[Krydel]

I've just finished my First year as a straight 3-year LLB law student and found when i was in your position as a potential student/definite student (when results day finally arrives for you - good luck!) there was very little realistic information available to me about the course, workload, assessments, reading etc etc before i arrived.

I thought I'd set this thread up to give everyone the opportunity to fire as many questions as they like at me about the course and the university and i'll do my best to answer.

Also, definitely set up a Facebook law freshers 2012/2013 group when the time comes, very useful for consulting when tricky points come up and you've a base of ~300 students to rack the brains of.

Fire away!

[musicrockz93]

Wow hey that's really nice of you! Thanks so much! Honestly since I'm still not an official student yet (fingers crossed for my A-level results!!!), I don't really dare to ask toooo much for fear I'll just set myself up for disappointment. Nonetheless, I'm really curious to know how you found the university and the course overall. Sorry for such a general question, I'm just wondering how you felt about the experience

[tehforum]

Yeah, cool.

[tehforum]

(Original post by Krydel)
I've just finished my First year as a straight 3-year LLB law student and found when i was in your position as a potential student/definite student (when results day finally arrives for you - good luck!) there was very little realistic information available to me about the course, workload, assessments, reading etc etc before i arrived.

I thought I'd set this thread up to give everyone the opportunity to fire as many questions as they like at me about the course and the university and i'll do my best to answer.

Also, definitely set up a Facebook law freshers 2012/2013 group when the time comes, very useful for consulting when tricky points come up and you've a base of ~300 students to rack the brains of.

Fire away!

Already done.



Now just hoping I got the required grades.

[Krydel]

The course is great!

Unfortunately, you have to put up with Legal Theory in your first year which although only a half module is difficult to grasp and is essentially philosophy, something myself and many others did not expect to have to deal with. This year the main lecturer fell ill, so I'm not sure whether he will be back, but we had a lady replace him who was better for the module anyway. Legal Theory teaching on the whole though is pretty poor, and you are better off going it alone really - I stopped going to lectures because they made no sense and ended up with a 2.1 from private study. You wouldn't do legal theory until term 2 anyway though.

Modern English legal system is easy if a bit dry, though the vacation assessment is oddly enjoyable.

Criminal law is always good fun, with eccentric lecturers aplenty to keep it interesting! You will enjoy Victor Tadros in particular.

Land is a love or hate ordeal. Term 1 will be easy enough to grasp after a while, term 2 is a bitch though and do not neglect to work at this! Lecturers are fine, though one (John Snape) is not nearly as entertaining as he sounds - unfortunately they paired him with the dullest parts of the course! But, I'm pretty sure this is fairly standard across universities.

Tort law here is amazing in first term, with Paul Raffield who consistently gets standing ovations at the end of term out of respect for his thoroughly enjoyable lectures. Term 2 steps up the difficulty along with a man who sounds like kermit the frog - love him or hate him.

Assessments you get plenty of time to do are on interesting topics and feedback is usually good - they've recently begun giving more detailed emailed feedback and there were a few lectures dedicated to it.

Exams don't have any surprises. At least, not this year. Revision lectures in term 3 usually give a good indication of what will come up purely based on what they recap on, even if they try to tell you not to selectively revise!

It's difficult to broad answer how good the uni as a whole is, would need more specific questions. However, SU nightlife is okay, but you will likely move to leamington Birmingham and Coventry after the end of term 1 at the latest. Still, Top B at the union is always good to play "how drunk can we get and still be let into a place". Not that students have a drinking culture

It's entirely possible to go out 2-3 times a week and still get a 2.1 in first year, just make sure you do work when its set - i learnt this the hard way and had to do all night sessions for most of my assessments!

There's something for everyone on campus - societies are a big part of uni life and don't forget to get involved in everything you possibly can! (you won't manage more than one sports society though if it's one you train with, schedules will clash and it will take up too much time)


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

[alipally94]

(Original post by Krydel)
The course is great!

Unfortunately, you have to put up with Legal Theory in your first year which although only a half module is difficult to grasp and is essentially philosophy, something myself and many others did not expect to have to deal with. This year the main lecturer fell ill, so I'm not sure whether he will be back, but we had a lady replace him who was better for the module anyway. Legal Theory teaching on the whole though is pretty poor, and you are better off going it alone really - I stopped going to lectures because they made no sense and ended up with a 2.1 from private study. You wouldn't do legal theory until term 2 anyway though.

