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Originally Posted by Unregistered
Had a few friends like that. Usually it turned out one of two ways. One, you apply to hundreds of jobs, get no response, then literally give up and change degrees or try to work in another field.
Two, you get all and any vaguely law-related job possible to boost your resume. Usually courtroom staff ,like typists, or as a legal secretary, or even multi-year intern. Once your resume is sufficiently bolstered, the place you've been working at to prove your steel might make you a full lawyer, or you'll find a job elsewhere in a small to average-sized firm.
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That’s the nature of a law degree. With the exception of litigation, a law degree has little, if not no value, to corporate work in a law firm. Unlike medicine where a medical doctor is held in very high regard regardless of the class of Honours (simply because medicine doesn’t make that distinction), law is very image / reputation driven. Top clients only want to pay top dollar to a law firm that has a string of top Ivy League/Oxbridge lawyers.
In short, if you come from a third rated university, you should either quit or go do a LLM from an Ivy League / Oxbridge but bear in mind that recent admission pattern shows you need to be top 5% of cohort for LLB and multiple prizes for postgrad law in Oxbridge. Even so this is no guarantee. I’ve seen top first class getting rejected by Oxbridge. Harvard admission is slightly less academic based and has more flexibility.
Other than that, if you have a lot of money and are thinking of going overseas, do medicine. It’s a more secure career. Alternatively try applying for postgrad medicine if your law career doesn’t work out.
Law is so reputation based and so much emphasis is placed on brand name/ glamour and prestige that it’s very hard to do well in the industry without outstanding academics.