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This past year was gruelling (to say the least) and demanded a lot of flexibility and adaptability. Not only did I have to adjust to learning an entirely new discipline, but I also had to do it all in one year!

A law conversion course is certainly not for the faint of heart, but I can't say it wasn't worth it. If you're considering doing the Postgraduate Diploma in Law (PGDL), read on for an idea of what to look out for.

The law – and how to approach it 

I'm probably stating the obvious, but it's still worth acknowledging, doing a law conversion course gave me a better understanding of not only the black letter law, but also its application to real-life scenarios.

Beyond that, I came away from this year with a new method of approaching problems, legal and otherwise, even going so far as to occasionally apply this rigorous evidence-based attitude in my personal life. Oddly, the legal emphasis on ‘sticking to the facts’ has helped me deal with overthinking – a weird and unexpected perk of studying law (although that might just be a me thing). 

SBA question techniques

Because I want to be a solicitor and with the Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE) coming up, I feel this past year has really helped me to understand and hone my single-best-answer (SBA) question technique, giving me a head start going into the SQE prep course.

My own interests

I went into this year thinking I probably wanted to do intellectual propertyor corporate law. But a combination of the modules I've studied, people I've interacted with and research I've conducted (including the 'insight' blog series I've been doing where I look into different practice areas) has led me in totally different directions.

My current interests are in property law, family law and contentious work, but if this year has taught me anything, it’s that I'm definitely going to keep my options (and mind) open!

On the other hand, even the things I thought I'd enjoy the most were challenged – I expected to find business law boring and love human rights law but my experiences turned out to be quite the opposite.

The experience of having my interests and opinions continuously challenged has not only opened me up to more practice areas and encouraged me to keep a flexible mind, but has also reminded me why I chose this career path in the first place. It also reassured me that, despite how stressful this upcoming year might be, finding my studies and the legal world genuinely fascinating is a good sign that I'm on the right track.

Multitasking is key

I’m no stranger to multitasking before, having sat through the IB programme during my last two years of school and juggled my university degree alongside a part-time job, but that didn't make this past year any easier! The condensed nature of the conversion course made for an intense year, and balance was paramount to survival. It's something I'm still working on and a skill I'll need going into the SQE prep course. That said, just knowing I made it out of this year alive (and well… ish) is enough to give me hope for the future!

How to think (and write) like a lawyer

At undergrad, I learnt to let go of my formulaic GCSE and IB-style essays. Writing literary essays became an exercise in not only critical analysis but also creativity – that is, writing through different creative angles and adopting a stylistic narrative voice with flair. I could get away with the occasional pun, the first-person pronoun and the excessive use of adjectives.

Writing law essays, although not probably something I'll need to do past this point, demanded that I toss all those three years of relaxed creativity away. It was like learning how to write all over again. A muscle that I thought was well-honed and carefully cultivated was discarded for one that was wonky and barely even worked.

Regardless, writing law essays still engaged my analytical skills but the approach was entirely different. Rather than adopting creativity to write the essay, no stylistic flair was needed: sentences were sharp and straight to the point. The focus was efficiency, rather than flair and creativity. 

It definitely wasn't a strength of mine. But it's a skill I had to learn that made me question what I thought I knew. It's nice, sometimes, to start again and feel like you know absolutely nothing – especially in an area you took for granted. Discomfort aside, it’s, at the very least, character building.

Study skills

It'd been a while since I've had to memorise. Although my conversion course exams were open-book, my SQE won’t be, and classes were so fast-paced that memorisation was really the best way to go (not that I took my own advice!).

Going forward, I'll probably be returning to some paper notes after a long hiatus (apologies in advance to the environment), with mind maps, posters and diagrams. I've found that it's the best way for me to learn.

Move at your own pace

Finally, although I found classes super helpful for clarification, my experience was that the PGDL classes expect a level of self-study and personal understanding that demands full engagement in your studies. You have to start reading those chapters and doing those exercises on your own – you learn the material first. The class is just consolidation and skim-reading didn’t cut it for me.

Going forward, I'll be putting less emphasis on what I do in class and thinking of it as consolidation for what I've done on my own. This means I've got to make my own plan and follow up on my learning myself – that is, following my own schedule, rather than the one set by my course provider. This approach certainly won't be for everyone, but if you're finding it hard to keep up in class (which I can't say I blame you for), it might be worth a try.

Final thoughts

This past year was full of surprises: I discovered I actually enjoyed my land law module, found multiple new practice areas that interested me and eventually got to grips with an entirely new discipline. This has not only benefited me in my personal life and restored my confidence in the path I chose, but also moved me further along that same path.

Having a better understanding of law in every sense has helped me zero in on the types of law firms that I want to apply to in future (alongside considering applications to places beyond the private sector!). If you're doing a PGDL this year, I hope you found this article as helpful as this year will be for you. Here's to the year ahead and good luck – you'll be needing it!