The Student Room Group

Urgent!!!:recommended reading list for law at Oxford Uni

I am currently an AS leve student and want to apply a law degree in Oxford Uni. I want to use this summer holiday to read some books from the recommended reading list but just couldn't find it.

Did anyone have any clue or have done the same thing when you applied to any other universities, please please let me know!! Thank you !!!

Reply 1

Original post by Miss Elaine
x


Hmm. I'm not sure we share the same understanding of urgency.

I couldn't find it. I know a man who can find anything @nulli tertius


But I found this: http://www.balliol.ox.ac.uk/undergraduate-admissions/law-reading-list which is a summer reading list for candidates already admitted, rather than intended to be waded through pre-interview.

My own suggestion is that they likely don't want you pre-teaching yourself overmuch anyway. The interview is about how you think, not what you know. Browsing through the books on the list above (from library, don't buy) might be most useful for concentrating your mind on whether you do or do not want to study Law.

For interview in any non-school subject you can usually do no better than the OUP very short introductions, for example:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Law-Very-Short-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0199214964/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1434413692&sr=1-1&keywords=law+a+very+short+introduction

http://www.amazon.co.uk/British-Constitution-Short-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0199697698/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1434413692&sr=1-11&keywords=law+a+very+short+introduction

Reply 2

Original post by Miss Elaine
I am currently an AS leve student and want to apply a law degree in Oxford Uni. I want to use this summer holiday to read some books from the recommended reading list but just couldn't find it.

Did anyone have any clue or have done the same thing when you applied to any other universities, please please let me know!! Thank you !!!


Letters to a Law Student and What About Law are the two principal books for school students contemplating a law degree. Feel free to read one or both of them.

However please remember that about 20,000 of your contemporaries will be doing likewise and to use anything from them in your personal statement or interview will be as stale as 2 month old bread.

Learning the Law is better read immediately before starting a law degree.

You may want to think about reading one or more of the LNAT prep books. Some swear by them. Others think they are useless.

My view is that you should be starting to think about law as an abstract idea. You can approach that through jurisprudence, history or fiction.

The Very Short Introductions are accessible. There are several
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/nav/p/category/academic/series/general/vsi/R/browse+within+this+series/law/n/4294921792.do?sortby=bookTitleAscend&thumbby_crawl=10&thumbby=25 and to these please add Nick Vincent's recent one on Magna Carta.

Tom Bingham's Rule of Law and, although they are over thirty years' old, Tom Denning's series of four books starting with The Discipline of Law are readable.

Eve Was Framed and The Justice Game are radical critiques of the legal system by leftie lawyers. Both of them have the faults of champagne socialists patronising ordinary people but if your background has not exposed you to serious left wing thought, they may be useful. One way to crash and burn at interview is to assume your own prejudices are the only possible viewpoint. No similar criticism of the legal system has been done from the political right for about 70 years.

If you approach this historically, Brian Simpson's Cannibalism and the Common Law is a serious work of legal history but readable without specialist knowledge. It examines what happened when three shipwrecked sailors ate their cabin boy. Dame Veronica Wedgwood's Trial of Charles I is still the leading account of the central event in English political history. If you can find a copy The Ayes Have It is a very funny account by Alan Herbert of his successful attempt to become MP for Oxford University and pass a private members' bill reforming the divorce laws.

On the subject of fiction; anything but To Kill a Mockingbird. Bleak House, all 800 pages of it, is the legal novel but Pickwick Papers and Sketches by Boz are easier going. For something a little more modern I have always liked Leon Uris' QB VII. Most Victorian and many 20th century serious writers produced at least one novel or play with a legal plot, Most of the plays have been filmed. Bolt's A Man for All Seasons is probably the best.

At the end of the day, you are not going to be questioned about your knowledge of law but it helps if you look a little more interesting than the other 1200+ applicants.
(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 3

:smile::smile: haha do you notice the last thread above yours, saying you are the man that could find anything, and then you just turn up !!
ok ' encyclopaedia' ( ok google ) please tell me some books to prepare LNAT, as LNAT is another very crucial thing to apply law in Oxford,

And then, on the basis of your suggestion, how can i apply the stuff introduced in those books smoothly in my personal statement, to show that i truly got the passion and enthusiastism on law. To be honest, to maks it believeable that i got passion on law is my main reason to do those wilder reading....

