Which one are you?
The one who’s wanted to be a corporate lawyer since they were three
Your mum and dad dressed you up in a ‘Future Lawyer’ baby grow as a joke and that’s where it all started. You might as well have skipped all of your schooling, and nursery for that matter, and gone straight for the training contract.
Law school is just yet another unnecessary, but unfortunately compulsory, stage in the process, and you will definitely succeed with flying colours. The 48 average in company law was just a blip — honest.
The Charlotte Proudmanite
You’re not here for the money or the power — you’re here because it’s the right thing to do. You started your personal statement with “law is the foundation of a moral and gentle society”, before going on to discuss all your impressive charitable achievements (you’ve signed a couple of Amnesty International petitions and bought a Big Issue once).
You love jurisprudence and family law, and probably did an open unit in social policy. The perks of the City mean nothing to you — you’re the face of social justice and that’s all that matters.
The BNOC
After a hangover-induced sign up session at the fresher’s fair you have taken on every position of responsibility that ever existed. You’re now law society president, environmental officer, captain of the football team, charities’ rep, and the leader of the debating society — and everyone knows it.
Sometimes the fame gets a bit too much for you and you find yourself swatting off your fans with your Dixon’s property law book, which you managed to nab for an extra few days because you’re friends with the librarian. You’ll get the biggest cheer at the graduation ceremony, and will probably try to high five the law school president as he gives you your degree.
The ruthless compartmentaliser
There’s just no middle way for you. Doing reasoned human things like eating and shopping have become too much. Now you only have time to study and, when that’s done, you spend the rest of your time doing things that make your mum cry.
You spend at least two hours a day smoking outside the library. You’ve spent your entire student loan on tattoos. You’re hungover every Sunday, and spend one night a term being scraped up off of the law ball floor, just after you tried to make out with one of your tutors.
Every other law student thinks you’re a mess, and that you’ll never make it through. But, mild drink problem aside, you’re there, 9am on the dot every morning, ready to learn about equitable remedies. You’ll get a first, much to the shock of your fellow lawyers, and you will deserve it.
The one who did law on a whim — and regrets it
UCAS deadline day was approaching and you panicked. You used to watch The Bill when you were younger so decided to have a punt on a law degree. You did no research and had no idea what you were getting yourself in for — and are living to regret your decision.
You’ve been trying to switch courses since your intro to contract law lecture but no one else would have you. Now you’re plodding away in the library nine to five with a broken soul and still no clue what a unilateral contract is.
The talker
You should really be at drama school, but your parents were having none of it and law school was your second best bet. You want all eyes on you at all times. You answer every question in every tutorial on every topic, regardless of whether or not you know the answer.
You stopped your criminal law lecturer mid-sentence to let the entire lecture theatre know that your best friend’s uncle got car-jacked when he was on holiday in the Maldives a few summers back, even though the lecture was on inchoate offences.
Your EU law tutorial group listened with bated breath as you recall, in painstaking detail, the time you lost your passport in Magaluf and had it out with a Spanish border control officer. In your spare time, you make appearances at am dram society events and, of course, love a good moot.
The human rights wannabe who decided to sell their soul
You walked into law school with your heart set on becoming the next Amal Clooney, but then went to a fancy Hogan Lovells dinner and everything changed. The free food and unlimited supply of pens were too good to resist, and now you’ve decided to ditch your human rights dreams and take on the City.
Pretend you have always wanted to be commercial lawyer all you like — you’re a total sell out.
The moderately intelligent bimbo/himbo
Somehow, and we don’t quite know how, you managed to make it the whole way to law school on luck, money and a few work experience placements daddy fixed up for you.
Now you’re here, you do little else but sit right by the library entrance fixing up your hair and making “trusts is so boring ): #lawstudentproblems” tweets, before heading over to seminars you haven’t prepared for to flirt with professors that are way too old for you.
The one who cries in exams
Law school is way too much for you. You do tutorial reading two weeks in advance but still don’t know your trusts from your powers. You smile your way through lectures and seminars, while worrying frantically about the enormity of the task before you. By exam time, the build up of pressure is just too much and you erupt like a tropical storm, showering your land law paper in a downpour of mascara.
The GDL trustafarian
If there’s anyone that can bring about world peace, it’s you. Yet you have realised that the 2:1 you managed to scrape in your history of art degree just won’t do. You want to become powerful, respected, a leader: you want to become a lawyer.
Your post-uni travels across Thailand and South America have opened your eyes to the big wide world and now it’s time for you to make a difference. If only the GDL wasn’t so hard…
The dead behind the eyes all-rounder
You do a lot of things, but you don’t do any of them particularly well. You’ve managed to scrape a 60 in all of your modules, while juggling your position at the pro bono clinic and keeping up appearances at the City networking events.
You have no real passion for anything, apart from padding out your CV until it’s so long it could rival Lloyd’s introduction to jurisprudence. You will perform moderately well during your training contract at a mid-tier firm and live a reasonably happy life.
The future Prime Minister
The king of commercial awareness — you know everything about everything and want everyone to know about it. You come to lectures in a full suit and have been in the Question Time audience more than once. You’re on first name terms with most of the chancery bar, and have lawyers queuing up to talk to you at networking events.
Even though you are only 19 you have a level of gravitas not found in most 50 year-olds. “‘Statesmanlike is an over-used adjective!” you once bellowed at Vince Cable during one of those BBCQT appearances, but you know with 100% certainty that it applies to you.
BNOC image by REW-Photography.