It's disturbing being told that the sheer majority of a law degree is in actual fact useless when it comes to the practise of law.
Mostly it's learnt on the job, and plenty of the academic work you do isn't even close to what is expected in the legal world.
It both comforts me and scares me - at least if I feel as though I'm not prepared for a real job as a lawyer, it's expected that as a jr lawyer, you won't really know what you're doing.
The main 2 things my degree teaches me is:
1) How to learn, find, and interpret the law.
2) How to write legal opinions, follow legal procedures and handle negotiations.
These are the skills that I will need. The rest is superfluous and just plain annoying.
Out of interest, do you have to study law as a degree to practise law in NZ?
In England we can do a 1 year conversion course after taking a degree in any subject and that's just as good as studying for a standard 3 year LLB. In fact a lot of firms appreciate non-law students as they'll have different skills to offer. My brother was saying the other week that as firms are currently taking on fewer trainees due to the economic climate, the firm he works for is now advising students to only study law for their degree if they think they'll really enjoy the subject in an academic context. If there's any other subject that they think they'd prefer or do better in, they should do that instead to ensure the best marks possible and then convert afterwards. Too much competition in the City to not have top marks.
