How to be a Qualified Criminal Lawyer

My name is Tim Welsh. I'm a university law lecturer, a barrister and a law tutor at City Law Tutors, and I'm going to talk to you about how to find legal jobs. I'm going to talk to you about becoming a criminal lawyer. To become a criminal lawyer, you must first qualify as a lawyer, which will mean qualifying as either a barrister or a solicitor. For both barrister and solicitor, you must first do an academic stage of qualification. This will typically involve doing an LOB law degree or also known as a BA as you study in so for example, Oxford, or a graduate diploma in law. A graduate diploma in law is a one-year course used by people who have degrees but not in law to convert their degrees into a qualifying law degree. The qualifying law degree, whichever you take, must involve the studying of seven course subjects. For example, you will need to study contract law and the law of torts, land law and equity and trust, constitutional and administrative law, criminal law and also EU law, and you must also know something about the English legal system and the common law. So, criminal law is any but an aspect of the other subjects you will study in your law degree. The next stage in becoming a criminal lawyer would be to undertake the vocational stage training. You will have to do a one-year course which can be taken over two years part-time. Which course you take will depend on which brand of the profession you wish to go into. If you wish to join as a barrister, you will take the bar professional training course formerly known as the BVC or bar vocational course. This is a one-year course as is the solicitor route which is a one-year course known as the legal practice course or LPC. Whichever you choose to take, the course must be studied in part before you can go into the next stage in qualification which is the on-the-job training. The training stage in becoming a criminal lawyer will involve doing a two-year training contract if you are intending to be a solicitor in a solicitor's firm or a one-year pupillage in a barrister's chambers if you want to practice at bar. In any case, you will need to select a criminal law firm of solicitors if that's the area you want to practice and also if you're intending barristers, you must talk into chambers which practice criminal law. Once you have completed the professional part of your course, the on-the-job training whether a pupillage or a training contract, you will then be given a practicing certificate and you can then practice. If you're a barrister, you can undertake co-work or undertake instructions from solicitors representing lay clients. If you are a solicitor working in a solicitor's firm, you will often work in a team of other lawyers preparing cases which should then be given to barristers to fight in a court as the advocate. However in recent times, many solicitors are now doing their own advocacy in court learning solicitor advocates. In order to become a solicitor advocate, you must take another course known as the high rights of audience course and that will give you rights to practice in the court such as the trial court where most criminal trials take place. If you are thinking of qualifying as a criminal lawyer, we can help you do this. We specialize in training criminal lawyers in all the stages aforementioned. Call us or visit our website, www.citylawtutors.co.uk.