De Montfort LLB grad follows UWE law student in hitting the streets
Let’s be honest: if you’ve got a 2:1 from a mediocre university you’re going to struggle to get a training contract. And you’ll almost certainly not get a pupillage. (Note that it’s a different matter if you got a first.)
Perhaps this assessment is a little jarring, but in this still very difficult graduate job market — where many firms continue to cut training contract numbers — it’s undeniably true.
Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. Every year a handful of graduates of lesser universities with unremarkable grades manage to secure a foothold in the legal profession because they have something remarkable about them.
In many cases it’s — depressingly — lawyer parents whose remarkable connections open up doors. But other times the graduate shows remarkable persistence/charm/good timing and somehow edges into a coveted job ahead of one of the many students who look better on paper.
At present there is a big collective gripe among City law firms about graduates’ perceived lack of commercial awareness — opening the door, in theory, for wannabes to impress with eye-catching entrepreneurial gestures.
It’s this capacity to hustle which the De Montfort law graduate (pictured above) seems to be attempting to demonstrate in his recent attempt to find work outside Cannon Street Tube station in the City of London.
The same applies to UWE law graduate Bilal Rauf (pictured below), who tried a similar trick at Chancery Lane Tube station in September.
We have been unable to identify the De Monfort graduate — whose picture was tweeted by Venner Shipley IP lawyer Birgit Clark — but Rauf, who spoke to Legal Cheek about his quest for work earlier this year, still seems be jobless, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Fees for the LLB courses at De Montfort and UWE are both £9,000-a-year. If more of their graduates keep taking to the streets to beg for jobs they may have to take another look at those prices …