BA (Hons) - Law (Jurisprudence) at Oxford only allows choice of 2 optional papers?

oh my god this is hysterical, thank you for giving me such a good laugh

if you are a real person I would strongly recommend you do not apply for jurisprudence

Alright, I’ll entertain you and explain this. Hopefully it helps anyone else coming across the thread.

Recently the system has changed, but until the last couple of years, a Law degree was not automatically enough to go into Law as a career. You needed to have a QUALIFYING Law degree for it to be of any use. (Often called a QLD.)

The Law Society and Bar Council issued a statement in 1999 which specified exactly what a Law degree curriculum must cover for it to be “qualifying”, aka, what it must contain so that you can progress to the next level as you seek to become a solicitor or a barrister. In essence, they published a list of modules and a couple of additional requirements.

If your degree didn’t cover this content, it wouldn’t be certified as a QLD - so it would be of no use in becoming a solicitor or barrister. It’d be like taking a degree in Physics, or History. If you wanted to go into law you’d be required to do a CPD (a law conversion course) to be able to progress to the next stage. So there would be no point in studying that law degree, you’d be better off going elsewhere!

Universities could let students choose modules freely, and that would mean some students had QLDs and others didn’t. This isn’t an approach they took - after all, it’d mess with the course structure and they’d have a lot of frustrated graduates who didn’t realise that skipping one module in First Year had demoted their degree. (And obviously, employers wouldn’t be huge fans of Law students who decided to avoid doing these core modules… so you’d be very unlikely to get a CPD sponsored by them - and therefore unlikely to be able to become a solicitor or barrister.)

So the Law Society set a list of requirements and universities followed them. Alongside some more general requirements (students must learn the fundamentals of the law in England & Wales, how to analyse, how to communicate orally and in writing, to be trained in legal research, and so on), there’s a list of essential topics that must be covered.

These required topics were:

i. Public Law, including Constitutional Law, Administrative Law and Human Rights;
ii. Law of the European Union;
iii. Criminal Law;
iv. Obligations including Contract, Restitution and Tort;
v. Property Law; and
vi. Equity and the Law of Trusts.

Some universities separate out some of these modules as they’re quite big - for example, at Oxford, (i) Constitutional Law and Administrative Law are taught separately, as are (v) Contract Law and Tort Law. Many other universities take similar approaches - some separate (vi) in half, or have a separate module for (i) Human Rights.

So. Given that you only have time to do a limited number of modules properly during a degree, and you have to include a certain selection of modules for your degree to be useful, I think you’ve misunderstood the Cambridge system a little bit. You definitely didn’t have free choice between all of the optional modules a couple of years ago.

There have recently been updates to the system and the qualifying degree system has been phased out - only students who began their degrees in 2021 or earlier may qualify under that system. Instead, all new candidates aiming to be a solicitor must complete an SQE if they wish to qualify.

However, this doesn’t mean all the requirements are totally gone. These modules form the basic coverage of most law, and are still considered foundational my most institutions. Furthermore, all students aiming to be barristers must STILL obtain an appropriate law degree which requires - you guessed it - the exact same array of subjects.

Universities remain incentivised to keep students on the qualifying course - if you don’t follow that framework, the door to being a barrister after your degree just closed. And I see that you want to become a barrister… so you have to take all of these modules wherever you go.

So… why do you keep insisting you want more free choice? There’s not enough time, unless you want Oxford to change their entire USP as well. And you want Oxford to break away from the course… because you said so? Be for real.

Cambridge students study for 3 years, so do Oxford students. The amount of teaching is the same, so any module that’s shorter contains less content. Cambridge has more, smaller modules, whereas Oxford has larger modules but less of them overall. They are different for very good reasons - they each cater to different preferences!

Some students would much prefer to have more time to go in-depth and examine the deeper nuances of some of their modules. For those who care about jurisprudence and prefer the in-depth approach, Oxford is an excellent choice. Clearly, employers agree. You’d be able to take an option paper in Health Law or Copyright Law or whatever and spend an entire term examining the subject in as much depth as all your core subjects - if you’re seeking to specialise in Copyright Law for example, that’s invaluable.

