our guest lecturers are some of the leading legal minds of our generation, and collaborations with the likes of the UK Supreme Court, Liberty, The Inns of Court and many other legal organisations and NGOs will immerse you in the dynamic world of legal London. 

Career paths

One of the most popular career routes for students graduating from LLB or LLM programmes will be to become a lawyer. Lawyers in England and Wales are split into two categories: barristers and solicitors.

Barristers and solicitors require different qualifications and advise clients on different cases and at different stages of the legal process. Below we'll explain the routes to becoming a solicitor or barrister, as well as the many other options that are open to Law graduates.

Solicitors

When someone says they’re going to see their lawyer, they’re usually referring to a solicitor. Solicitors are generally the first point of call for clients as they offer legal advice, prepare the necessary paperwork and communicate with others involved in the client’s case.

Solicitors deal with a wide range of issues such as providing expert guidance on things like buying and selling houses, drawing up wills, and dealing with relationship breakdowns. They also help businesses with the legal side of commercial transactions, advising people on their rights, undertaking legal aid work, and representing clients in the lower courts like County Court or tribunals.

Some solicitors with specialised training can also represent their clients in the higher courts such as the Crown Court.

Becoming a solicitor

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has introduced a new system for qualifying as a lawyer – the Solicitors Qualifying Examination or SQE – that is coming into effect on 1 September 2021.

Goldsmiths is one of the first Law Schools in the UK to embed elements of SQE preparation into the LLB, requiring no additional fees from its students. We offer a bespoke SQE module in Year 3, integrate SQE1 workshops delivered by solicitors in relevant modules in all years of the LLB and provide our students with invaluable opportunities to develop the professional skills assessed at the SQE2. To find out more about the unique ways in which we support your preparation for the SQE, read here.

The SQE consists of two parts. SQE 1 focuses on legal knowledge, while SQE 2 focuses on the practical legal skills you’ll need as a practising solicitor, and we will provide you with a solid foundation in both. By the time you graduate from Goldsmiths, you will be well familiar with the key themes, and assessment methods, that are part of the SQE. You will still most likely need to spend a short period of time in a professional short-term programme that will provide you with the more intense final preparation required to sit the SQE. We will advise you about the available providers and facilitate your transition from the LLB to their programme.

To get quickly to grips with how the new SQE will operate, see the infographics prepared by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) here, which include what becoming a solicitor will involve, what the assessment covers, how qualifying work experience works and provide information on sitting the SQE. Or read in more detail here.

Barristers

When a case needs to go to court, a solicitor will instruct a barrister to advise about the law or go to court to represent the client.

Barristers develop legal argumentation before a jury about the facts of the case, and to judges about the interpretation of legal rules and their application to evidence and other issues affecting trial processes and the outcome of a case. 

Barristers are highly trained in the art of advocacy and often deal with serious and high-profile court cases. 

Advocacy is when a lawyer puts forward an argument to a court with the aim of persuading the court to come to a decision favourable to their client.

Becoming a barrister

There are three stages to becoming a practising barrister in England and Wales once you’ve completed an LLB law degree.

• You’ll need to become a member of one of the four Inns of Court. The Inns of Court are professional associations for barristers who have the sole right to call qualified students to the bar.
• You’ll have to complete the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC).
• You’ll have to complete a year of vocational training, which is often called pupillage.

If you’re aiming for a career at the bar, you’ll find plenty of opportunities to hone the essential skills you’ll need to represent clients during your studies at Goldsmiths. Option modules like Criminal Evidence will complement the insights from legal professionals, and visits to courts to see advocacy in practice, that are built into your degree from the beginning.

Other career paths

Law is a strong foundation for a range of professional careers. Goldsmiths’ focus on multidisciplinarity learning and giving students access to a varied network of professionals will enable you to pursue opportunities in other areas.

You can find the future that you want across a range of disciplines, including:

• human rights and the third sector
• financial technology and regulation in the financial sector, including compliance
• the civil service
• journalism, the media and creative industries
• patent and trademark litigation
• art and cultural heritage litigation
• the government, for example in relation to immigration or foreign affairs
• mediation
• the crown prosecution service
• the police or the prison service
• legal recruitment
• the ‘in-house’ legal practice sector
• academia