Law is a popular and competitive course at university. Other than the traditional barrister and commercial law routes, there are certainly non-legal opportunities you may delve into after university. But before that, there are a few tips I would give for those who are looking into applying for law at LSE.

Work experience

It is of course amazing if your personal statement has legal work experience. There are many chambers and law firms that offer that, they specifically target state school educated, BAME and first-generation university students. Look up magic circle law firms (which are the top elite UK commercial law firms) such as Clifford Chance to explore their opportunities for high school students. Legal work experiences are good, but don’t completely dismiss non-legal work experience. For example, if you are able to work in a pub or a café, these are still amazing opportunities that would allow you to develop communication and teamwork skills!

Extra-curriculars

Consider joining your law or debating society at school. If there isn’t one, start one! You may gather like-minded students from your school or from your local area where you will be able to learn how to formulate arguments in a structured and confident manner. This also demonstrates to universities that you are enthusiastic in engaging in academic discussion.

Reading

There are plenty of books you can read out there. The Law degree at LSE does not require any specific A-Level subjects, which is why reading outside of your school curriculum is so important! There are plenty of reading lists out there on university websites I am sure you can find, so I am not going to repeat them here. What I suggest you do to prepare for an interview or to prepare for during the summer before you start law school would be to get a general understanding of core law modules. For examples, criminal, tort and contract law. Universities do not require you to know the law, but by reading about the most famous cases give you a general understanding of how law works, which would facilitate your logical reasoning at interviews or when you first start at university.

LNAT

I am sure you have heard of this name before, and if you haven’t, this is the aptitude test that is required by most law schools in the UK, including LSE, UCL, KCL, Oxford, etc. The test is meant to be difficult to distinguish candidates. You get 42 multiple choice questions that give you five options per question and an essay question. I remember being really frustrated when I was getting very low marks in my practice tests. You have to understand that that is normal, and the view is shared by many LSE Law students I have spoken to! Don’t worry if you are not acing it at the start, what you should or can do is to purchase the practice book. It is definitely worth the purchase. You should use the tactic of elimination in this test and never apply your own knowledge to answer the comprehension question. Also, bear in mind that the test will take place on a computer where you cannot annotate the texts, so maybe take that into account when taking practice papers! I suggest you plan essays and submit them to your teachers in school to review. I also suggest you share essay feedback on different questions with your peers, that way you can look at other people’s style of writing and consider arguments from another perspective.

I hope this blog post would be useful for those who want to do law, or are in the process of preparing. If I could go back in time and talk to my younger self, I would say don’t panic and don’t put yourself down if you don’t get the result you want the first time. You will gradually get better at debating, LNAT multiple choices and your essay writing. It will all work out in the end – best of luck!