Deal with it
1. You understand the world so (so, so) much better than everyone else
Having made it to three out of four 9am lectures this week, you are now basically an oracle. Studied land law? You can now sort out your friend’s landlord/tenant dispute for them. Friend’s just been kicked out of a club? You’ll make sure to play the Equality Act card and get them back in.
2. Who cares if you’re years away from qualifying — you’re practically already a lawyer
Solicitors Regulation Authority who? While everyone else pitter patters away with their essays and dissertations, you’re already out on the forefront of legal practice. With cuts to legal aid, your time in the uni pro bono clinic is nothing short of a crucial service to humanity.
3. Fancy events with (not Sainsbury’s basics) wine are the norm
Law balls, networking events, career talks, Inns of Court dinners, the list goes on. The collective effect of such exposure makes lawyers-to-be far more sophisticated than your average student.
4. Your lecturers are famous
Baroness Hale, the Beyonce of the legal world
Posted by Legal Cheek on Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Law students are taught by the biggest of the BNOCs. Forget sitting in an office working on lame academic research — your lecturers are out giving evidence in parliament or plotting Supreme Court careers like the one of former academic Lady Hale.
5. Legal work experience is the best
No, you’re not filing away papers at your dad’s best friend’s brother’s office, you’re doing proper work experience — legal work experience. Have any of your non-lawyer friends ever met a murderer? Didn’t think so. And is it difficult to work with these people? Well yes, but its just all the more evidence of your impeccably multi-layered, compassionate, professional, kind-hearted character.
6. You’re a one-man warrior of social justice
Law is a worthy profession to get into. Your friends and family um and ahh as you tell them about your plans to single-handedly rectify every single miscarriage of justice there’s ever been. Don’t worry: the Noble Peace Prize is on its way.
7. A law degree is practically two degrees
Modus operandi, inter alia, prima facie, ratio decidendi, mens rea — you’re learning so much Latin you might as well be doing a joint honours.
8. You’re balling
Well, maybe not yet. But chances are you’ll bag a magic circle TC and will be living the Suits lifestyle in no time.
9. Even if you decide not to become a lawyer, you’re made
Employers love law students — so if you decide the lawyer-life isn’t for you, then there are still options out there. Become a journalist like Afua Hirsch. Become the President of America like Barack Obama. Become Derren Brown. The world is your oyster.
10. Law school has made you a super student
Complain though you will, you’ve acquired some pretty useful skills during your time at university. You’ll never yawn inappropriately again because, after studying contract law, you are totally immune to boredom. You can read the Financial Times from cover to cover in less than five minutes. You can highlight at a rate of 15 words per second. The list goes on.
11. The law is constantly evolving
Sorry geographers — once an oxbow lake is an oxbow lake, it’s not going to change. And, history students, we can exclusively confirm that the roaring twenties are well and truly over. Law is different (and better): it’s important, it’s topical, and it’s constantly changing, and that makes it exciting.
12. In your spare time, you like to bring massive legal actions — and win
Need a break from staring at paper in between Twitter scrolls? Just sue Facebook, like Austrian law student Max Schrems (pictured above) — no biggie.
13. You get your own library (even if it’s full of arts students)
If it says ‘law’ on the front, it’s yours and no one else’s.
14. Dressing up is seen as an acceptable hobby
If you’re lucky enough to don a wig and robes at a mooting competition or some other event, you truly feel as if you’ve made it in life. You’ve now got a taste for it and feel in much better stead at fancy dress parties.
15. You can outsmart your politics student friends
In the desperate, pre-interview strive for commercial awareness, you like to keep up to date with the news — and are now a total political affairs know-it-all. You follow The Independent on Twitter, and once read Private Eye in the hairdressers. You even stayed up all night eating ice cream and watching the election results, and now feel your chances of becoming Prime Minister have at least doubled.
16. You get free stuff
Being given free stuff is definitive proof that you are better than everyone else. If you weren’t, then why else would you have a Slaughter and May pen, stored safely in your Burges Salmon tote bag, next to you South Square Chambers headphones, DLA Piper phone charger, and Hogan Lovells travel mug? Logic people.