My path to law. Embracing the Possibilities

• Author: Matthew Channon
• Pages: 14-15

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF EXETER

Opening Statements

MY PATH TO LAW

Embracing the Possibilities

Matthew Channon c reated the #mypathtolaw

hashtag on Twitter in January. O ur guest column

celebrates the div ersity of the legal profession through

attorneys’ first-pe rson stories detailing their uni que

and inspiring t rajectories. Read

more #mypathtolaw stor ies on

Twi tt er .

I ALWAYS THOUGHT g oing

to university and worki ng as a

lawyer was only an opt ion for

those who had money, and that

going into the law profession

depended more on fa mily con-

nections rather than ha rd work.

I didn’t have an expensive edu-

cation, and I was sent to my

local com munity school.

Many judges, senior lawyers

and barrist ers in the UK are

educated privately at fee-pay ing

schools. This gives the impres -

sion to some young people (like

me) who haven’t had the same

experience that these r oles are

unachievable for them.

I often suered from a la ck of

confidence in my own ability whi le at school, thinking

that I would never make it into the legal profes sion or

make a success of my life. My confidence hit roc k bot-

tom on a number of occasions, and I dre aded taking

exams. I often felt pe ople had low expectations of me

because of my own absence of self-c onfidence.

I continued to struggle on thr ough school and then at

a local college. I was of ten tempted to give up and felt

other people didn’t have faith in my ability. This wasn’t

true—one tutor encouraged me to apply to st udy for a

law degree, and from then on thi ngs started to improve

for me. I still realiz ed it was hard to get a job in the UK

legal industry, but I secured a good deg ree.

I went on to apply for a PhD and was accepted, but

this was largely s elf-funded. To pay for my PhD, I

worked evenings in a local pub and of ten didn’t finish

working until 6 a.m., a situat ion that often eroded my

self-confidenc e further.

However, I am proud that I didn’t give up and I

became a much stronger person af ter overcoming

my own confidence issues. I am now an a cademic,

researching the impac t of driverless cars and also,

importantly, working to inspire f uture generations of

lawyers.

Now, I not only lecture students at the University

of Exeter Law School but also go to loc al state schools

to try to inspir e future generations. I am passionate

about showing those who do not come from tradit ional

backgrounds that they c an

make it, that bar riers can be

overcome.

I am attempting to pro-

vide the inspiration that I

really craved while I wa s at

school. At the University of

Exeter, we oer a program

called Pathways to Law, run

by the social mobility cha rity

the Sutton Trust and funded

by the Legal Education

Foundation, which oers

support to high-achieving

students fr om nonprivileged

backgrounds as t hey finish

school and start the proc ess

of applying to university.

These young people, who

will ty pically be the first in

their family to att end uni-

versity or live in area s with

low progression rates to uni-

versity, engage in academic and ski lls sessions, visits to

local and national lega l institutions and law firms and,

in some cases, ta ke part in visits to other local pa rtner

Pathways to Law universities.

The students also receive cr ucial help with the appli-

cation process to univer sity in terms of writing their

personal statements and prepa ration for admissions

tests and universit y admissions interviews.

In addition, Pathways to Law students benefit f rom

gaining work experience i n a legal setting and having a

law undergraduate assig ned to them to personally men-

tor them through the whole program. O ver the four-

year period that thi s program has run at Exeter, it has

shown an increased number of st ate-school applicants,

not only to the university itsel f but to other research-

intensive universities acr oss the UK.

‘EVERY PATH IS DIFFERENT’

I’ve realized over the yea rs that actually many law-

yers, judges, barris ters and academics come from

all sorts of back grounds and have had to overcome

remarkable obstacles t o get their roles. It is absolutely

not the case that people are bar red from privileged

positions only because of their ba ckgrounds, and we all

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