‘The skills to be persuasive’

The popularity of TV shows and films such as Suits and Legally Blonde made the idea of a career in legal affairs an enticing option for many prospective students.

While a career in the field is not, in reality, as dramatic and explosive as the shows portray, those from within the sector say they are still an excellent degree option for many people.

Dr Sarah Hamill, director of undergraduate teaching and learning in the School of Law at Trinity College Dublin, says the area of study results in a very broad understanding of the world.

“In addition to learning what the law is, they also learn how to analyse the law and how it shapes society and how society shapes the law,” she says. “It is a really great way of understanding society, government, politics, because they are structured by law and they engage with law in different ways.”

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Dr Hamill says there are transferable skills taught throughout the course, including research, writing, critical thinking and public speaking.

“Attention to detail is a particular skill that law students will pick up, just given the importance of getting the law correct,” she added.

“And obviously, they’ll pick up the skills to be persuasive and their reasoning skills will be enhanced. These are all vitally important skills in a range of industries, not just in the legal profession.”

Graduates from law courses are always sought after due to the universally applicable skills that are taught throughout the degree.

There is the solicitor or barrister route, with most graduates tending to gravitate towards becoming a solicitor.

“They also have to remember that not every solicitor does the same thing,” Dr Hamill says.

“You have the high street family solicitor, you have the solicitor in a large, corporate law firm, possibly an international law firm, you would also have inhouse counsel. There’s a range of roles for solicitors themselves.”

According to Dr Hamill, a lot of these skills are particularly relevant to business, journalism and the civil service.

“While students tend to think of a law degree as leading to a solicitor or a barrister, there are other career pathways open,” she says.

Charity work

Plenty of Trinity’s graduates have gone on to work as policy developers in charities, working in the European Union or in research roles, she adds.

And for those who complete a degree in law, the earning potential is very positive.

According to Grad Ireland, newly qualified solicitors can earn about €40,000, with those in the Dublin region having the potential to earn up to €10,000 more than that.

Barristers are self-employed, which means they often work long, unsociable hours, particularly in the early years of your career.

However, Grad Ireland says it can be a very lucrative career for some people, as income is decided by fees rather than a regular salary.

As a result, earnings can be low during the first few years, but experienced barristers earn €55,000-€110,000 a year, with top earners capable of making more than €280,000 a year.

There are a variety of places to study law in Ireland, and many different ways of going about it.

General law degrees are available at NUI Galway, Maynooth University, TU Dublin, Trinity, UCD, WIT, IT Carlow and Letterkenny IT, while UCC’s Law Pathways programme allows students to tailor their own law programme with placement and study-abroad options.

DCU’s Law and Society degree explores how law influences – and is influenced by – a diverse range of social forces so, as well as learning about the core legal principles, students learn to reflect critically on how they are shaped.

There are a number of popular combinations with law, including law and business, law and arts, and law with a language.

But often the CAO points requirement for law courses can be on the higher scale. The single-honours law course in Trinity last year required 589 points, while the law degree from UCD required 576 points.

However, like most courses, they were affected by the pandemic-related grade inflation that pushed up points requirement. Previously, in 2019 for example, the UCD course points requirement was 522.

Business

Another very popular area of study is business. About one in every six applicants to the CAO seeking a college place in a level 8 degree lists a business programme as their first choice, second only in popularity to arts.

Business degrees constitute a broad umbrella term that actually encompasses a wide range of subjects, business degrees are not as specific as one might think.

According to Prof Brian Harney, the course chairman for the new Digital Business and Innovation programme in DCU, when people think of business, they often picture abstract buildings or faraway companies.

“One message we try to get across is that business and the way organisations are organised and work impacts everything you do, whether that’s school, hospitals, your experience in a shop,” he says. “Businesses aren’t necessarily over there. They’re everywhere.”

The wide variety of businesses means there are also many options when it comes to courses.

There’s general business, of course, but there’s also human relations, economics, management, marketing, accounting and finance.

In recent years there’s also been a move towards global business due to the increasingly interconnected nature of the world. These degree courses give students an opportunity to have a year abroad, or also learn a language while at university.

In fact, a quick search on the Qualifax.ie website shows there are more than 330 level 8 business courses on offer in the country.

Students get a broad, foundational taste of all of them and then they can decide which area within the sector they would like to specialise in in the latter years of their degree.

That wide variety is why, Prof Harney says, they are rising in popularity.

“Unless you’re doing something like dedicated accounting and finance where you have a dedicated career, it really opens up the doors for you to a range of different areas,” he says.

“We find students really benefit from the work placement. That sort of solidifies if they’re actually interested in the domain or not. A student might decide to do marketing and come back from the placement and decide it isn’t for them, and switch into HR.”

The way in which the world of work is changing and evolving to a more digital-focused environment is also another reason why business is front and centre.

“There is the idea that digital skills are ubiquitous. The digital skills are sort of interlaced in everything we do in terms of undergrad business,” says Prof Harney.

“For people, leaving a business degree, there’s a sense of confidence that there’s markets and opportunities out there. They may shift, move and the market may change, but there will be constant opportunity. The end result might be more obvious.”

The points for business degrees can vary significantly depending on the university and the programme itself.

General business in DCU last year had a minimum point requirement of 511, while business studies in University of Limerick was 450 CAO points.

In contrast, a level 8 business course on the Athlone campus of the Technological University of the Shannon required 309 points last year.