Which would make me more appealing to law firms: an LLM at UCL or an MSc at King's?

[ninadeoliveira]

Hey all!

My name's Nina, I'm an foreign qualified lawyer (graduated in the end of 2019) from a non common law country who aspires to become a lawyer and practice in the UK. A few months ago I posted here asking for help with my personal statement, and you guys helped me so much! 💕

I know that as a foreign qualified lawyer, I could just sit the SQE and become a solicitor, but I think going to uni first will make me more employable and a lot more confident as a future solicitor or barrister, so this is the route I chose.

I'm super happy because I got into both King's and UCL, but I'm also torn between the two.

The King's programme I applied for is called Law & Professional Practice, it's a MSc (not an LLM), lasts 2 years and will teach me the basics of England and Wales' law. It will basically teach me how to lawyer in the UK.

The programme I applied for at UCL is the general LLM, so I get to choose what modules I want to study - it lasts 1 year and it won't teach me the basics of UK law or prepare me for the SQE.

UCL is higher than King's on the rankings, and I think an LLM would sound better than a MSc on my CV.

However, I'm really worried I'll not know the basics and I don't know how on earth I can practice law without knowing the foundations.

From your point of view, which would be the smart decision? I am all by myself on this and I have no one to ask, so any advice and insight you can give me will be greatly appreciated. 💕💕💕

Thank you so much!

Ps: these are the links to the programmes' pages:

Law & Professional Practice - King's College London

The MSc Law & Professional Practice is a two-year postgraduate degree, with the first year available as a stand-alone Postgraduate Diploma.

www.kcl.ac.uk

Master of Laws (LLM)

On the Master of Laws (LLM) programme at UCL Laws, you’ll be joining a community of some of the brightest and most ambitious graduate students from all over the world.

www.ucl.ac.uk

 

[Stasis]

In all honesty, neither. LLMs are pointless when it comes to recruitment - don’t waste your money.

 

[Jessica Booker]

This will echo some of the points from both threads on this but:

Either course will give you easier access to the U.K. job market, not because they make your application stronger, but because they give you rights to work in the U.K. out of term time and give you the option to then pursue a postgraduate visa.

As mentioned in other posts, they also buy you time to apply for vacation schemes (although these can be tricky depending on your term dates) and TCs. But put frankly, this is probably one of the most expensive ways you can buy this time.

Neither course will really give you the practical skills to succeed as a lawyer in the U.K.. This will really only come with experience as a trainee. However, they could give you further knowledge of the English legal system which could be helpful with passing the SQE - however the more specialist the course, the less transferable that knowledge will be.