National Careers Week 2016 2016 Digital Magazine | Page 28

Lawyer In The Making Aspiring Barrister Rebecca Morgan talks about her personal journey becoming a Lawyer. A great read and resource for any students thinking of pursuing a career in law during National Careers Week Growing up I always knew that I wanted to be a Barrister, and this was confirmed even more when I was able to undertake work experience whilst at school. Sadly, you can’t really undertake work experience with Barristers whilst at school but I was able to do a lot of work with solicitors (it was a brilliant experience, but I still wanted to be a Barrister). My route to studying law was not as straight forward as I imagined it would be. I envisaged sitting my A Levels and heading off to study law at one of the universities I had visited such as Warwick, Durham or a few of the London based ones. Sadly, I ended up not being at school much during my A Levels, so whilst having pretty decent GCSEs, my A Levels were not as expected due to being ill. Instead of giving up, I persevered, and re-worked my route to studying law. I had two choices, re-sit my A Levels and take two years doing that, or sit a Foundation Law Degree and then study law part time and I made the decision to do the latter. I am very lucky that I sat my Foundation Law Degree at The University of West London, and then my LLB at The University of Hertfordshire. I had a lot of exposure to participating in extra curricular activities, building up legal contacts and working on advocacy skills. Whilst at Hertfordshire, I still did a lot by myself, that included undertaking mini-pupillages, sitting in court, working in law firms, setting up my law blog, and lots more. I spent, and still do spend, a lot of time just sitting in courts and listening. I am fortunate that London is on my doorstep and I have lots of courts to sit in on, and one of my favourites is The Royal Courts of Justice as well as being able to walk around the Inns of Court. I am a member of Middle Temple.