Hello everyone,

I am a Polish qualified lawyer with 5-6 years legal professional experience in international law firms based in Warsaw, Poland, including 2 years of PQE. For personal reasons I am considering moving to UK and would like to continue my legal career in UK. My plan is to enroll for one of the LLM programs in London and simultaneusly qualify as a solicitior via QLTT. What chances in your opinion I have for securing myself a job in London (of course as a lawyer) after completing LLM and passing QLTT exams? Is LLM increasing my chances? I would be grateful for any comments you may have on this subject.

Clearly we are in recession and the UK legal job market is tougher than a few years ago. However, with a degree of organisation and focus good jobs can be secured. Major city law firms still have a significant demand for capable young lawyers.

I would make the following initial observations: Subject focus. Are you interested or following any specific area of law? This can help. For instance, one of my specialist areas is antitrust law. There is a compelling career path for capable young lawyers. Take an LLM in competition law, obtain a stage in DG Competition (or an equivalent post in national agencies) and seek a position in a competition law unit of a major firm or an agency. Some of my students have followed that path successfully. Similar career paths exist for specific subject areas such as Maritime and Energy Law.

My second observation would be to recognise that London is the world's greatest legal centre and that young lawyers should grasp it with both hands. Not just will they learn a lot but there are enormous networking opportunities across the capital. For instance, join BIICL www.biicl.org the British Institute of International & Comparative Law. They have probably the largest number of lectures, seminars and conferences on commercial law running anywhere in the world. By joining BIICL you can learn an enormous amount over a year about current commercial law issues. In addition, you meet a very large number of commercial lawyers who can provide some insight into the state of the legal market in the UK. It only costs £25 to join and gives you free or discounted access to most of their seminars and lectures.

I hope the above information is of help.

Professor Alan Riley
Director LLM Programme
City Law School
City University
Grays Inn
London
Electronic Mail: alan.riley.1@city.ac.uk
www.flickr.com/photos/citylawschool/sets/721576199

Dear Alan,

Thank you very much for your reply. At the moment my major specialisation are M&A deals although I do bits and pieces of other work too. I was considering following that path and attending LLM in corporate/commercial or international business law. Of course I realise this is a very competitve area. I had a look at BIICL website and I will definately join it as it sounds very interesting and hopefully this will give me some further insight into current UK legal market condition.

Once again thank you for you reply and advice.

All the best