For those who want to be able to try more options and take multiple shorter papers, Cambridge may suit them better. You get to try more things out and discover what caters to you. If that suits you better that’s absolutely fine, but that doesn’t mean Cambridge is doing a better job than Oxford. Graduate outcomes are comparable and top firms headhunt students from both universities.

You clearly want to pick lots of mini options. In that case, you ought to apply to Cambridge. But you don’t speak for anyone else. You should open those poll results.

Law students are finding this post comically ridiculous for a reason - you don’t look clever making this point! You don’t seem to understand what you even have to COVER, let alone the principle of modules being worth different amounts of credits. You seem like a troll, and I honestly still think you are trolling. I’d consider that before you brag about results you haven’t yet received.

Finally, I’d like to point out your statement on your court case, your political beliefs and getting an offer. You are not special just because you got mugged. Your case may have sparked an interest but it was not an academic event that taught you to analyse or contemplate the nuances of the system correctly. It is useful for the “Why I’m interested in law” sentence of your personal statement and no further. It will not ensure you get an offer or make up for any other shortcomings.

Furthermore, it may even add shortcomings. You have fundamentally understood a number of principles of justice and jurisprudence if you want to campaign for restoration of the death penalty. Being a hardline punitive ruler does not make you a good law candidate - you see the world in black and white, but don’t appreciate any of the grey. Studying jurisprudence teaches you to appreciate the complexity of these cases, sure, but I don’t think you are even CAPABLE of taking more than one view into account at this point in your life - your comments on this post have shown you are not willing to change your mind when presented with new information.

A top university will not pick you with that hardline, unchanging attitude. It would make you a poor barrister. That is why I do not recommend you pursue this degree without making any changes.

Alright, I’ll entertain you and explain this. Hopefully it helps anyone else coming across the thread.

Recently the system has changed, but until the last couple of years, a Law degree was not automatically enough to go into Law as a career. You needed to have a QUALIFYING Law degree for it to be of any use. (Often called a QLD.)

The Law Society and Bar Council issued a statement in 1999 which specified exactly what a Law degree curriculum must cover for it to be “qualifying”, aka, what it must contain so that you can progress to the next level as you seek to become a solicitor or a barrister. In essence, they published a list of modules and a couple of additional requirements.

If your degree didn’t cover this content, it wouldn’t be certified as a QLD - so it would be of no use in becoming a solicitor or barrister. It’d be like taking a degree in Physics, or History. If you wanted to go into law you’d be required to do a CPD (a law conversion course) to be able to progress to the next stage. So there would be no point in studying that law degree, you’d be better off going elsewhere!

Universities could let students choose modules freely, and that would mean some students had QLDs and others didn’t. This isn’t an approach they took - after all, it’d mess with the course structure and they’d have a lot of frustrated graduates who didn’t realise that skipping one module in First Year had demoted their degree. (And obviously, employers wouldn’t be huge fans of Law students who decided to avoid doing these core modules… so you’d be very unlikely to get a CPD sponsored by them - and therefore unlikely to be able to become a solicitor or barrister.)

So the Law Society set a list of requirements and universities followed them. Alongside some more general requirements (students must learn the fundamentals of the law in England & Wales, how to analyse, how to communicate orally and in writing, to be trained in legal research, and so on), there’s a list of essential topics that must be covered.

These required topics were:

i. Public Law, including Constitutional Law, Administrative Law and Human Rights;
ii. Law of the European Union;
iii. Criminal Law;
iv. Obligations including Contract, Restitution and Tort;
v. Property Law; and
vi. Equity and the Law of Trusts.

Some universities separate out some of these modules as they’re quite big - for example, at Oxford, (i) Constitutional Law and Administrative Law are taught separately, as are (v) Contract Law and Tort Law. Many other universities take similar approaches - some separate (vi) in half, or have a separate module for (i) Human Rights.

So. Given that you only have time to do a limited number of modules properly during a degree, and you have to include a certain selection of modules for your degree to be useful, I think you’ve misunderstood the Cambridge system a little bit. You definitely didn’t have free choice between all of the optional modules a couple of years ago.