Last quesiton today, an also a urget , truly urgent one, tomorrow i will go to a local county court to listen the hearing, what sort of thing you think that i should concentrate on, as i need to grab some points to put in my personal statement , as to show them i have 'related experience'.

Thank you for all, and good midnight

Elaine

Reply 4

Original post by nulli tertius
Letters to a Law Student and What About Law are the two principal books for school students contemplating a law degree. Feel free to read one or both of them.

However please remember that about 20,000 of your contemporaries will be doing likewise and to use anything from them in your personal statement or interview will be as stale as 2 month old bread.

Learning the Law is better read immediately before starting a law degree.

You may want to think about reading one or more of the LNAT prep books. Some swear by them. Others think they are useless.

My view is that you should be starting to think about law as an abstract idea. You can approach that through jurisprudence, history or fiction.

The Very Short Introductions are accessible. There are several
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/nav/p/category/academic/series/general/vsi/R/browse+within+this+series/law/n/4294921792.do?sortby=bookTitleAscend&thumbby_crawl=10&thumbby=25 and to these please add Nick Vincent's recent one on Magna Carta.

Tom Bingham's Rule of Law and, although they are over thirty years' old, Tom Denning's series of four books starting with The Discipline of Law are readable.

Eve Was Framed and The Justice Game are radical critiques of the legal system by leftie lawyers. Both of them have the faults of champagne socialists patronising ordinary people but if your background has not exposed you to serious left wing thought, they may be useful. One way to crash and burn at interview is to assume your own prejudices are the only possible viewpoint. No similar criticism of the legal system has been done from the political right for about 70 years.

If you approach this historically, Brian Simpson's Cannibalism and the Common Law is a serious work of legal history but readable without specialist knowledge. It examines what happened when three shipwrecked sailors ate their cabin boy. Dame Veronica Wedgwood's Trial of Charles I is still the leading account of the central event in English political history. If you can find a copy The Ayes Have It is a very funny account by Alan Herbert of his successful attempt to become MP for Oxford University and pass a private members' bill reforming the divorce laws.

On the subject of fiction; anything but To Kill a Mockingbird. Bleak House, all 800 pages of it, is the legal novel but Pickwick Papers and Sketches by Boz are easier going. For something a little more modern I have always liked Leon Uris' QB VII. Most Victorian and many 20th century serious writers produced at least one novel or play with a legal plot, Most of the plays have been filmed. Bolt's A Man for All Seasons is probably the best.

At the end of the day, you are not going to be questioned about your knowledge of law but it helps if you look a little more interesting than the other 1200+ applicants.


haha do you notice the last thread above yours, saying you are the man that could find anything, and then you just turn up !!
ok ' encyclopaedia' ( ok google ) please tell me some books to prepare LNAT, as LNAT is another very crucial thing to apply law in Oxford,

And then, on the basis of your suggestion, how can i apply the stuff introduced in those books smoothly in my personal statement, to show that i truly got the passion and enthusiastism on law. To be honest, to maks it believeable that i got passion on law is my main reason to do those wilder reading....

Last quesiton today, an also a urget , truly urgent one, tomorrow i will go to a local county court to listen the hearing, what sort of thing you think that i should concentrate on, as i need to grab some points to put in my personal statement , as to show them i have 'related experience'.

Thank you for all, and good midnight

Elaine

Reply 5

Original post by nulli tertius
Letters to a Law Student and What About Law are the two principal books for school students contemplating a law degree. Feel free to read one or both of them.

However please remember that about 20,000 of your contemporaries will be doing likewise and to use anything from them in your personal statement or interview will be as stale as 2 month old bread.

Learning the Law is better read immediately before starting a law degree.

You may want to think about reading one or more of the LNAT prep books. Some swear by them. Others think they are useless.

My view is that you should be starting to think about law as an abstract idea. You can approach that through jurisprudence, history or fiction.

The Very Short Introductions are accessible. There are several
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/nav/p/category/academic/series/general/vsi/R/browse+within+this+series/law/n/4294921792.do?sortby=bookTitleAscend&thumbby_crawl=10&thumbby=25 and to these please add Nick Vincent's recent one on Magna Carta.

