Hello and welcome to the state of your webinar on legal careers. My name is Sean Broken. I'm the commercial Director of Data Law and I'm in a unique position as I liaise and deal with our legal, see the procurement here at data, which means I need to have an overview of the different areas of law updates in each area of law, different qualifications in each area of law. It also means that I need to speak regularly with the regulatory bodies that monitor those different areas of all. For example, solicitors are monitored by the S. R. A. The solicitors regulatory authority and I liaise with them regularly. I have a annual meetings and also impromptu meetings with the S. R. A. I also deal with people like the the regulatory bodies like the Council of License conveyances, the cLc and a whole host of other partnerships and regulatory bodies, which allows me to understand the legal set the legal environments in it in its entirety, at a top level overview. So I can give insight into a lot of different areas that maybe you may not have thought of, that you can progress onto after undertaking this apprenticeship and I can also give insight into the different areas and their roots of qualifying. You may also see me throughout this course as I have special ISMs and management G. D. P. R. And cybersecurity. So what we're gonna cover in this webinar is first going to talk about the apprenticeship itself and what it means in terms of education, academic education and the doors that the apprenticeship is gonna open for yourself after completing it. Well then talk about moving from, apparently go roll into other roles such as a solicitor in the legal industry, we'll talk about the different areas of law and specialist pathways into those areas of law and as well as talking about the different careers that you could have within the legal industry, not gonna cover absolutely everything, this is just intended to give a top level overview of the most traditional pathways in law. However, there are multiple different areas that we're not going to cover, such as cost lawyers, complying specialists and so on. So hopefully after taking this webinar and attending here with me today, you'll have an idea of where you either want to specialize in or the general route that you want to go down after completing this apprenticeship. So it's important to note, first of all that as a paralegal. After completing this apprenticeship, you would be classed as a lawyer, you would have the academics to prove that you're a lawyer and you would be working in the legal industry. Part of this apprenticeship is the National Association of Licensed Paralegals Diploma level three, that is embedded in this apprenticeship, which would mean that you could register as a licensed paralegal with the not with not themselves after completing this apprenticeship, it also opens up a few different doors in terms of career progression, but in itself being a paralegal is a career, and so what it allows for you to do is be recognized academically and also allows your fame to recognize you as a Fiona, So you may already be undertaken fear learning tasks within the law firm, but your fare may not know that you are actually registered once you're registered as a licensed paralegal would actually be able to be built out at the same rate as a trainee solicitor. So this is the bill and recommendations from the legal aid agency. So if you're a legal aid funded law fare, um your firm would be familiar with this. And so here you can see training solicitors and paralegals, so you're actually available at the same rate as someone that has already undertaken a law degree and is undertaken for your work. So with that in mind, you may just want to progress further academically as a paralegal, you may not want to move and to, to take a step towards a different pathway, such as being a solicitor and if that's the case, there's many diplomas out there and the ones that we recommend for apparently is the level for National Association of Licensed paralegal Diploma. So here you can see this diploma or certificate and award is included within your um apprenticeship. It's embedded as part of the materials of your apprenticeship and assessments in your apprenticeship, but the level for the prior matt is the next step after taking this level three with ourselves and there's more information there. This slide has clickable links so you can go through and read that further if that's the sort of path you wish to stay on. Okay, so just to cover some legal jargon, paralegals as you will already know, work within the law fan, but fairness or people within the law firm that the level, legal services that are available and paralegals are actually classed as lawyers. The term lawyer can be used for anyone in general that worked in a law firm and provides any sort of legal service. So, for all intensive purposes after this apprenticeship, you are a lawyer and you could also be a Fiona. It's important to note, however, the differences between paralegals and other members within the legal environments and so I've included this year. So this is written, this is an article written by Amanda Holden's. So, Amanda Hambleton, who is the Director of the National Association of Licensed paralegal and it's quite handy. It says the things that you can do and reserved activities that you can't do as a paralegal and one of them is the rights of audience. So you wouldn't be able to go to court and attend court, but you could help a solicitor prep the paperwork to go to court and you could also help them back and forth with the clients. You could help give advice to the clients, etcetera, you shouldn't represent yourself as a solicitor in any way and but you, you're more than welcome to represent yourself as a paralegal or as a lawyer working as a paralegal. Okay, so educational levels, you would have heard that this is a level three paralegal apprenticeship, but what does that really mean academically? That means that this apprenticeship and the deployment embedded in this apprenticeship is equivalent to sit in your A levels and as such, provides the same entrance requirements and entrance abilities that set new levels would provide. So, for example, we'll talk about universities and going on to go to university after taking this. This apprenticeship would allow you to go to university without necessarily having to take A levels. So, you see there, I mentioned the level for now, diploma, which will be classed in the terms of higher education. Level four might be class level four and five classes, say a foundation degree, whereas level six