There have recently been updates to the system and the qualifying degree system has been phased out - only students who began their degrees in 2021 or earlier may qualify under that system. Instead, all new candidates aiming to be a solicitor must complete an SQE if they wish to qualify.

However, this doesn’t mean all the requirements are totally gone. These modules form the basic coverage of most law, and are still considered foundational my most institutions. Furthermore, all students aiming to be barristers must STILL obtain an appropriate law degree which requires - you guessed it - the exact same array of subjects.

Universities remain incentivised to keep students on the qualifying course - if you don’t follow that framework, the door to being a barrister after your degree just closed. And I see that you want to become a barrister… so you have to take all of these modules wherever you go.

So… why do you keep insisting you want more free choice? There’s not enough time, unless you want Oxford to change their entire USP as well. And you want Oxford to break away from the course… because you said so? Be for real.

Cambridge students study for 3 years, so do Oxford students. The amount of teaching is the same, so any module that’s shorter contains less content. Cambridge has more, smaller modules, whereas Oxford has larger modules but less of them overall. They are different for very good reasons - they each cater to different preferences!

Some students would much prefer to have more time to go in-depth and examine the deeper nuances of some of their modules. For those who care about jurisprudence and prefer the in-depth approach, Oxford is an excellent choice. Clearly, employers agree. You’d be able to take an option paper in Health Law or Copyright Law or whatever and spend an entire term examining the subject in as much depth as all your core subjects - if you’re seeking to specialise in Copyright Law for example, that’s invaluable.

For those who want to be able to try more options and take multiple shorter papers, Cambridge may suit them better. You get to try more things out and discover what caters to you. If that suits you better that’s absolutely fine, but that doesn’t mean Cambridge is doing a better job than Oxford. Graduate outcomes are comparable and top firms headhunt students from both universities.

You clearly want to pick lots of mini options. In that case, you ought to apply to Cambridge. But you don’t speak for anyone else. You should open those poll results.

Law students are finding this post comically ridiculous for a reason - you don’t look clever making this point! You don’t seem to understand what you even have to COVER, let alone the principle of modules being worth different amounts of credits. You seem like a troll, and I honestly still think you are trolling. I’d consider that before you brag about results you haven’t yet received.

Finally, I’d like to point out your statement on your court case, your political beliefs and getting an offer. You are not special just because you got mugged. Your case may have sparked an interest but it was not an academic event that taught you to analyse or contemplate the nuances of the system correctly. It is useful for the “Why I’m interested in law” sentence of your personal statement and no further. It will not ensure you get an offer or make up for any other shortcomings.

Furthermore, it may even add shortcomings. You have fundamentally understood a number of principles of justice and jurisprudence if you want to campaign for restoration of the death penalty. Being a hardline punitive ruler does not make you a good law candidate - you see the world in black and white, but don’t appreciate any of the grey. Studying jurisprudence teaches you to appreciate the complexity of these cases, sure, but I don’t think you are even CAPABLE of taking more than one view into account at this point in your life - your comments on this post have shown you are not willing to change your mind when presented with new information.

A top university will not pick you with that hardline, unchanging attitude. It would make you a poor barrister. That is why I do not recommend you pursue this degree without making any changes.

A much more sensible and coherent explanation than this thread deserved. PRSOM

Alright, I’ll entertain you and explain this. Hopefully it helps anyone else coming across the thread.

Why are the poll results still closed after 3 weeks? Surely as an admin for the forums you can open them?

Alright, I’ll entertain you and explain this. Hopefully it helps anyone else coming across the thread.

Recently the system has changed, but until the last couple of years, a Law degree was not automatically enough to go into Law as a career. You needed to have a QUALIFYING Law degree for it to be of any use. (Often called a QLD.)

The Law Society and Bar Council issued a statement in 1999 which specified exactly what a Law degree curriculum must cover for it to be “qualifying”, aka, what it must contain so that you can progress to the next level as you seek to become a solicitor or a barrister. In essence, they published a list of modules and a couple of additional requirements.

If your degree didn’t cover this content, it wouldn’t be certified as a QLD - so it would be of no use in becoming a solicitor or barrister. It’d be like taking a degree in Physics, or History. If you wanted to go into law you’d be required to do a CPD (a law conversion course) to be able to progress to the next stage. So there would be no point in studying that law degree, you’d be better off going elsewhere!

