Marcuss

Anyhow I've just realised I failed to answer your question. The answer is
1. Undergraduate degree - 3 years
2. Postgraduate degree - 1 year - certainly not essential but it's an option and gives you an extra feather in your cap
3. Law conversion course - 1 year - not neccesary if you've done a Law degree
4. Bar School - 1 year
5. Pupillage - 1 year - an apprenticeship at a barristers' chambers
6. Get a tenancy - ie you get taken on permanently by a barristers' chambers (most likely the place where you did pupillage).

So it's a minimum of 5 years from school to being a fully-fledged barrister. I took a bit longer because I took a year out before Uni (went to the cricket world cup in Australia!) and did a one-year postgraduate degree.

What matters far more than the subject you study is your degree result. And just as important, try to involve yourself in extra-curricular things. The sorts of things that will be useful on your CV are things showing an interest and ability in advocacy (eg debating competitions, mooting competitions, student politics or representation); a willingness to go into bat for other people (student representation, counselling etc); things which demonstrate leadership; things that show that you are self-motivated and a "self-starter".

I don't think that the subject you do matters much. However if you do Law, you will not need to do the additional one-year conversion course. Barristers' Chambers who are recruiting pupils will not think "ah, he did history so he wasn't committed to Law at age 17 when he decided what course to take."
Do what suits you - what you find interesting, and what you will be good at.

I went to Oxford where I studied law. There are more ways than one to go about it though: plenty of barristers didn't go to Oxbridge, and plenty didn't study law. In fact there's a big school of thought that it's best not to do a law degree, as doing another subject will allow you to broaden your horizons and the academic study of law as a degree course doesn't necessarily serve as a useful training for actual practice in law.

Anyhow if you've any questions or would like any advice about a career as a barrister, feel free to ask.

What AS levels are you doing? Will you go on to do A-levels after that?

Yes mate - I'm a barrister specialising in employment and discrimination law. And you?
Tom

Cheers. Be there presently. :-)

Want a senior FTP Friendly in about a months time? I've got a series going ATM.

it is indeed, to be honest i'm surprised by how quickly my turn keeps coming up

Pretty much yeah

Last time my team was England-dominated but I had a few like Bevan, Ahmed in there. Will see what I can muster together this time.

Thanks for the alerts.

You're up, just picked KP

Impressive that, mate

I'm intrigued, if it wasn't because of what I said then how did you wind up doing AS Maths already? Or don't you want to say? No worries if not like

Just in case I forget...good luck for Thursday!

Wow, that's really good, if you do all six and get a high grade in the majority of them then you will really make yourself a strong candidate for the very top universities. A mate of mine did six in total too and now he's at Oxford, or at least he was, I think he may even have finished now.

Yeah indeed, most places don't acknowledge General Studies as a full A level, and ones that do you should probably steer clear of (IMO anyway), but it doesn't hurt to have it, and tbh, after you do the AS level you could turn up and sit the A2 exam and get an A without having learnt anything about it (which is what I did, haha).

But yeah, take your time and enjoy it, I remember my 6th form days very fondly, and though I wouldn't go back even if I could, I think in some ways it was a lot more fun than uni.

Haha, yeah, as good as the social scene maybe in certain places, you seem to have the right idea in putting that behind the actually getting of the degree, which is the more important issue, or at least it would be for me anyway.. On a serious note though, if you get the chance to do general studies I would do it imo, I know most places don't consider it as such, but it's pretty much an extra A grade for free, and it will set you apart from someone who doesn't have it. Also if you can hack it, then don't drop a subject after you do your AS levels, I kept going with all 4 of mine and general studies and felt I could have done more, though obviously how much is right for each person will vary a lot.

Don't suppose you go to Truro College do you? I'm guessing not as you said "6th form", but just thought I'd ask, I have a few friends who go/went there, though they mainly live in the Penzance area.

Oh, and yes, I do plan on travelling out there after I have finished my degree, forgot to answer your initial question there lol.

Oh, and as for Japanese, it's just a part of the world I've been fascinated by since I was quite young. I just enjoy everything about the culture and the mystique of the place, and I'd love to experience something dramatically different from the UK, should be interesting times ahead..

Yeah defo worth a visit if nothing else, a degree from Cambridge would be an amazing thing to have, esspecially one in Law! But yeah, I'm sure you'll soon start getting talks etc.. on which universities you would like to and be given all the prospectuses and all that stuff, which is good, just take your time to look over all of them and see which ones you like the look of best.

I'm not sure what York's law department is like, but it's certainly a well regarded Uni, and a nice town as well, not an easy journey from Cornwall mind you, but that's hardly the crux of the matter! And yeah, you have a good spread of A Level Subjects, all of which are well respected by the Universities, so if you get the grades you want then you can pretty much dictate where you end up!

Cont....

apparently about three times as much certain other subjects require (or so i'm told), but if you are the kind of person who does a lot of essay based subjects like History, English etc... and are quite good at them, I wouldn't have thought you'd have too much trouble doing it, certainly if you already have an interest in the subject. The hardest thing is actually getting the grades to get into the uni you want to, if you can do that then you're away.

Which Universities are you looking at?

I'm just about to embark on my second year, am learning Japanese this year as well so balancing the two will be interesting I'm sure.

The degree is great though, I've really enjoyed it so far. Unfortunately all of my subjects this year are meant to be the really tedious ones that everyone hates, so I'm not much looking forward to those. But in the third year I get to pick whichever subjects I like, and there are some really interestings ones like Medical Law, Environmental Law and Human Rights Law which I'm really looking forward to doing. Though I'm sure which subjects you get to do will vary from university to university. It's not the easiest subject, and does require a fair bit of work,