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Law (HE): Employability & Get Certified

What is Employability?

Employability is all about developing transferable 'soft' skills that will be essential in your future career.  These include the ability to communicate confidently in written and spoken form; to problem solve, work as a team, keep up-to-date with legal developments, be familiar with the legal profession, and take responsibility for your own knowledge and training.  The following resources will provide you with the tools to support you in improving these skills. 

Useful Library Books

Get Certified

The aim of the certification schemes are to provide you with a certificate that proves to employers that you have reached a level of competence in the legal databases. 

The Westlaw page also include very good tutorials on Getting Started, finding Primary Law and finding Secondary Sources, and an Advanced Westlaw tutorial.  

Westlaw - Basic & Advanced Certification tutorials and tests

Certification | UK Law Student | Legal Solutions UK | Thomson Reuters

 

Watch this to see how real life lawyers find cases

Commercial Awareness and the Legal Workplace

It is useful to develop a sense of the legal market while you are at university.  Commercial Awareness is about understanding how a legal firm operates as a business, awareness of the legal market; and understanding of client needs.  You may want to research the key firms in the area of the law that you wish to practice, or read about changes in the profession. The library provides access to a number of sources of this information.

  • LexisLibrary provides access to New Law Journal which includes news about law firms. 
  • Use Westlaw UK to research firms and people. Each Case Analysis document lists the names of counsel and solicitors' firms representing the different parties.
  • The Legal Week website includes information on the major law firms such as the latest news, statistics and interviews. Legal Week is also available on General OneFile.
  • This blog post on Demystifying commercial awareness for law students from an LLB undergraduate at London University may also give you some ideas. 
  • Law Careers.net always has good articles and advice including this blog post on Commercial Awareness

Legal Blogs

LCN Handbook 2023

The Handbook contains crucial information for students interested in a career in law, including:

  • comprehensive information on how to become a solicitor or barrister;
  • advice on getting work experience, making applications and interviews;
  • directories featuring 5,000 training contract opportunities from more than 800 law firms and 390 pupillages from 190 barristers’ chambers; and
  • profiles of 40 lawyers working in key practice areas.