Universities could let students choose modules freely, and that would mean some students had QLDs and others didn’t. This isn’t an approach they took - after all, it’d mess with the course structure and they’d have a lot of frustrated graduates who didn’t realise that skipping one module in First Year had demoted their degree. (And obviously, employers wouldn’t be huge fans of Law students who decided to avoid doing these core modules… so you’d be very unlikely to get a CPD sponsored by them - and therefore unlikely to be able to become a solicitor or barrister.)

So the Law Society set a list of requirements and universities followed them. Alongside some more general requirements (students must learn the fundamentals of the law in England & Wales, how to analyse, how to communicate orally and in writing, to be trained in legal research, and so on), there’s a list of essential topics that must be covered.

These required topics were:

i. Public Law, including Constitutional Law, Administrative Law and Human Rights;
ii. Law of the European Union;
iii. Criminal Law;
iv. Obligations including Contract, Restitution and Tort;
v. Property Law; and
vi. Equity and the Law of Trusts.

Some universities separate out some of these modules as they’re quite big - for example, at Oxford, (i) Constitutional Law and Administrative Law are taught separately, as are (v) Contract Law and Tort Law. Many other universities take similar approaches - some separate (vi) in half, or have a separate module for (i) Human Rights.

So. Given that you only have time to do a limited number of modules properly during a degree, and you have to include a certain selection of modules for your degree to be useful, I think you’ve misunderstood the Cambridge system a little bit. You definitely didn’t have free choice between all of the optional modules a couple of years ago.

There have recently been updates to the system and the qualifying degree system has been phased out - only students who began their degrees in 2021 or earlier may qualify under that system. Instead, all new candidates aiming to be a solicitor must complete an SQE if they wish to qualify.

However, this doesn’t mean all the requirements are totally gone. These modules form the basic coverage of most law, and are still considered foundational my most institutions. Furthermore, all students aiming to be barristers must STILL obtain an appropriate law degree which requires - you guessed it - the exact same array of subjects.

Universities remain incentivised to keep students on the qualifying course - if you don’t follow that framework, the door to being a barrister after your degree just closed. And I see that you want to become a barrister… so you have to take all of these modules wherever you go.

So… why do you keep insisting you want more free choice? There’s not enough time, unless you want Oxford to change their entire USP as well. And you want Oxford to break away from the course… because you said so? Be for real.

Cambridge students study for 3 years, so do Oxford students. The amount of teaching is the same, so any module that’s shorter contains less content. Cambridge has more, smaller modules, whereas Oxford has larger modules but less of them overall. They are different for very good reasons - they each cater to different preferences!

Some students would much prefer to have more time to go in-depth and examine the deeper nuances of some of their modules. For those who care about jurisprudence and prefer the in-depth approach, Oxford is an excellent choice. Clearly, employers agree. You’d be able to take an option paper in Health Law or Copyright Law or whatever and spend an entire term examining the subject in as much depth as all your core subjects - if you’re seeking to specialise in Copyright Law for example, that’s invaluable.

For those who want to be able to try more options and take multiple shorter papers, Cambridge may suit them better. You get to try more things out and discover what caters to you. If that suits you better that’s absolutely fine, but that doesn’t mean Cambridge is doing a better job than Oxford. Graduate outcomes are comparable and top firms headhunt students from both universities.

You clearly want to pick lots of mini options. In that case, you ought to apply to Cambridge. But you don’t speak for anyone else. You should open those poll results.

Law students are finding this post comically ridiculous for a reason - you don’t look clever making this point! You don’t seem to understand what you even have to COVER, let alone the principle of modules being worth different amounts of credits. You seem like a troll, and I honestly still think you are trolling. I’d consider that before you brag about results you haven’t yet received.

Finally, I’d like to point out your statement on your court case, your political beliefs and getting an offer. You are not special just because you got mugged. Your case may have sparked an interest but it was not an academic event that taught you to analyse or contemplate the nuances of the system correctly. It is useful for the “Why I’m interested in law” sentence of your personal statement and no further. It will not ensure you get an offer or make up for any other shortcomings.

