This is a fantastic and much-needed post with loads of consideration. Really great to see, especially with a small but growing legal and legal-adjacent community in EA.
I did a similar route to this but in the UK, so in the spirit of adding context for those who aren’t US-based, I’m going to cover some points in this comment. It’s not agreeing or disagreeing with anything you said in your post, but providing a little bit of info from a different area for anyone from there :)
I did my undergrad in AI, formally the BSc (Hons) Computer Science with Artificial Intelligence. Because of engaging a lot with EA at the tail end of that degree, and due to 80,000 hours publications, I applied for an LLM at Northumbria Law School. A lot of law schools here in the UK are starting to encourage interdisciplinary applicants to fill new skill gaps in emerging areas.
I applied and was accepted for Space Law (LLM), and graduated in 2021. I found it a bit difficult, but law in itself wasn’t that hard and to be honest the biggest change to get used to was going from STEM writing and research styles to legal styles. I really enjoyed it, and would recommend it to others. So if you’re UK-based with a non-law background, there are a lot of places that cater to that.
This is the course I did which I would recommend both as a uni and for the teaching staff who were hugely supportive and really passionate. They included an ‘Advanced Legal Research’ module to get the STEM folks up to speed. I’d say for my cohort it was around 70% of the course were lawyers, 20% computer scientists/engineers, and 10% other. Most people adapted to law well. So if you’re interested in going into an area specialism, it’s a good place to start. This course also did modules on AI law, which I took and would recommend. Very interesting.
The exams were all long essays (which generally we could pick the topic for, lots of freedom), with a final research project (again, you decide). I then went on to do my PhD in law at the same law school, where I’m looking at AI in policing and as evidence. So even as a non-law background person you can still advance.
Downsides are that due to the non-law background, you’re not technically a lawyer. You’ll still be highly sought after by companies looking for information, and because it’s a niche area there’s lots of opportunity for early careers impact, but you’ll need to do a conversion course to be able to give actual legal advice. (Except as an expert witness or general counsel, but expert witness work can be few and far between, with general counsel work preferring lawyers over non-lawyers).
Luckily the UK just introduced the SQE, a new way for non-law folk to qualify as solicitors. There are considerable financial barriers unfortunately, as the exams are horrendously expensive for literally no reason (one is like £2500 to take a multiple choice online exam) so there are real class barriers. You can also take the bar course to be a barrister, but I have less familiarity with that.
For fees, you can get funded quite easily by SFE I found, but can’t speak for those outside of England. As normal in the UK, your loan repayments are only taken as a small % of what you earn over a certain threshold, so you can’t really go broke by going to law school. It’s not a ‘real’ loan, like all educational loans.
So yeah, this post was a great read and it’s cool to see that law school is becoming more explored as a career path. Honestly I kind of fell into it, but found a niche I enjoy with lots of good impact potential so maybe I just got lucky. I’d recommend to anyone interested in studying law not to let yourself get put off by law’s reputation as a fierce and considerably difficult area. I actually found law to be way less toxic than computer science, and around the same in difficulty.
If anyone based in UK wants to ask me more about my experiences, my inbox is open. I only applied for the LLM because I knew a non-law person who did it before me and got to grill them. Or I wouldn’t have likely applied. So I’m happy to pass that baton on :)
Luke, thanks so much for sharing these perspectives—so helpful to have a UK perspective for a topic like this one that comes with so many jurisdictional differences. (I suspect some U.S.-based contributors who are still making tuition or loan payments may have winced at your observation that “you can’t really go broke by going to law school” in the UK…) Cheers!
This is a fantastic and much-needed post with loads of consideration. Really great to see, especially with a small but growing legal and legal-adjacent community in EA.
I did a similar route to this but in the UK, so in the spirit of adding context for those who aren’t US-based, I’m going to cover some points in this comment. It’s not agreeing or disagreeing with anything you said in your post, but providing a little bit of info from a different area for anyone from there :)
I did my undergrad in AI, formally the BSc (Hons) Computer Science with Artificial Intelligence. Because of engaging a lot with EA at the tail end of that degree, and due to 80,000 hours publications, I applied for an LLM at Northumbria Law School. A lot of law schools here in the UK are starting to encourage interdisciplinary applicants to fill new skill gaps in emerging areas.
I applied and was accepted for Space Law (LLM), and graduated in 2021. I found it a bit difficult, but law in itself wasn’t that hard and to be honest the biggest change to get used to was going from STEM writing and research styles to legal styles. I really enjoyed it, and would recommend it to others. So if you’re UK-based with a non-law background, there are a lot of places that cater to that.
This is the course I did which I would recommend both as a uni and for the teaching staff who were hugely supportive and really passionate. They included an ‘Advanced Legal Research’ module to get the STEM folks up to speed. I’d say for my cohort it was around 70% of the course were lawyers, 20% computer scientists/engineers, and 10% other. Most people adapted to law well. So if you’re interested in going into an area specialism, it’s a good place to start. This course also did modules on AI law, which I took and would recommend. Very interesting.
The exams were all long essays (which generally we could pick the topic for, lots of freedom), with a final research project (again, you decide). I then went on to do my PhD in law at the same law school, where I’m looking at AI in policing and as evidence. So even as a non-law background person you can still advance.
Downsides are that due to the non-law background, you’re not technically a lawyer. You’ll still be highly sought after by companies looking for information, and because it’s a niche area there’s lots of opportunity for early careers impact, but you’ll need to do a conversion course to be able to give actual legal advice. (Except as an expert witness or general counsel, but expert witness work can be few and far between, with general counsel work preferring lawyers over non-lawyers).
Luckily the UK just introduced the SQE, a new way for non-law folk to qualify as solicitors. There are considerable financial barriers unfortunately, as the exams are horrendously expensive for literally no reason (one is like £2500 to take a multiple choice online exam) so there are real class barriers. You can also take the bar course to be a barrister, but I have less familiarity with that.
For fees, you can get funded quite easily by SFE I found, but can’t speak for those outside of England. As normal in the UK, your loan repayments are only taken as a small % of what you earn over a certain threshold, so you can’t really go broke by going to law school. It’s not a ‘real’ loan, like all educational loans.
So yeah, this post was a great read and it’s cool to see that law school is becoming more explored as a career path. Honestly I kind of fell into it, but found a niche I enjoy with lots of good impact potential so maybe I just got lucky. I’d recommend to anyone interested in studying law not to let yourself get put off by law’s reputation as a fierce and considerably difficult area. I actually found law to be way less toxic than computer science, and around the same in difficulty.
If anyone based in UK wants to ask me more about my experiences, my inbox is open. I only applied for the LLM because I knew a non-law person who did it before me and got to grill them. Or I wouldn’t have likely applied. So I’m happy to pass that baton on :)
Luke, thanks so much for sharing these perspectives—so helpful to have a UK perspective for a topic like this one that comes with so many jurisdictional differences. (I suspect some U.S.-based contributors who are still making tuition or loan payments may have winced at your observation that “you can’t really go broke by going to law school” in the UK…) Cheers!