Your Future Career
An amazing start to your career
Setting your sights on a high flying career? Nottingham Law School is the perfect place to start. One of the biggest law schools in the UK, we have an outstanding reputation, links with some of the world's best legal firms and other graduate employers.
Your degree is just the start, and the Law School is here to support you as your career develops:
- Our careers experts help you to secure training contracts and pupillages and graduate jobs.
- Our practitioner courses help you stay up-to-date in the years ahead.
Whatever you want from your career, Nottingham Law School is here to help with all the support, skills and experience you need to make it happen.
Dedicated Employability Team
Nottingham Law School has a dedicated Employability Team which provides students with as much guidance and assistance as possible in their search for a training contract, pupillage, and graduate career. Support is offered from undergraduate level and increases as students progress onto our professional courses.
In the most recent Graduate Outcomes Survey:
- 95% of LLM LPC graduates (Full-time and part-time) were in some form of employment.
- 91% of LLM LPC (Full-time and part-time), plus GDL (Full-time and part-time) graduates were in some form of employment.
At Nottingham Law School our dedicated Employability Team can provide the following support:
- careers seminars dedicated to training contract, pupillage applications, graduate training schemes and interview techniques
- workshops delivered by practitioners from regional and national firms, chambers and the judiciary
- individual presentations by international and regional practices, and chambers seeking to recruit trainees and pupils
- advice on the most appropriate combination of elective subjects
- access to a specialist careers consultant and a dedicated careers tutor within the Law School to review training contracts, pupillage, placement, and vacation scheme applications and formulate individual career plans
- regular updates about training contract, pupillage and paralegal opportunities
- interview preparation service, including mock interviews
- a mentoring scheme supported by law firms including Eversheds, Geldards and Shoosmiths to provide support and guidance on what to expect from life in the legal profession
- a law fair
Legal careers
These are broader than the training in, for example, interviewing, research, and drafting skills that your course provides. In addition to these, employers will be looking for evidence of the practical skills that are required in all effective lawyers, such as problem-solving, communication, organisation, working under pressure to deadlines, team working, interpersonal skills, and presentational skills. Your time at Nottingham Law School can be used to develop a portfolio of these professional skills.
Employers will take for granted your knowledge of the core and compulsory subjects. What will start to make you more distinctive is your choice of PGDL Research Project and LLM LPC or LLM BTC electives – they will be an integral part of showing a firm or chambers why you are particularly interested in them.
There is no substitute for this, whether in private practice with a law firm, in the public sector with the Government Legal Service (GLS), a local authority, a magistrates' court, or the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS); in a voluntary organisation with a Law Centre or Citizens' Advice Bureau, in chambers, or marshalling with a judge. Please visit LawCareers.Net to find out about vacation placements with law firms and pupillagegateway.com for information on mini-pupillages
There are quite a number and variety of sources. Some will be more useful than others, but you should use as many as you feel your needs require. The sites for advertised vacancies include LawCareers.Net, Chambers and Partners and Prospects, while for non-advertised vacancies there is The Law Society of England and Wales for the firms authorised by the Law Society to offer traineeships.
As with applications for training contracts, it will be essential to target your applications for pupillage.
The source for these is the Pupillage Gateway, although you may be directed by some chambers to apply via their websites.
Graduate careers
Not every law student wants to become a solicitor, barrister, legal executive, or professional paralegal. Instead you may want to use your Law degree to enter the broader graduate job market, and have identified the career that will best suit your skills, experiences and knowledge.
Besides the legal profession, Law graduates can consider a wide range of careers that are law-related, including:
- law and the community (for example, the police, prison service, probation service, social work and trading standards)
- law and the individual (for example, patent agency and estate agency work)
- law and employment (for example, human resource management, and retail management)
- law and finance (for example, accountancy, banking, revenue and customs, insurance, and tax consultancy)
- law and client / customer service (for example, legal publishing, legal recruitment consultancy, management consultancy, and retail management).
There are also other careers in the broader graduate job market, whether in:
- the public sector (for example, the Civil Service, Local Government, NHS management)
- commerce and industry (for example, general management, marketing, public relations, and sales).
The next question is - where to find those jobs? The good news is that there are many sources and you should use as many as are relevant and useful to maximise your chances of being successful.
- NTU Employability’s online vacancy portal: MyEmployability
- the Prospects national universities' careers website
- Large national job search sites such as Indeed and Target Jobs
- The Times top employers
- Graduate Recruitment Fairs: these take place online or in-person at universities around the country; full details are available on the Prospects website.
- Recruitment Agencies Agency Central is well worth using to identify suitable agencies and graduate opportunities.
- Professional organisations: some produce their own vacancy lists, and details are also available on the Prospects website.
What our students say
"The brilliant events held by the employability team have broadened my understanding of the legal profession immensely."
Akil Hunte
“If the opportunities presented to you by the University are properly utilised, they have the potential to have a significant impact on your future prospects.”
During his time at NTU, Christian was mentored by a KC who provided invaluable feedback and advice on things like pupillage and non-law related activities. Arranged by NTU’s employability team, the mentoring advice continued years after Christian graduated and remains thankful for the support offered by the Nottingham Law School.