Modern English legal system is easy if a bit dry, though the vacation assessment is oddly enjoyable.

Criminal law is always good fun, with eccentric lecturers aplenty to keep it interesting! You will enjoy Victor Tadros in particular.

Land is a love or hate ordeal. Term 1 will be easy enough to grasp after a while, term 2 is a bitch though and do not neglect to work at this! Lecturers are fine, though one (John Snape) is not nearly as entertaining as he sounds - unfortunately they paired him with the dullest parts of the course! But, I'm pretty sure this is fairly standard across universities.

Tort law here is amazing in first term, with Paul Raffield who consistently gets standing ovations at the end of term out of respect for his thoroughly enjoyable lectures. Term 2 steps up the difficulty along with a man who sounds like kermit the frog - love him or hate him.

Assessments you get plenty of time to do are on interesting topics and feedback is usually good - they've recently begun giving more detailed emailed feedback and there were a few lectures dedicated to it.

Exams don't have any surprises. At least, not this year. Revision lectures in term 3 usually give a good indication of what will come up purely based on what they recap on, even if they try to tell you not to selectively revise!

It's difficult to broad answer how good the uni as a whole is, would need more specific questions. However, SU nightlife is okay, but you will likely move to leamington Birmingham and Coventry after the end of term 1 at the latest. Still, Top B at the union is always good to play "how drunk can we get and still be let into a place". Not that students have a drinking culture

It's entirely possible to go out 2-3 times a week and still get a 2.1 in first year, just make sure you do work when its set - i learnt this the hard way and had to do all night sessions for most of my assessments!

There's something for everyone on campus - societies are a big part of uni life and don't forget to get involved in everything you possibly can! (you won't manage more than one sports society though if it's one you train with, schedules will clash and it will take up too much time)


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

Thank you for this information!! It is very useful! I hold a conditional offer for Warwick and an praying i get the grades. You said that you can go out 2-3 times a week and still get a 2:1. But, how many hours would you say you worked a week (for your law course). And did you do work every day for say X amount of hours, even on weekends? Im worried that when I get to Warwick (hopefully!) I will end up doing not enought work, or too much and therefore just being stuck in my room surrounded by legal books all the time!

[Krydel]

(Original post by alipally94)
Thank you for this information!! It is very useful! I hold a conditional offer for Warwick and an praying i get the grades. You said that you can go out 2-3 times a week and still get a 2:1. But, how many hours would you say you worked a week (for your law course). And did you do work every day for say X amount of hours, even on weekends? Im worried that when I get to Warwick (hopefully!) I will end up doing not enought work, or too much and therefore just being stuck in my room surrounded by legal books all the time!

Best of luck!

To be able to go out as much as I did you'd probably need to put in a 9-5 day Monday-Friday or Monday-Saturday depending on the work that week (or at least, something equivalent, I definitely didn't make 9am after a lot of nights out!) depending on how fast you work. In term 1 i did very little (perhaps 100 pages total?!) of the set reading and fell behind very quickly, making for a very very busy Christmas 'vacation' where i spent every waking minute of my day smashing through the textbooks as fast as i could to catch up.

That said, you can manage doing nothing all week and then using the weekend to solidly get the work done. This is essentially what I did, but i wouldn't recommend it - It's very very stressful. Word of warning: get cracking on assignments/essays as soon as you can!

I was told by my personal tutor that each week a module should be setting you some required reading and some seminar work, which should take 4-6 hours per module. This seems about right. You do 4 modules in term 1 so expect around 20 additional hours per week as the minimum, not sure I knew anyone who bothered with extra reading, but it's a must if you want a first.

Ignore the stereotype that Law students have no life - We definitely do! Perhaps we don't have the social life of some other courses because of the workload, but so long as you put in a good days work, you will have your evenings free to do as you want. Very much dependent on how little sleep you can live off though, with three 9ams in term 2 this year It was not uncommon that I'd make do in 4-5 hours sleep and a huge hangover and have to powernap later / go to bed earlier if i wasn't going out again that night. Plan your late starts to coincide with your nights out! Again a warning: First year doesn't count, but if you want any kind of legal career, make sure you get a 2.1 in first year.

