Birmingham or Leicester for Law? Which is "better"?

There's not much betwen them. I would go to Birmingham though.

Not much difference between them? and ooooh, for what reason?

I think that Birmingham fares better internationally.
- More prestigious
- on the outskirts of the top 10, while Leicester is closer to the outskirts of the top 20.
- Birmingham just seems to have a better overall reputation in my eyes.

hmmm I thought that too. However Leicester beats Birmingham in all the University leauge tables I have seen. Tricky

Don't take much note of those. I mean one table puts Newcastle first for law in the UK! and Reading 8th.

Woahh, Which University are you hoping to study Law at?

LSE or Warwick, still deciding which to firm.. or Nottingham Both those universities will probably suffice provided you get top marks! I do think Birmingham is the better out of the two though.

I got rejected from Warwick today so I hate you Well done!! I wish I was in a position to choose between LSE and Warwick! haha :') What A levels do you do? And hmmm decisions decisions

Yeah, swayed towards Warwick.. sceptical of getting the A* for LSE. I do Literature, Philosophy, History and Economics..which do you do?

As a Leicester student I would, totally unbiased, say blatantly Leicester :P

Saying that Birmingham is probably slightly more prestigious, but I think you will do better at the one you prefer and a 68 from Leicester is better than a 61 from Birmingham. They're quite different so just see what your gut instinct is when you visit.

I would say Leicester is very good at opportunities to get involved in the, famously CV boosting, extra curriculars which, though they are available at Birmingham, seem to be less widely taken up, judging by my friends and girlfriend who go there. This particularly applies for sport, if that's your thing, as Birmingham's sports teams are elite and thus hard to break into. Obviously if you make the effort you can still do plenty of ECs at Birmingham.

In terms of jobs I know a couple people from Leicester with Slaughters TCs so it can't be too badly viewed by law firms, though I'm sure Brum has these too.

In summary just go for the one you prefer.

hmmmmm, so difficult to make a decision! aargh, I came to Leicester just last week and really liked it! Im just worried about after Ive got my degree and then getting a job :/

do you know which line of work you want to go into? i.e corporate law in London?

hmmmmm, so difficult to make a decision! aargh, I came to Leicester just last week and really liked it! Im just worried about after Ive got my degree and then getting a job :/

I don't think Leicester's got no reputation in the City, people get into the MC every year and A&O and Freshfields actively recruit us. Since we've had more people with AAA at A level the numbers getting into the City seem to be rising. American firms don't actively come after us, but I know people with Bakers and White and Case TCs. Leicester does a lot of commercial-oriented modules which I think may help a bit too and one of our top academics is a Competition lecturer. The Hogan Lovells list suggests they're both on the radar but no Bristol/LSE, which isn't really news: http://graduates.hoganlovells.com/apply_now/meet_us_on_campus/campus_alumni/

Birmingham, probably a few more firms target it, but I think that's because there are a lot more students there to recruit from and more big firms with local offices, as it's the second city. From either of these you would probably need a high 2:1 in order to break into the City, neither give you that Oxbridge security of just needing any 2:1. Might be an idea to have a look at the lists of their respective law fairs.

http://www.as.bham.ac.uk/careers/events/fairslaw2011.shtml#eventdescrip

http://luls.org.uk/Portals/0/LawFair2010.pdf

Sorry, Leicester don't seem to have 2011 up, be similar anyway, maybe a couple more as the recruitment picked up a bit in the year between.

If you've not visited Birmingham yet I'd say do that and just make your decision on where you feel happiest, the relatively negligible prestige gap is not enough to comfort you if you feel you could have been happier elsewhere for what should be 3 of the best years of your life. I'm not just saying that as you like Leicester, if this was Leicester vs. Cambridge I'd tell you it's probably worth just sucking it up! But with these two, either way, I don't think it'd be worth it.

Also, I know how you feel! When I applied I had offers from Warwick and Leicester. When I visited Warwick I thought it seemed just a bit boring (no offence Tsunami2011, I just like going out a bit too much!) and was really torn. With hindsight, I've never regretted going for Leicester even though I know Warwick has a better reputation, though they all seem to go into IB as much as law.

Wow, thank you for taking your time to write all this, really really helps and I thought that about Warwick too but was prepared to compromise because of the better reputation but I didn't even get an offer so ahahaha :') yes, I'm going to visit Birmingham next week and then going to start making decisions soon and applying for accommodation etc. Are you also a Law student? What did you get in your A levels?

Don't worry, it didn't take me that long! Ah, their loss!

I do Law with French, so slightly different but most of my time is spent doing law and I'm attached to the Law dept. I'm definitely more lawyer than linguist. I got AAAB.

Enjoy your Birmingham visit, in terms of the atmosphere in the accommodation, which I know you can't really get a sense of when you visit and having lived in one and visited the other very regularly, I would say they're both really good. Brum may be slightly more going out oriented, but if you have Broad St. on your doorstep I suppose that's inevitable and Leicester is still very sociable.

PM me if you've got any Leicester questions

Hahaha ooooooh, Yea I'll have to visit and see :') yea thank you, will do and maybe I will see you round Leicester campus, and the new shiny library ahaha :')