Law
What is law?
Pursuing a career in law can span a vast number of areas such as business, crime, politics, the environment, human rights, trade, and property. Lawyers work on some of today’s most interesting and challenging issues.
Advise clients and help them navigate and comply with the rules in their relevant area.
Attend hearings, trials, and meetings with clients.
Prepare legal documents, contracts, and agreements for clients.
What law job opportunities are there in Jersey?
Jersey’s legal sector is a focal point of the financial services industry, with a range of firms servicing both the international and local markets.
The market tends to be split between lawyers providing services to local people and businesses and lawyers who provide specialist Jersey corporate and commercial advice to international transactions and clients or to local businesses who have international clients. Specialisms include corporate and commercial, funds, banking, private wealth, trusts, litigation and property. This makes Jersey a great location to specialise in various different types of law to suit your interests and skills.
This could be in:
- Private practice (law firms who advise clients)
- ‘In-house’ (lawyers who are employed by a business to provide them with legal expertise)
- Government and Courts
Career opportunities in law include:
- Advocate
- Solicitor
- Barrister
- Paralegal
- Legal Adviser
- In-house / General Counsel roles
- Legal administrator
- Legal secretary
- Support services in law firms and courts
What skills do I need?
A law degree will provide you with a range of knowledge, experience, analytical reasoning, and attention to detail that you develop that will also make you attractive to other professional avenues. You can however become a lawyer with a degree in a subject other than law or in some cases without a degree.
Qualifications to consider include:
- A relevant university degree (not necessarily in law). This could be outside the Island or with the Jersey Institute of Law
- Relevant practical experience
- Professional accreditations from organisations like the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEx)
- A Graduate Diploma in Law course
- Qualification as a Jersey advocate or solicitor through the Jersey Institute of Law and accredited by the Law Society of Jersey
- Qualification as a lawyer in another jurisdiction such as Scotland or England
We asked finance firms in Jersey what skills they are most looking for when hiring lawyers and they responded:
- The ability to understand complex issues from multiple perspectives to ‘see the bigger picture’
- The ability to construct and defend a persuasive argument or position
- Excellent spoken and written communication, including presenting to others and negotiation
- Self-management, including planning and meeting deadlines
If you are ready to kick-start your career in law, you can find out which businesses are currently operating in this field through our Business Directory.