[alipally94]

(Original post by Krydel)
Best of luck!

To be able to go out as much as I did you'd probably need to put in a 9-5 day Monday-Friday or Monday-Saturday depending on the work that week (or at least, something equivalent, I definitely didn't make 9am after a lot of nights out!) depending on how fast you work. In term 1 i did very little (perhaps 100 pages total?!) of the set reading and fell behind very quickly, making for a very very busy Christmas 'vacation' where i spent every waking minute of my day smashing through the textbooks as fast as i could to catch up.

That said, you can manage doing nothing all week and then using the weekend to solidly get the work done. This is essentially what I did, but i wouldn't recommend it - It's very very stressful. Word of warning: get cracking on assignments/essays as soon as you can!

I was told by my personal tutor that each week a module should be setting you some required reading and some seminar work, which should take 4-6 hours per module. This seems about right. You do 4 modules in term 1 so expect around 20 additional hours per week as the minimum, not sure I knew anyone who bothered with required reading, but it's a must if you want a first.

Ignore the stereotype that Law students have no life - We definitely do! Perhaps we don't have the social life of some other courses because of the workload, but so long as you put in a good days work, you will have your evenings free to do as you want. Very much dependent on how little sleep you can live off though, with three 9ams in term 2 this year It was not uncommon that I'd make do in 4-5 hours sleep and a huge hangover and have to powernap later / go to bed earlier if i wasn't going out again that night. Plan your late starts to coincide with your nights out! Again a warning: First year doesn't count, but if you want any kind of legal career, make sure you get a 2.1 in first year.

Thank you so much for replying. So would you suggest to sort of treat a law degree as a full time job (9-5 mon to fri and catch up on anything you've missed over the weekend) obviously as far as you possibly can!? Haha

Also, when I went to an open day the girl showing me round said that you didn't really need to deviate from the main textbooks to get a good grade (e.g stick to the main textbook for each module). Would you agree with this or would you say extra reading is necessary? I was quite surprised when she said that she didn't do much extra reading and was getting a high 2:1.
Thankyou!!!

[Krydel]

(Original post by alipally94)
Thank you so much for replying. So would you suggest to sort of treat a law degree as a full time job (9-5 mon to fri and catch up on anything you've missed over the weekend) obviously as far as you possibly can!? Haha

Also, when I went to an open day the girl showing me round said that you didn't really need to deviate from the main textbooks to get a good grade (e.g stick to the main textbook for each module). Would you agree with this or would you say extra reading is necessary? I was quite surprised when she said that she didn't do much extra reading and was getting a high 2:1.
Thankyou!!!

You'll have a much easier time of your first year if you treat it that way, certainly. That way you get a good 7 hours to yourself every evening if you go to bed at midnight, up at 8am and ready for your 9am lecture with a good 8 hours sleep ahead of you (Unless of course, you use these sleep hours to go out for the night :P).

That girl is right. I did no extra reading (apart from for assessments, don't whatever you do rely on textbooks for those!) and didn't even open the Criminal Law textbook and got a mid 2.1 this year.

I imagine it's a different story in the later years, however.

[Krydel]

So it's that time... Congratulations to anyone who got in, thought I'd give this a bump for the incoming law freshers!

[Greatleysteg]

Hey - thanks for the useful post up there ^^^ Paul Raffield seems great; I emailed him on Saturday to ask if he could let me know how to get hold of Donoghue v. Stevenson and he replied within ten minutes with a .pdf of the case and a really friendly message! Seems like a ledge. Just waiting to hear back from Victor Tadros re. another case.

How much of the background reading would you say you'd managed before you got there? Oh, and dear GOD Donoghue vs. Stevenson is dull... it's just so verbose! I can't really get hold of (m)any of the reading list books, because Liverpool libraries are dreadful and I didn't have the reading list when I was still in Oxford - those that are available tend to be older editions. Is it still worth reading a book if it's an edition (or four) out of date?