Tom Bingham's Rule of Law and, although they are over thirty years' old, Tom Denning's series of four books starting with The Discipline of Law are readable.

Eve Was Framed and The Justice Game are radical critiques of the legal system by leftie lawyers. Both of them have the faults of champagne socialists patronising ordinary people but if your background has not exposed you to serious left wing thought, they may be useful. One way to crash and burn at interview is to assume your own prejudices are the only possible viewpoint. No similar criticism of the legal system has been done from the political right for about 70 years.

If you approach this historically, Brian Simpson's Cannibalism and the Common Law is a serious work of legal history but readable without specialist knowledge. It examines what happened when three shipwrecked sailors ate their cabin boy. Dame Veronica Wedgwood's Trial of Charles I is still the leading account of the central event in English political history. If you can find a copy The Ayes Have It is a very funny account by Alan Herbert of his successful attempt to become MP for Oxford University and pass a private members' bill reforming the divorce laws.

On the subject of fiction; anything but To Kill a Mockingbird. Bleak House, all 800 pages of it, is the legal novel but Pickwick Papers and Sketches by Boz are easier going. For something a little more modern I have always liked Leon Uris' QB VII. Most Victorian and many 20th century serious writers produced at least one novel or play with a legal plot, Most of the plays have been filmed. Bolt's A Man for All Seasons is probably the best.

At the end of the day, you are not going to be questioned about your knowledge of law but it helps if you look a little more interesting than the other 1200+ applicants.


followe by last reply, as all the thing i want to is to build up a rich personal statement, so the basis of this, could you give me your suggest of the order of reading those, i would probably can read 5 in total, and i want to approach through those 3 ways you mentioned..... so what do you think is a good order, under a reallly limited time period.

Good night

Reply 6

Original post by Miss Elaine
:smile::smile: haha do you notice the last thread above yours, saying you are the man that could find anything, and then you just turn up !!
ok ' encyclopaedia' ( ok google ) please tell me some books to prepare LNAT, as LNAT is another very crucial thing to apply law in Oxford,

And then, on the basis of your suggestion, how can i apply the stuff introduced in those books smoothly in my personal statement, to show that i truly got the passion and enthusiastism on law. To be honest, to maks it believeable that i got passion on law is my main reason to do those wilder reading....

Last quesiton today, an also a urget , truly urgent one, tomorrow i will go to a local county court to listen the hearing, what sort of thing you think that i should concentrate on, as i need to grab some points to put in my personal statement , as to show them i have 'related experience'.

Thank you for all, and good midnight

Elaine


Original post by Miss Elaine
haha do you notice the last thread above yours, saying you are the man that could find anything, and then you just turn up !!
ok ' encyclopaedia' ( ok google ) please tell me some books to prepare LNAT, as LNAT is another very crucial thing to apply law in Oxford,

And then, on the basis of your suggestion, how can i apply the stuff introduced in those books smoothly in my personal statement, to show that i truly got the passion and enthusiastism on law. To be honest, to maks it believeable that i got passion on law is my main reason to do those wilder reading....

Last quesiton today, an also a urget , truly urgent one, tomorrow i will go to a local county court to listen the hearing, what sort of thing you think that i should concentrate on, as i need to grab some points to put in my personal statement , as to show them i have 'related experience'.

Thank you for all, and good midnight

Elaine


Original post by Miss Elaine
followe by last reply, as all the thing i want to is to build up a rich personal statement, so the basis of this, could you give me your suggest of the order of reading those, i would probably can read 5 in total, and i want to approach through those 3 ways you mentioned..... so what do you think is a good order, under a reallly limited time period.

Good night


Cambio wechsel called me by using "@" to answer your question. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

With the County Court, take a pad and pen. Make notes. Try to follow the case closely. It isn't exciting. Everything moves slowly. Think about what the lawyers are trying to do by their questions. Think why this case has gone to court. More than 90% of cases that are started settle prior to the trial.

No university prizes stamp collecting. Dropping the names of things you have read does not improve your personal statement. What you need to demonstrate is what you have got out of these things. Law at university is an academic subject. You need to show an academic interest in it. Concentrate on just reading a couple of things (other than the two introductory books) and then think about what you have read. As I said, try and approach law either through philosophy or history or literature but there is no need to do all three. Oxford in particular is looking for depth of thought.

