peripathetic

Legal Aid crisis?
Or just unrealistic expectations from law graduates? UK Citizens' Advice Bureaux are in a panic because they can't find enough trainee solicitors to provide legal aid to poorer citizens. This is becase only a small percentage of trainee solicitors are considering a career in the field. These young solicitors are 'deterred by student debt and poor pay'.

25,000 pounds a year is poor pay?! Listen, boys and girls. When I started off as a journalist in London, I had student debt and bank debt and was paid 12,500 gross. *That* was poor pay. Especially for London. But here in Northern Ireland, that salary would be quite alright for even a junior civil servant.

Law graduates have been told by their schoolteachers and professors that they 'should' get a salary of around 40,000 quid. And the survey the linked article cites shows that they've been told this so much, they believe that they'll get it with nothing more than a mortarboard.

Perhaps they should take a look at reality which dictates that you start your career on lower pay than you'll get when you've been working for a while. I certainly don't think that 25,000 is bad pay, even in London, and when you know you'll be getting anything upwards of 40-45,000 when you hit a large commercial firm... they should really stop groaning. Especially when legal representation for those who are *really* poor is at stake.