[missach]

(Original post by Greatleysteg)
Hey - thanks for the useful post up there ^^^ Paul Raffield seems great; I emailed him on Saturday to ask if he could let me know how to get hold of Donoghue v. Stevenson and he replied within ten minutes with a .pdf of the case and a really friendly message! Seems like a ledge. Just waiting to hear back from Victor Tadros re. another case.

How much of the background reading would you say you'd managed before you got there? Oh, and dear GOD Donoghue vs. Stevenson is dull... it's just so verbose! I can't really get hold of (m)any of the reading list books, because Liverpool libraries are dreadful and I didn't have the reading list when I was still in Oxford - those that are available tend to be older editions. Is it still worth reading a book if it's an edition (or four) out of date?

Same- I'm not really sure how much background reading to do. Maybe one from each module? To be honest, I'm having the same problem, and am finding it really difficult to gain access to the law books. :/ Lets hope everyone is experiencing the same problem!!

[Krydel]

(Original post by Greatleysteg)
Hey - thanks for the useful post up there ^^^ Paul Raffield seems great; I emailed him on Saturday to ask if he could let me know how to get hold of Donoghue v. Stevenson and he replied within ten minutes with a .pdf of the case and a really friendly message! Seems like a ledge. Just waiting to hear back from Victor Tadros re. another case.

How much of the background reading would you say you'd managed before you got there? Oh, and dear GOD Donoghue vs. Stevenson is dull... it's just so verbose! I can't really get hold of (m)any of the reading list books, because Liverpool libraries are dreadful and I didn't have the reading list when I was still in Oxford - those that are available tend to be older editions. Is it still worth reading a book if it's an edition (or four) out of date?

He really is a nice guy, you will enjoy the lectures. Getting hold of cases is really easy once you're part of the IT service at Warwick, as you then have access to Westlaw and Lexis (law databases) where everything is just a search away. It's like google for law! There are usually a few training sessions available to get settled into using them - you will be reliant upon them when you get into the swing of things. Most people have a preference as to which they use, though.

I've never read all of Donoghue v Stevenson personally, just bits and pieces; mainly Lord Atkin's judgement and 'the neighbour principle' which is essentially the foundation of tort law. Cases aren't usually loads of fun, because even if the content is interesting, once its been evaluated to death by judges you get a little sick of it Still, there are some hidden gems that are fun!

As far as the reading list goes it doesn't matter for the background reading which edition you get, so long as it's relatively recent - an edition or two older wont make a difference. Its only textbooks that will need to be up to date. Don't get reading everything on the reading list - i don't know what they've given you this year, but personally I would recommend getting:

• Letters to a Law Student, for a basic understanding of what to expect and some useful tips for studying law.
• The Law Machine, for an easy read to get a jist of legal system and;
• any of the 'Understanding...' books i.e. Understanding Criminal Law are good to get hold of - might be a bit of a struggle without knowledge of the black letter law and you won't immediately think they are relevant to start with, but when you come to doing essay questions they will be a valuable resource to tap into before going searching for journals.

(Original post by missach)
Same- I'm not really sure how much background reading to do. Maybe one from each module? To be honest, I'm having the same problem, and am finding it really difficult to gain access to the law books. :/ Lets hope everyone is experiencing the same problem!!

As above, you could get an 'understanding...' book for each subject and be pretty happy. Wouldn't bother with anything for MELS (Modern English Legal System) or Land/Property though.





I have a number of the reading list books and textbooks from my first year I could sell on if you have difficulty getting them free from the library / don't want to buy them new!

http://i45.tinypic.com/288o83o.jpg (books i have)

[EE1994]

Hi, thanks for posting so much useful information I was just wondering what the workload is like during the first week or so, considering there'll be lots of freshers events going on. Thanks again!

[Krydel]

(Original post by EE1994)
Hi, thanks for posting so much useful information I was just wondering what the workload is like during the first week or so, considering there'll be lots of freshers events going on. Thanks again!