Furthermore, it may even add shortcomings. You have fundamentally understood a number of principles of justice and jurisprudence if you want to campaign for restoration of the death penalty. Being a hardline punitive ruler does not make you a good law candidate - you see the world in black and white, but don’t appreciate any of the grey. Studying jurisprudence teaches you to appreciate the complexity of these cases, sure, but I don’t think you are even CAPABLE of taking more than one view into account at this point in your life - your comments on this post have shown you are not willing to change your mind when presented with new information.

A top university will not pick you with that hardline, unchanging attitude. It would make you a poor barrister. That is why I do not recommend you pursue this degree without making any changes.

How has the system changed?
I was under the impression that we still need a QLD until I saw your post.
so SQE is now required for prospective solicitors
what happens to the bar route?

Good luck trying to reform Oxford. As for Oxford law being an unpopular course, if only you could see the anguished pms I get from desperate people who are dying to get into Oxford law.

Tutors don’t like being told their courses are rubbish.

I went to a different university and once there, a handful of students decided that the course was old fashioned and they were going to rebel. They told the tutors exactly what they thought. They were furious, and in retaliation they made all our finals questions harder. Where there used to be a choice of questions there was only one. As one of my fellow students I was “robbed” of a 2:1. I do resent what that group of ( rather entitled) students did. And you are trying to do this before you apply to one of the most popular and oversubscribed courses in the country.

No, my son is not dissatisfied with hospital. He is just addicted to medical research and has been since he was 16.

Hii,
Im curious. Did your son go to an independent or state school? and which extracurriculars/supercurriculars/work experience did he do etc?

At the open day for my daughter's college last year, the Master of the college and the Tutor for Admissions each said that, at the admissions stage, Oxford is not interested in candidates' extra curricular activities. I know a number of Oxford Dons at other colleges, and they have confirmed this to be the case. The Master and the Tutor for Admissions recommended including a few lines in the personal statement dealing with extra curricular activities, because other universities may be interested in those activities.

The Dons said that, although they welcome the rounded scholar, and encouraged extra curricular activities by students, the competition for places at Oxford, and the intensity of the academic demands placed on Oxford undergraduates, are such that the university and colleges focus on the scholarly abilities and potential of the candidates.

My daughter's school's Head of History wrote for my daughter a positive reference which dealt only with her academic qualities. The interviewers did not ask anything about my daughter's personal statement. The interviewers asked my daughter to look at two legal problems, and asked her only about those problems.

Every successful candidate is different, but by way of illustration, my daughter, who scored 41 in the IB last year, scored 33 in the LNAT. She does not know her essay score, because she received an offer.

omg may i ask - which supercurriculars/exracurriculars your daughter did? and how she went about preparing for the interview?

My daughter shoots target rifle - she has been a member of the GB and Ireland Teams for her age group. She was a Cadet Warrant Officer in the RAF section of her school's CCF. She was in her school's debating team, and acted and sang in some school musicals. It appears that none of those things played any part in her admission to Oxford.

To prepare for the interviews, my daughter read and listened to news and current affairs, law blogs and podcasts. She read Tom Bingham's "The Rule of Law", and dipped into "The Oxford Book of Essays". She researched debates about jury trials, and environmental law cases in the European Court of Human Rights. She watched Oxford youtube videos about interviews. She engaged in conversations about law and current affairs with both of her parents.

so none of her extracurriculars helped her get in? btw which a levels did she do + grades did she get?

Independent school ( scholarships etc).

Both ins did loads and loads of extra curriculars. That’s what it takes to get in

hii,
so i saw that you know a lot about applications and i wanted to ask for advice. I want to do law for uni and I'm going to do politics, Spanish, history and English lit. There's a girl in my year that wants to asw, she does like 3 instruments diploma level, umpiring netball, netball, county hockey, football, tennis, speech and drama etc
I literally don't do nearly half of that and I'm wondering if I don't do all of that does that mean I definitely can't go to oxford. I need advice extracurricular wise, lnat and a level advice to get A*. As both of your sons went I was wondering if you could give me advice so I could maximise my possibilites. which extracurriculars did they do btw. thank u so much