Sir, Ms Christina Murphy's article, "Think carefully before embarking on a legal career (January 18th) makes a largely successful attempt to describe an unclear and shifting area. However, I believe that certain conclusions regarding the chances of entry to the solicitors' profession, which might be drawn from this article, would be unduly bleak. In particular, one of the graphs illustrating the article, which gives the numbers of solicitors on the roll, as these have increased in the past 30 years, bounds alarmingly upwards displaying a dizzy, exponential growth.
In fact, by today, this graph has become misleading just because there is a delay of some years between, on the one hand, a person becoming a law student or a trainee solicitor and, on the other hand, that person's name appearing on the solicitors' roll. And what is most significant for the future size of the profession are the current figures for law students or trainee solicitors. The essential point is that since the early 1990s these figures have plateau out (as the two other graphs illustrating the article show). Accordingly, it seems probable that something like a steady state in numbers of practising solicitors has been achieved.
Furthermore, there is a healthy balance between two of the sets of figures given in the article, namely those which show a solicitors' profession of 6,000 strong with entrants at 300 per year. A profession of this size ought to be able to provide apprenticeships for 300 entrants each year and, thereafter, jobs for them. Moreover, if one compares our total number of lawyers (barristers and solicitors) at present, with the size of the Irish population one finds a situation which is roughly comparable to that in other jurisdictions.
Thus, whilst as Ms Murphy notes, the present picture amounts to "an unholy mess", it is possible to predict that it will, over the next few years, settle down to a steady state of 6,000 members of the solicitors' profession with 300 entrants. While this may or may not be considered holy, it would be less of a mess than appears at present and affords a reasonably solid basic assumption upon which career guidance teachers and others can give advice.
On a different point it is of course beyond controversy that there is not room in the professions for all law graduates. This is perhaps fortunate since many law graduates do not wish to enter either of the professions. However, at UCC we find that the 40 plus per cent of our graduates who do not enter the professions find satisfactory careers in other areas, like accountancy, tax advice, banking, civil service, journalism etc.
Ms Murphy's article is directed to one part the initial part of a lawyer's career she mentions difficulties of getting started, low, pay etc. However, a more comprehensive view would take into account the entire period of a legal career. And, certainly, in my 20 years or so as an academic lawyer, I have known of few solicitors who were unemployed for longer than a period of weeks and, a great majority who enjoyed secure employment which was rewarding in both financial and other terms. To strike another personal note I shall advise my own children, if they have talent that way, to read law (except in the case of one who has a bent for languages and who will set her sights on UCC's new BCL in Law and French/German). I believe that it is more realistic, in this context, to eschew the gloomy attitude "Don't put UCC's news BCL in Law and French/German. I believe that it is more realistic, in this context, to eschew the gloomy attitudes "Don't put your daughter, on the stage, Mrs Worthington" and to prefer the adage "There is always room for one good one" or even "There is always room at at-he top". Yours, etc., University College, Cork.