is right up to the level of degree. So if we think of it this way, level three, the level that you guys are doing that is equivalent to the entrance requirements to get to university. If we were talking about the traditional group of qualifying, the level four would be the first year of university. Level five would be the second year of university, and level six would be the final year of a three year university degree. So, a level six is equivalent to a degree and a level seven would be equivalent to doing a postgraduate. Also sometimes called the Masters, when a post graduate is a level seven. And those the equivalence is. So it's important to know that because you're gonna want to know what route to take after this level three. And so you're gonna be looking for a level four or higher. And so we've covered paralegals and we talked about progressing as a paralegal in a term. Right? But what if after taking this apprenticeship, you wanted to progress into doing other things with high rights such as becoming a solicitor? Well it used to be that you would have to go to university and you would have to get some sort of law degree and then you would go ahead and do your postgraduate often an L. P. C. Then you would do two years of training with with a law firm doing a training contract and then you would apply to the S. R. A. Now that was scrapped in 2016. And so the great news is that anyone that has a law degree now, you guys are gonna have to go through the exact same process as then. And And that would be the solicitor's qualification exam. So after doing this level three you could then move on to either go into a university and taken university degree to get an llB. And as mentioned this apprenticeship can act as some of the entrance requirements needed to get on to a university degree or you can go on to do a solicitor apprenticeship. Now the great thing about doing this parallel apprenticeship is it's two years of qualified training. So you already have the first requirement that you need in order to take the solicitors qualifying example. But what you also need is a level six equivalent or a degree. So that's why we're going to talk about these next two routes. The SQL solicited qualify qualifying exam or qualification exam is broken into two parts, the SQ one, which is a multiple choice exam or exam because there's two exams within the S. Q. One and the S. QE two, which is a oral exam. Now you could complete this apprenticeship and move on and find a university such as University of Law and go through their entrance criteria to see if you qualify to be allowed onto their llB and all that will degree as mentioned here, you don't need a law degree specifically to undertake the solicitor qualification exam. Anyone where any level six can undertake it and that's important to note because there are other options to getting a level six qualification to then be able to take the S. Q. A. Which we'll talk about later on, there's other level six is available out there that would allow you to to go ahead and take the S. QE exams and become a qualified solicitor. So just a note from doing this, apparently your friendship, you will have two years qualifying training. Then you could do a little degree. then you could set the SQ A exams woman too. Okay. And you could fund that part time full time, That would be funded through student Finance England, there's more information about lower degrees on UCAS, but as I mentioned, you could do a degree in criminology and then undertake this because from doing this apprenticeship, you would have the two years of qualified training that being said. And I think the SQ A would be very difficult to pass if someone was undertake it without doing some sort of law degree that will, will examine the things within the SQ A later on in this and the slides and you'll see why taking this level free apprenticeship really does set you up for success with the solicitor qualification exam and the alternative routes into becoming a solicitor. So that's the traditional route, if you like going to university and as I mentioned, this apprenticeship will help you with the entrance criteria. Each, each university does have its own entrance criteria. So it's important to look at that if you're thinking of going down the traditional route in advance of going ahead and applying for anything there and come the end of this apprenticeship. So level three paralegal apprenticeship, these are the standards that we have to teach as part of the level three paralegal apprenticeship. Okay. And if you, let's see here, there is a new route to becoming a solicitor and that's the solicitor apprenticeship. Okay. And you would go through the apprenticeship, much like you're going through this apprenticeship apprenticeship provider and the University Law is an apprenticeship provider and the benefits there to yourself is that you can do it while you're at work. It does have quite a long duration, it does take 16 months to do, but those are 60 months where you'll be at work and while while you're doing the apprenticeship. So this level three, apparently your apprenticeship really set you up for success because after doing this, level three, apparently your friends, you can go on to do the solicitors apprenticeship. And so taking, take a look here at the things that we will, we will um thank you through in this apprenticeship, so it's ethics professionalism, judgment, technical legal practice, managing yourself and your work and work among other people. And if we move on to what's involved in the level seven solicitor apprenticeship, they categorize as ethics professionals and judgment, technical legal practice, work on other people manage yourself and their work. So the standards that we assess you on and that we teach you within this level three parallel apprentice give you the foundation to allow you to progress on to this level seven, these will be covered in much more in depth than than we cover it here on our level level three because this is a level seven course and it will be covered, things like the technical legal practice, you'll cover a lot more information, So that's the level seven solicitor apprenticeship, It's a level seven because as you can see it's a five year course. So if you think you've completed the level A level three here with us, so the 1st 12 months would be the level four, the second five, third in the sixth and the last two years would be undertaken the level seven Masters element too. So it's called the level seven, but included in the level seven is the level 456 and seven. Okay, that's why it's such a long long