I will give you a question to think about that is apt for this week. Why do we prize as the foundations of English liberties a document that says: "No one shall be arrested or imprisoned on the appeal [ie complaint] of a woman for the death of any person except her husband."?

As to the LNAT books, I will leave that to others to answer.

Reply 7

I am afraid that I disagree with you entirely.

I am not expecting the OP to self-teach herself a balanced approach to jurisprudence. I don't think it matters at all that she would not have read anything in support of your hero or any of mine. What I want her to do is to read someone's approach to law and to do her own thinking about it. Bingham, with whose views I am generally not in agreement, is more accessible than most simply because of his literary style.

I used to recommend the Hart/Devlin debate but I feel that whilst the central question remains as valid today as it did 60 years ago, the concrete examples about which the debate raged are so remote from the experience of young people today that it is becoming inaccessible.

Reply 8

Original post by nulli tertius
Letters to a Law Student and What About Law are the two principal books for school students contemplating a law degree. Feel free to read one or both of them.

However please remember that about 20,000 of your contemporaries will be doing likewise and to use anything from them in your personal statement or interview will be as stale as 2 month old bread.

Learning the Law is better read immediately before starting a law degree.

You may want to think about reading one or more of the LNAT prep books. Some swear by them. Others think they are useless.

My view is that you should be starting to think about law as an abstract idea. You can approach that through jurisprudence, history or fiction.

The Very Short Introductions are accessible. There are several
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/nav/p/category/academic/series/general/vsi/R/browse+within+this+series/law/n/4294921792.do?sortby=bookTitleAscend&thumbby_crawl=10&thumbby=25 and to these please add Nick Vincent's recent one on Magna Carta.

Tom Bingham's Rule of Law and, although they are over thirty years' old, Tom Denning's series of four books starting with The Discipline of Law are readable.

Eve Was Framed and The Justice Game are radical critiques of the legal system by leftie lawyers. Both of them have the faults of champagne socialists patronising ordinary people but if your background has not exposed you to serious left wing thought, they may be useful. One way to crash and burn at interview is to assume your own prejudices are the only possible viewpoint. No similar criticism of the legal system has been done from the political right for about 70 years.

If you approach this historically, Brian Simpson's Cannibalism and the Common Law is a serious work of legal history but readable without specialist knowledge. It examines what happened when three shipwrecked sailors ate their cabin boy. Dame Veronica Wedgwood's Trial of Charles I is still the leading account of the central event in English political history. If you can find a copy The Ayes Have It is a very funny account by Alan Herbert of his successful attempt to become MP for Oxford University and pass a private members' bill reforming the divorce laws.

On the subject of fiction; anything but To Kill a Mockingbird. Bleak House, all 800 pages of it, is the legal novel but Pickwick Papers and Sketches by Boz are easier going. For something a little more modern I have always liked Leon Uris' QB VII. Most Victorian and many 20th century serious writers produced at least one novel or play with a legal plot, Most of the plays have been filmed. Bolt's A Man for All Seasons is probably the best.

At the end of the day, you are not going to be questioned about your knowledge of law but it helps if you look a little more interesting than the other 1200+ applicants.


Thank you for all..
Then for the Pickwick Papers, there are so many edition, which one are you talking about? could you send me the link :smile:
And also for Trial of Charles I, same question
Good night

Reply 9

Original post by Miss Elaine
Thank you for all..
Then for the Pickwick Papers, there are so many edition, which one are you talking about? could you send me the link :smile:
And also for Trial of Charles I, same question
Good night


Any edition of Pickwick Papers will do (but Penguin or Oxford World Classics are best because they have full notes). Dickens was a great advocate of law reform. The issues he was satirising in Pickwick were venal, rascally lawyers drumming up litigation that wouldn't otherwise be brought (think of all those adverts for PI law firms) and imprisonment on mesne process, an obsolete procedure by which defendants were imprisoned before it was determined whether they had done anything wrong (think about fairness).

Trial of Charles I
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trial-Charles-The-C-V-Wedgwood/dp/0002118114

Reply 10

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