The legal profession is a popular one with the potential to earn a large salary and have a secure career. The process of becoming a solicitor or barrister is fairly complicated and exceptionally competitive. If you can get the grades at school to study Law at university, you will need to spend four years before graduating, then a further year in a Legal Practice Course (LPC) before spending two years in a 'training contract' at a legal organisation (assuming you can get one). All this is very competitive from the outset and lends itself to recruiting the 'best of the best'.

Students who had the best a-levels and got into the best universities get the best legal jobs. They will have outperformed their classmates and got involved with plenty of extra-curricular activities. Legal recruiters are looking for the best of the best and you need an impressive CV, so how will a criminal record look?

A criminal record can harm your chances of getting any job, depending on the severity so you could assume that the legal profession was no different. And you would be right! It can be difficult enough to get into university with a criminal record, let alone get a job so what do you need to do?

If you are frank and honest about your entire criminal record from the start universities and recruiters may take a sympathetic look upon you, especially if you can provide evidence of personal development and possibly some decent character references.

If a university has doubts about your record they will do a simple check and could find out you were lying all along which could get you banned from all higher education applications. If you lie to an employer they are going to do a background check anyway so when they discover you weren't being honest, you won't have a chance in hell of getting a job.

Don't expect to become a lawyer if you did 25 years for murder however, as it does depend on the severity of your offence(s). If you were 'young and stupid' and had a run in with the law when you were young it will most likely not affect you. Most young offenders' institutes actively encourage education and will help you pursue a career in Law if you wish as well as a variety of education institutions.

In any circumstance you need to put everything out in the open from the very beginning and be prepared for uncomfortable character judgements every now and again. The simple answer is that if you can't get in with your history, maybe Law is not the profession for you.