There are many possible jobs for someone who studies law.
Louiza Antoniades, who works at a local law firm, says the kind of law degree you take at university determines what type of work you will eventually do.
If someone wants to become a criminal or civil attorney or advocate, the four-year-long LLB course at any university is the way to start.
This attorney will not specalise like those who are doing BCom LLB or BSc LLB.
The BCom LLB degree is a five-year course and will give you work in the business field at places such a banks and accounting firms.
If you want to specalise in something like human rights you will do a BA LLB, also a course of five years.
The six year long Bsc LLB course is for attorneys who want to specialise in areas such as patent laws and trademarks.
Louiza studied BCom LLB and did her masters degree on cyber and the new media laws.
She says when a student completes their LLB university studies they have two routes to take before being admitted by the high court as an attorney.
One route is to do your articles at an attorney firm for two years and complete the six week long practical law training and board examination.
This board examination has four subjects the students have to complete, namely criminal and civil law, book keeping, ethics and wills and estates.
Before the attorney will be accepted by the high court he also has to write a fitness test.
Louiza says she took the shorter and quicker route to get to the point of writing the board examinations and fitness test.
She took law night classes for six months and did one year and not two years’ articles before writing the exam.
She qualified in September last year and is currently a professional assistant.
She explains that, after you do your articles, you become a candidate attorney and then a professional assistant before becoming a fully recognised attorney.
Louiza loves this job because of the flexibility and the fact that you don’t always work from an office and sit behind a desk.
“You meet a lot of people and some very strange ones,” she says.
What she does not like about her job is that she feels she does not have enough time to do all her work.
She says school children who are considering the career in law must meet the university standards to get into university.
They do not need special subjects to be admitted to study law at university.
However she advises that they have accounting as one of their subjects in matric because it will be good to know how to balance books.
She also advises students who are considering studying law to do history in matric because it teaches students on how to to handle a huge volume of work.
“Because volume in work is what you will encounter during your studies,” says Louiza.
