Blur drummer Dave Rowntree felt something was missing in his life – so he decided to become a lawyer. Alex Aldridge reports

It's the first day of the Legal Practice Course (LPC) at BPP Law School's Holborn branch. To break the ice, the tutor suggests that each person tells everyone else what they did over the summer. Cue the usual tales of vacation schemes and exotic holidays. Finally, it's the turn of the scruffy older guy in the corner. "I did some gigs in Hyde Park, then headlined Glastonbury."

"A few people thought I was joking at first," explains Dave Rowntree, LPC student and drummer in the band Blur. "But they googled me and found out I was telling the truth. Not that it was a big deal – after a day it was obvious I wasn't going to turn up in a diamond-encrusted Rolls Royce and laud it over everyone. I'm serious about the law and love learning."

Rowntree's unlikely journey to the threshold of a career in law – he will commence a training contract with London criminal law firm Edward Fail Bradshaw & Waterson on completion of his LPC later this year – began in the mid part of the decade during Blur's hiatus period, in which the various band members took time off to pursue other interests.

While frontman Damon Albarn and guitarist Graham Coxon embarked on their own musical projects and bassist Alex James forged a career as a cheesemaker and newspaper columnist, Rowntree – a trained computer programmer – initially spent his time setting up and running his own animation company. It was enjoyable, but he wanted to do something more fulfilling.

"I think turning 40 causes certain chemical changes to happen in your brain. I started to wonder if everything I'd done to date had been a trivial waste of time. Which of course it hasn't been. I guess I just felt angsty," he reflects over a coffee between advanced criminal law lectures.dave-rowntree-blur

Rowntree (pictured), 45, had always been the band member who engaged with the legal side of things, taking time to read any contracts after the band found themselves "relieved of their money" by their first manager in the early 90s. "We were young and naive – to a point where we'd actually agreed to sign blank cheques for our then manager," he remembers. "I couldn't believe how stupid we'd been, and from then on I decided to get involved in all that sort of stuff." In doing so, Rowntree found that he possessed an aptitude for understanding legal language and enjoyed the company of the music industry lawyers he met. Over time, some of them became friends and he found himself increasingly intrigued by what they did. In response to Rowntree's persistent enquiries as to what being a lawyer was actually like, Richard Bray, founding partner at law firm Bray & Krais, the niche entertainment industry law firm instructed by Blur, suggested that he spend a couple of weeks observing cases at the Old Bailey.

"It was brilliant, fascinating and I wanted more," recalls Rowntree. He followed up the experience with a work placement at Edward Fail, arranged via another lawyer contact. "Again, I loved it – going to police stations, to prisons, court. It was like being in The Bill," he says. A large murder case then came up and the firm offered Rowntree some part-time work assisting with case preparation.

He accepted, found the grunt work didn't dull his enthusiasm, then got taken on full-time after one of the other lawyers working on the file left the firm. Rowntree remembers the trial, which went on for three months, as "the best time of my life". "I've done some amazing things with Blur, but that, for me, was more interesting. The lawyers involved were absolutely incredible. I guess I love being around clever people. I was devastated when the weekends came."

After working as a paralegal for a year, Rowntree decided to qualify as a lawyer by doing the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) at BPP. "While working as a paralegal I actually completed the first year of the Open University law degree. Then I heard about law conversion courses and decided to take that route as it was so much quicker," he says.

Despite not holding a degree, Rowntree was granted admission to the course after the Law Society granted him an exemption based on his previous business and academic involvements, which included his co-authoring of several academic papers on computer graphics. The GDL was an "astonishing treadmill," he says, adding: "I knew it would be tough but I thought, well, I've had a job, I've worked 18-hour days in the early days of the band, so I know what hard work is. But nothing prepared me the workload on the GDL."

But Rowntree came through it, even managing to fit in time to do rehearsals for Blur's Hyde Park shows last summer during his final exams. "The rehearsals were actually quite a nice distraction, meaning I got a bit of a break from all the revision," he adds.

But as he slogs through the notoriously dry LPC, doesn't Rowntree miss the excitement of doing gigs and the associated showbiz glamour?

"Well, I'm still in the band, which I enjoy, although we only do 3-4 weeks' work a year these days," he responds. "But in terms of the other stuff, I don't miss it at all. I was always a pretty hopeless celebrity anyway. It's a full-time job and the clubs and parties were never my thing."

Still, Rowntree clearly has a liking for being in the public eye: when he's not studying law he spends his time campaigning as the Labour candidate for the Cities of London and Westminster. "It's a safe Tory seat, with no danger of me getting elected, but it's been a good experience – all part of my mid-life crisis," he quips, adding that it's in law rather than politics that he sees his future.

"Hopefully I'll get taken on after my training contract. After that, who knows? But I'd love to do my higher rights and become a solicitor advocate."