[amandanc]

Could anyone offer any advice? I am totally stuck now deciding what to do for my law dissertation....

Any help/advice would be much appreciated.

[cliffg]

(Original post by amandanc)
Could anyone offer any advice? I am totally stuck now deciding what to do for my law dissertation....

Any help/advice would be much appreciated.

You haven't provided a big deal to go on in terms of offering help or advice. First thing I would say, though, is to decide whether or not a dissertation is the right choice for you to make, provided it is an option and not compulsory. Before you pick it as an option make sure that independent study, research and writing is what you excel at. In other words, it should be clear that you have scored much better in coursework than in exams to date. If not, you might be better sticking to taught modules assessed by exams or 50/50. Secondly, there should by now be an area of law which really interests you in terms of exploring and researching a particular aspect of it in greater depth. You're going to live with this specialised area of law for at least one, probably more, days a week for the next year. So make sure you want to take that on. It should probably be hitting up you up the face by now, what you want to do. Thirdly, consider what you want to do after you graduate. You can use an undergraduate dissertation to illustrate a number of things, not least your interest in, commitment to and specialisation in a particular area of law. Fourthly, start to do some initial research into a few different areas. Identify the main areas of academic debate, indentify the amount of source material available, keep your mind open to different opinions and ideas, be prepared to change and re-focus your ideas, write up a good proposal and go from there.

[Kelly1987]

I bought a Dissertation book by Palgrave. It's pretty helpful for writing your dissertation, but not so much on the 'finding a topic' front.

I am doing my Dissertation on Media and Entertainment Law - As this is the area I want to go in to. I won't study this on my degree, so it's something completely new to me, which is of great interest to me too. I then chose Privacy Laws between two different countries, and how they differ, what would happen is the Laws from one were implemented in the other and so on.

You could pick an area of Law you've already studied, where it may have made you think about things, changes that could be made, or how that system works compared to a system in another country or something. Or an area of Law you want to go in to. Speak to your Dissertation Supervisor - they'll give you some basic ideas or examples.

As the other poster said, pic something you're interested in - you'll be living with this topic for a looong time!