Law is by far the most employable degree, even for non-legal jobs

Everyone’s heard of transferable skills, the phrase hammered in at every single careers talk, but it looks like lawyers just happen to have more of them. At least according to a poll of 500 businesses from Marketing Minds which says grad employers prefer LLBs over all other degrees. Bosses praised ex-law students who went on to work in non-legal jobs, praising their “aptitude for learning”, as well as their “strong leadership and communication abilities”.

The real blow for arts students is that 89 per cent of graduate employers value some courses a lot more than others. Outside of extremely vocational degrees like Medicine and Dentistry.  Law is first. Business comes in second for obvious reasons. There’s just something about hour after hour of land law and memorising cases  which gives lawyers a “strong work ethic”. When a lawyer and a medic swapped lectures, law turned out to be much harder. The medic even found the lack of empathy difficult to deal with, which seems to be something corporate employers go for. Arts degrees like English and History were considered to be the worst, alongside Sports Science of course.

Worth it

Speaking to Legal Cheek, Author of “Is Law For You? and Solicitor Christopher Stoakes said:

“What this research shows is that a law degree is a passport to a wider range of careers and can be of great value to students regardless of whether they want to become lawyers. Students have tended in the past to choose law because they were thinking of becoming lawyers, but the number of training contracts on offer from law firms has dipped. However, a law degree is increasingly valued by employers more generally because of the transferable skills it provides. It teaches key employability skills such as analysis, reasoning, attention to detail and work ethic.”

Previously law was listed as the sixth most employable subject to do at uni, but this might have something to do with the lack of law jobs in the country. There are fewer training contacts than before the recession hit in 2008, but the number of people studying law at uni has actually gone up by nearly 30 per cent. When law students apply for non-legal jobs, they take everyone else to the cleaners.