As a general Warwick thing we get a raw deal with freshers fortnight - unlike most places that get a week off to party, ours is alongside everything (as you know, of course). The first week is pretty low on work with mostly introductory lectures with bits and pieces of reading to do (normally the first 1-40 pages of your textbooks, the intro sections). Week 2 steps it up a bit, but is again less than the norm. I *think* seminars started in week 3, so that would mean week 2 includes both bits of reading and your seminar preparation for the following week. However, the first seminars are pretty basic - i recall Land Law being 'bring in a piece of art/literature/news etc that sparks your interest in land law which was a doss of a seminar. Don't forget to do it though, or you'll get off on a bad food and it will be incredibly awkward when your tutor asks for your say (cue 5 minutes of awkward silence waiting for someone in my group to say something). Unfortunately, doing Law you will be one of the few people having to really do anything in the first couple of weeks, but its not going to kill you - I went to nearly every single freshers event with ease.

[Greatleysteg]

(Original post by Krydel)
X

Hey - I was just wondering if you knew if (m)any people use a Kindle as opposed to buying and lugging about all those Law books?

I was thinking about getting one, and it seems as though it's a bit cheaper to buy the e-textbooks (although obviously not cheaper than buying second-hand copies of books), but I dunno.

Am I right in thinking we need to *buy* the most recent editions of the textbooks (hence we're not supposed to buy any before arriving, it says on the reading list), but for the 'background reading' books, i.e. the ones on the reading list, most of which are introductory and many of which have publication dates in the early-mid 2000s, some sooner, we can get older (and therefore probably hard, second-hand copies)?

Cheers!

[alipally94]

(Original post by Krydel)
As a general Warwick thing we get a raw deal with freshers fortnight - unlike most places that get a week off to party, ours is alongside everything (as you know, of course). The first week is pretty low on work with mostly introductory lectures with bits and pieces of reading to do (normally the first 1-40 pages of your textbooks, the intro sections). Week 2 steps it up a bit, but is again less than the norm. I *think* seminars started in week 3, so that would mean week 2 includes both bits of reading and your seminar preparation for the following week. However, the first seminars are pretty basic - i recall Land Law being 'bring in a piece of art/literature/news etc that sparks your interest in land law which was a doss of a seminar. Don't forget to do it though, or you'll get off on a bad food and it will be incredibly awkward when your tutor asks for your say (cue 5 minutes of awkward silence waiting for someone in my group to say something). Unfortunately, doing Law you will be one of the few people having to really do anything in the first couple of weeks, but its not going to kill you - I went to nearly every single freshers event with ease.

How do we know when to read certain pages of books.. do we get emails from tutors telling us to read certain pages of a book during the week and what to read and prepare for a specific seminar?

Hope that makes sense! I'm just a bit worried that I will turn up to warwick and not have a clue what I should be doing!

[Krydel]

(Original post by alipally94)
How do we know when to read certain pages of books.. do we get emails from tutors telling us to read certain pages of a book during the week and what to read and prepare for a specific seminar?

Hope that makes sense! I'm just a bit worried that I will turn up to warwick and not have a clue what I should be doing!

Largely they are written on the back of lecture handouts, at least to begin with. After that, you can check the module web pages and they usually have a dedicated page or downloadable word document with lecture number / subject / required and extra reading.

(Original post by Greatleysteg)
Hey - I was just wondering if you knew if (m)any people use a Kindle as opposed to buying and lugging about all those Law books?

I was thinking about getting one, and it seems as though it's a bit cheaper to buy the e-textbooks (although obviously not cheaper than buying second-hand copies of books), but I dunno.

Am I right in thinking we need to *buy* the most recent editions of the textbooks (hence we're not supposed to buy any before arriving, it says on the reading list), but for the 'background reading' books, i.e. the ones on the reading list, most of which are introductory and many of which have publication dates in the early-mid 2000s, some sooner, we can get older (and therefore probably hard, second-hand copies)?

Cheers!

I don't know of any - I think you'd probably be hard pushed to get a lot of your textbooks in kindle format and the page numbers they give you probably wouldn't line up with them anyway.

Yeah, textbooks you need the most recent edition and they don't tend to confirm what that textbook is until you get there. As you rightly say, that's why they tell you to wait.

Background reading you can pick up older editions, just check its not so old it misses some major statute or reform of the law if its on something specific.

[tehforum]

haha

I got in!

Also, thanks for your information Krydel

[Greatleysteg]

(Original post by tehforum)
haha

I got in!

Also, thanks for your information Krydel

Congrats! Which accommodation have you chosen?