course, whereas were undertaken here, the level three, which allows you to go ahead and approach the providers available on this list. So if you go to this list here, you can see all of the providers that provide this apprenticeship. So there are other routes available to yourself and what will cover on this apprenticeship in terms of technical legal knowledge, is civil litigation, criminal litigation, conveyancing, employment wills and succession. So these are the options that we've got available and you can add a select for these or you can specialize and will go on the special ISMs in a moment. Now, as part of your endpoint assessment, which is the final exam if you like of this apprenticeship, you will only have to pick one of the areas of law from the four options that you would pick and that means that you can really spend time preparing for that one area of law. Now, as I mentioned the beginning as solicitors or lawyers, they wouldn't normally have multiple areas that they practice within, potentially if you're a family law practitioner, you may do family and Children, but it's very unusual for a practitioner to do a criminal and family law. Um the two are separate and you wouldn't necessarily be specialist in both. So going down this route as you're selecting the options that you want to do, you may well want to pick the options that you believe you would most like to progress into. So for example, you may say actually I really want to be a criminal solicitor, a lawyer, I really want to work with him, family law, so you might want to specialize in the civil and we'll talk about that in a moment and or I may, you know, my law firm does mainly convenes and that's what I'm interested in. My law firm does mainly wills and probate and that's what I'm interested in. So there's multiple different routes that you can go down and each one of these also has its own practicing routes qualifying. So you don't have to be a solicitor, you can just specialize in one area of law, but note that solicitors have higher rights of audience so they can practice in every area of law regardless of the area they want to specialize in. So becoming a solicitor and doing the level seven gives you more options in your legal career and well, if you know what you want to specialize in, you don't have to become a solicitor to practice in it. There's, there's many different ways to practice in that area of law. So let's talk talk about data laws specific specialist pathways. So within this paralegal, you could go down the general route and pick 44 of these five options here or you could pick the police station rep qualification special is um, what that means is you won't do four of these, you will do just one of these and that will be the criminal litigation for paralegals and then we will take you through the qualifications required in order to become a police station wreck. What does that mean? That means that you can represent clients within the police station. So if someone has arrested someone that's going for interview, you would go to your local police station and represent them, you would provide your client with advice on what to say and what not to say and you would do that on a daily basis. That in itself is a career path. So you could be a police station wrap and you could specialize that with us. And after doing this apprenticeship, you would be a fully qualified police station rep. Now, data law is one of only two providers in England and Wales that are allowed by the solicitors regulatory authority to provide this qualification. It's also in Cardiff University and we are the only a friendship provider providing this pathway currently. And so this is a really unique opportunity to become a specialist in a particular area. And if you want to find out more about that, we've got this resource here about what, what's entailed in the police station representation scheme and we also talked, we've also got this um, this is about the legal aid agency, so once you qualify with us as an apprenticeship on the PS ras pathway, you would be registered with the legal aid agency and your fan could claim funding and every time you go to the police station and you could work eventually as a subcontractor for criminal firms if you wanted to. So you would work as a freelancer, you would go to criminal firms and go ahead and get paid to attend the police station on their behalf for their clients. So in its own, it is a career on its own to being a police station rep, we also have a specialist pathway in family law. So this civil litigation pathway is you would do civil litigation and then instead of doing any other options, we would then special issue in just family law and say just family law, but there's a lot to cover there and by the end of it you would be at the cutting edge of what, what a paralegal would expect within the family law environment. Another route in the legal environment is to progress as a chartered legal executive. Now, unlike a paralegal, a chartered chartered legal executive does have rights of audience, which means they can go to court and represent clients and they can go to court for the area that they've specialist in. So unlike a solicitor, a chartered legal executive couldn't represent in the family law court one day and then go to the Magistrates court another day, which is, the magistrate would be criminal and family law would be the civil courts or the family law courts on their own. So as a chartered legal executive, you would specialize in just one area. Now undertaking this level three paralegal apprenticeship would mean that after completing you can go on to do a bridging course with select the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives. And from there you could go ahead do the bridging course and from there you could then apply to go on to the level six chartered legal apprenticeship and become a chartered legal executive through the apprenticeship standards. I would note that the selects um, diploma and selects bridging course is, it's privately funded so you would have to fund that yourself. There isn't currently a funding root for undertaking that bridging course and that's part of silex is standards, is something they put in place themselves that you have to take this bridging course to then go on to do your level to be eligible to do the level six if you wanted to, I've put here the brochure from selects and I've linked it specifically to the paralegal apprenticeship section. But there is loads of this brochure so it might be worth going through. If this is the second, if this, if you're interested becoming a