The single most disturbing and career restricting aspect that has had many law graduates unemployed in Uganda or withstanding poor working conditions in law firms that cannot cater for them is that stray talk that “you must practice law if you study law.”

And sadly, our society is not enlightened enough to forgive anyone that doesn’t practice law with a law degree. They look at it as a waste of the 4-5 years you went through at university. For them, you would rather earn 300,000 working as a lawyer than get say, 2M as an accountant.

Surprisingly, and employers and human resource managers agree, a law degree teaches you to think critically, solve problems, research, communicate, work in teams and distil large, complex rafts of information into succinct writing. While these skills are important in almost any job, here are 10 careers that value law graduates highly.

1. Accounting

It is not a secret that the big four accounting firms in Uganda; PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Ernst & Young and Deloitte are “poaching” lawyers for their own growing legal services arms. In fact, so many law graduates (top of their classes most of the time) have made the switch into these accounting and audit firms and boy are they making money. Let alone developing steadily in their careers. In fact, moving to an accounting firm has the added bonus of expanding your skill set, as most firms will require (and pay for) you to obtain the Chartered Accountants qualification.

2. Journalism and Communications

As you may already know, most lawyers make excellent journalists because of their attention to detail, natural skepticism, writing skills, and knowledge of the complexities in politics and the legal system. As a media owner for instance, you would be sure that a lawyer as an editor of your outlet wouldn’t let mistakes like the difference between advice and advise or affect and effect pass them. I am not saying that guys in other career sets wouldn’t distinguish them but a lawyer is trained to pay that attention to detail.

3. Politics

Haha, you thought Politics was just about service? Think again! There are careers in politics and we know people around us that are doing politics full time. Speaker Jacob Oulanyah, NUP Secretary General David Lewis Rubongoya, DP President Norbert Mao and JEEMA’s Asuman Basalirwa are some of the many Ugandan Politicians with law degrees. The skills learned in law school such as argumentation, advocacy and an understanding of Uganda’s political system have been very useful in their careers.

4. Human Resource (HR)

At law school, there is a Labour Law course unit where law students are exposed to all the nitty gritties of employment law in Uganda and what should be done and not be done on either side – employer or employee. A move into human resources (HR), therefore, makes sense for many lawyers as it requires an ability to apply employment laws and mitigate risks relating to the employees’ health and safety while keeping the employer’s interests at hand.

5. Service/ the Forces

Someone said that the reason forces violate human rights is because they don’t have enough lawyers and there could be some element of truth. And recently, we’ve seen an insatiable hunger for law graduates by the forces be it the Army or the Police.

Sources in the Army have in fact intimated to me that the starting rank for a law graduate in the Army is Lieutenant. A whole Lieutenant. Have you heard thoughts about serving in the forces and have a law degree that could propel you? The ball is in your hands.

NOTE: This is just a tip of the iceberg, I could go all day.

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