rugbymatt

Wow! Bicker central!

The advice you got to contact the universities is about the best you are going to get to be honest. Everyone on here will fight to be seen to be the most helpful and useful, but at the end of the day (god I hate that expression!) the only people who will be able to help are the people who train law students in Spain, THEY and they alone will know everything you need to know.

Welcome though, as already said, you will never be out of work for sure.

Rotor

Very true ,but I like winding up pricketman with his biased views and made up nonsense

JLFS

It is very easy to mix up the P and C top left bottom right.............

Fred James

Please can we leave out this personal stuff and get back to the original topic.

Lis48

European Union law permits EU citizens with a British LL.B. degree to practise anywhere in the EU, provided they have practised law in the UK for three or more years. You obviously still need to take the appropriate national licenses but do not need to start from scratch again.
My advice would be to take your law degree, qualify as a UK lawyer and then continue working in the UK for three years.
Then, transfer to Spain...or wherever you decide. It´s a long time ahead ...

STD

The problem with trying to qualify as a lawyer in the UK it is that it is so, so difficult to get the necessary training (I should know, it took me years to finally qualify). Obviously, it helps if you're young (straight out of college or uni.). However, there are loads of young people out there in the UK with good degrees who want to become lawyers - more than there are training places to fill. To become a solicitor, you need to pass the solicitors' Legal Practice Course ("L.P.C.") and then find a 2 year training contract. To become a barrister, you first need to get a place on the Bar Vocational Course ("B.V.C." - which is an art in itself and needs a special dab hand at applying and answering the questions on the application form in the right way - I found, anyway) and then you need almost mystical powers in finding a pupillage (rarer than hens' teeth, I'd say).

Personally, I qualified by firstly passing the B.V.C. and then, as someone who had just been Called to the Bar - without having managed to obtain pupillage - at the time I was still deemed by the English Law Society to be a 'qualified lawyer' and so could sit the old Qualified Lawyers Transfer Test ("Q.L.T.T."), which means just passing the Prof. Conduct & Accounts exams, and evidencing 2 years' practical legal work experience, and then transfer over the solicitors' profession. This at least meant that I could obtain an English lawyers' practising certificate and basically be recognised as a proper, practising lawyer before my Call to the Bar expired (it has 5 years' life). The Law Society are now changing this system at the end of August 2010, so that English-qualified Barristers who have not found and completed a Pupillage will not be eligible to transfer like this anymore.

However, you could always try and "travel shop" by transferring to some of the few jurisdictions that still recognise being Called to the English Bar and at least get yourself registered as a practising lawyer on some country's Roll (but, again, this must be done within the 5 year limitation period). Gibraltar, as far as I remember, recognises both Engish solicitors and barristers (well, as a British territory it would do: all their lawyers qualify over here) and has the advantage of not requiring its practising barristers to have undertaken Pupillage (although it's solicitors would be required to have found and undertaken the necessary training contract). You can apply to put your name on the Gibraltarian Roll of lawyers as soon as you're Called to the Bar - but you need to find an address in Gib. and you also need to pay annual insurance these days. Obviously, the attraction of this is that you are on some country's/territory's roll of lawyers. After 3 years, you can try and transfer back to the English Bar as a Common Law qualified lawyer. I understand that the new Law Society rules don't like applicants who have half-qualified in one country with a degree (say from the UK) and then travelled abroad to complete their professional qualification. Also bear in mind that it might/might not be difficult to transfer from Gibraltar to another European country as Gib. entered the E.U. under a different Treaty Article than the other "normal" members of the E.U.

There are a few other countries/coral atolls dotted around the world who still recognise the English Bar qualification, but I can't remember what they are. Australia may be useful: depends on what State you qualify in. Queensland, I think, recognises the English Bar qualification. However, you still need to sit a couple of extra Australian exams (e.g. Australian Constitutional Law); New South Wales, from memory, has the advantage of allowing students to qualify by long-distance learning (not surprising, really, considering the vast distances there), and your English Common Law degree would obviously be largely recognised over there, with perhaps just a few additional ones necessary. The USA is difficult: there are now only 2 states left which recognise non-USA law degrees - New York Bar + Californian Bar. New York Bar is a notoriously difficult exam to pass for foreign graduates and the California Bar requires you to have studied 4 years' full-time law (so that would mean an LLB + an MA).

The advantage of qualifying in Europe is obviously that, after 3 years of practice, you are eligible to transfer to any other E.U. jurisdiction but qualifying in most European countries is a pretty difficult process. However, as I understand it, Spain is one of the few/perhaps only places left in Europe where you can become a lawyer having just completed a law degree (although their law degrees take about 4-5 years to complete). So, foreign law graduates can apply to whichever local region they want to pratice from to get their law degree 'homologised' - i.e. accepted, and, if necessary, presumably told which extra exams they need to take. THE PROBLEM is that I strongly suspect that an English Common Law LLB law degree is going to be nothing like/nowhere near a Spanish law degree. So, you'd probably have to take virtually another law degree again to get accepted. A Scots law degree may be a little better (it is a different system up there, more based on on Continental Roman Law, but is something of a hybrid system, nevertheless), but I still suspect that there would be plenty of extra exams to sit. I also understand that Spain, in the near future, will be changing its system re. qualifying as a lawyer by requiring all new lawyers to sit a national bar exam.

Fred James

Wow - what a comprehensive post. Thank you.

However, after reading it, I think if I was that young I would seriously think about becoming a plumber!

VFR

Dentist !
A good modern switched on dentist earns some serious money nowadays for what is basically a mouth mechanic

jdr

Noooo not a plumber. Too much like hard work.

lynnxa

air traffic controller??!!