silex practitioner and then this is the thing for you, then you really need to read through this, spend some time understanding it. Now we have a specialist from silex linda jones who can liaise with you on the bridging course and talk to you about the different options there. I know they're currently redoing the standards here so I didn't want to include too much information on this right now as it is due to change. But this brochure will give you all of the information you need to know about the bridge and course itself. And we do have linda coming in later on in your apprenticeship to come and talk you through the bridging course options, the costs around that. So special ISMs. Let's talk about convenience. And if that's your area of law that you're interested in, you may work for a law firm and that is a conveyance and firm, you may wait for a law firm and you're just interested in conveyancing and that's the route you want to go down and then the there are options to become a conveyance set, a licensed conveyance set through the apprentice standards. You don't have to become a solicitor or a silex chartered executive, you can become a licensed conveyor set and you would do that through the council of licensed conveyancing. Now there's a link to them here, Okay, and these are slightly different. Now there's two routes to doing this, you can privately fund this yourself by paying for the level for diploma, after doing this, level three or you can do the level for conveyancing apprenticeship and I've linked to here where you can find the apprenticeship information and you can also find out more about the different providers that do this apprenticeship. Now, this is something we're considering providing in the future, so please let your coach know if this is something that you're interested in and we will see if this is an apprenticeship standard that we can provide in the future for now, there are plenty of providers for this as an apprenticeship and you can go ahead and do the level for following on from this, level three, so you'll do the level three, apprenticeship with us, be a paralegal, get a found eight, get your academic foundation knowledge there and then you can go and specialist and do the level four and then do the level six and much like the solicitor, level seven, the level six has level five and six included as its, its multiple years to get that level six, so both of them are on here and you can privately fund both diplomas and as diplomas go, these aren't, aren't as expensive as other diplomas in the legal industry such as silent diplomas. So if you know you want to specialize in this then that is really something to consider. You can either go down the apprenticeship roots or you can go down the privately funded roots. It's worth noting that the council of licensed conveyances and getting qualified as a licensed conveying set rather than going down the traditional route is becoming a lot more popular and that's due to the legal environment, changing the, if you want to be a law firm that practices and conveyancing, you would have to be qualified and regulated under both the S. R. A. And also the law society and the law society have put things in place that has made it slightly harder for law firms to practice and conveyancing. And so now law firms are moving towards towards becoming regulated by the council of licensed conveyances. So these diplomas are actually becoming a lot more popular And here you can see that you can do both. Level four and the level six with the apprentice standards or you can undertake them privately. Now if you're interested in wills and probate and wills and probate is also regulated and can be licensed by the council of licensed conveniences And so you can also qualify as a probate lawyer through the level six diploma. And so what you would do is the level for deployment and that can be done through the apprenticeship standards and then you can do the level six deployment and probate and that would allow you to undertake probate activities. This will level forward lie to undertake it in in With the site of a solicitor so you can help a solicitor with probate activities. Level six will give you more rights to practice as a probate lawyer. Level four level four probate technician apprenticeship is similar to the level for diploma and there isn't currently a level six diploma under the apprenticeship standards. So if you wanted to go on to become a level six, you would have to privately fund that as well. If you were interested in becoming a will writer, you only want you wanted to write wills but you didn't want to probate, work within the probate, then you could also look into the Institute of Professional writers and they have, we have some courses on here that you can progress to further after taking our apprenticeship here and you can register with them as well. Now I mentioned earlier that and if we go back a few slides that with the S. U. E., you would need a degree or level six equivalent. So if you did want to become a level six chartered legal executive Or level six license convenience set or level 65 in probate, that could then allow you to go on to do the suv exam and become a solicitor. So there's many different ways to become a solicitor and there's many different ways to specialize in the area that you want to practice in. It's also worth mentioning not whatever whatever you want to practice in, whether it's it's fairly yourself as a paralegal after this or whether it's becoming a solicitor going on specializing in particular law. We train legal specialists in all of these definitions, law, we trained specialists in house lawyers and law firms. And so whatever it is that you want to do, it's worth sticking with data afterwards for your continuing professional development and you'll see that we have a library of hundreds of courses available to you while you're on this apprenticeship and to really take note and try and take advantage of those resources available to you. So thank you for attending Hope from this, you've got an overview of all of the different areas of law. General routes that you can go down. Like I said, there's plenty more and we do have a lineup of specialist guest speakers coming in to talk you through their experiences in their area of law and to answer your questions. So as you go through this apprenticeship, please let your coach know if there's a particular career route that you're interested in and we'll do everything we can to give you as much resource and as much clout within that area as possible
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