Can I Become A Lawyer With A Criminal Record

The legal profession is a popular one with the potential to earn a large salary and have a secure career. The process of becoming a solicitor or barrister is fairly complicated and exceptionally competitive. If you can get the grades at school to study Law at university, you will need to spend four years before graduating, then a further year in a Legal Practice Course (LPC) before spending two years in a ‘training contract’ at a legal organisation (assuming you can get one). All this is very competitive from the outset and lends itself to recruiting the ‘best of the best’.

Students who had the best a-levels and got into the best universities get the best legal jobs. They will have outperformed their classmates and got involved with plenty of extra-curricular activities. Legal recruiters are looking for the best of the best and you need an impressive CV, so how will a criminal record look?

A criminal record can harm your chances of getting any job, depending on the severity so you could assume that the legal profession was no different. And you would be right! It can be difficult enough to get into university with a criminal record, let alone get a job so what do you need to do?

The answer is fairly simple, honesty! If you are up front and honest about your entire criminal record from the start it will help your chances, if you can prove you have changed and become a better person by providing evidence of personal development and possibly some authoritative character references might help too.

When in doubt, a university will do a background check and if you were lying all along, you will get you banned from all higher education applications. Employers are going to do a background check anyway so If you lie and when they discover you weren’t being honest, you’ll have no chance of getting a job.

Some offences will always be considered inappropriate for legal professionals but it does depend on the severity. If you had a caution from the police for drinking in a park, it may not matter but if you did 10 years for international drug smuggling you probably don’t stand a chance. Most young offenders’ institutes actively encourage education and will help you pursue a career in Law if you wish as well as a variety of education institutions.

In any circumstance you need to put everything out in the open from the very beginning and be prepared for uncomfortable character judgements every now and again. The simple answer is that if you can’t get in with your history, maybe Law is not the profession for you.

If you are looking for helpful legal recruitment then talk to Saccomann recruiters who recruit for the best lawyer’s jobs