Despite facing a number of challenges in the wake of Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic, the legal market is currently experiencing its highest level of spend optimism in the last five years.
Overall, the percentage of UK legal buyers saying that they’re forecasting growth in their total spend saw a huge increase of late, especially in areas such as regulatory compliance.
As for recruitment, there remain plenty of opportunities for aspiring lawyers in the UK. But what type of law would you like to practice? We’ll explore your options below!
What Are the Benefits of Becoming a Lawyer?
Interestingly, one of the main benefits of becoming a lawyer is the wide and diverse selection of career options on offer, with several fields having experienced significant growth of late.
From regulatory compliance and criminal prosecution to conveyancing and family law, there are numerous areas of specialty on which you can focus. There’s also the personal injury and medical negligence sectors, which represent fast-growing markets that we’ll explore a little further in the next section.
Of course, regardless of your choice of legal field, working as a solicitor is highly rewarding from a financial perspective too. While your precise remuneration will depend on factors such as your chosen field and the location in which you work, the median gross salary for private practice, full-time solicitors is £62,000 per annum.
Even lawyers who are just starting out will earn an average of £30,000 per year, while trainees can bank approximately £21,024 every year.
Working as a lawyer can also be mentally stimulating and challenging, while there are significant emotional rewards in instances where you’re able to work in a niche in which you’re passionate.
Exploring Personal Injury as a Speciality
The personal injury market in the UK remains relatively nascent, especially when compared to fields like conveyancing and family law.
This was also borne out of the ‘no win, no fee’ revolution of the late 1990s, when changes to the law and the emergence of a more litigious culture (first observed in the US) created a vehicle through which people injured in an accident that wasn’t completely their fault could pursue compensation in a risk-free manner.
As of 2020, the personal injury market was worth a staggering £3.92 billion in the UK, and while this number stagnated slightly during the pandemic, it remains a popular and competitive field in law. With the number of no win, no fee medical negligence claims having also increased since 2005, the demand for lawyers within this space also remains relatively high.
This is certainly a viable option for aspiring lawyers in 2022, particularly those who have a passion of level of existing knowledge in healthcare and understand concepts such as clinical negligence or malpractice.
However, we’d always recommend comparing the available niches before you complete your studies, so that you can tailor your higher education accordingly and kickstart your career in the right way.
