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Differences between universities

Are there any real differences in the law courses at different universities?
The ones I’ve been looking at all do the same components just in different orders, has anyone noticed any major differences between the law courses at different universities?
On the surface, the courses are quite similar. But there are differences.

Some courses are heavily assessed through coursework whereas others are near exclusively assessed by examination. Check unistats/WhichUni.

Some courses have "law firms" in place of seminars, which present issues as practitioner problems and the group participants are made to pretend they're lawyers who have been tasked to deal with it. This can be useful to develop organisational skills and teamworking ability. York etc do this.

Pretty much all courses have faculty who favour a particular research topic. This is because a lot of the postdocs and lecturers will undertake their research alongside a noted specialist professor/assoc professor. So one type of specialists tend to group up at a particular uni. Southampton, for example, has expertise in shipping. Liverpool has expertise in specific areas of EU law. On the other hand, some courses will be taught by near exclusively practitioners and teach in a very practical way.
(edited 6 years ago)
Yes. There is a reason why the top firms recruit from the top universities. If you can't get into one of the best universities, just forget about law.
Original post by JohnGreek
I'm increasingly privy to the view that what distinguishes unis is their student population (their grades, characters, socioeconomic background, ambitions, etc), not the CVs of the academics teaching at each.


That is an interesting idea. One much espoused by our venerable J-SP.

However, one thing for sure is that the academics (and their CVs) effect the modules that are available. Whether anyone cares that you were taught by Graham Virgo or that your assessments were graded harsher at the top unis, that is a separate point. Merely for his pedagoguery I would prefer to be taught by Virgo over a practitioner, but it is true that some "leading" research minds make for crap communicators. A lecture I had from Simon Gardner comes to mind.
Original post by JohnGreek
Very true on the presentation front, I don't think I've seen much of a correlation between good research skills/CV/seniority and good delivery.

I agree that the availability of faculty does obviously influence the availability of modules, albeit within certain limitations. The main one I can think of is that some modules have less room for additional, 'spinoff' modules at undergrad than others. At postgrad, well, it's a whole different story!

For instance, it's far harder to come up with a specialised "EULaw+" module than it is to come up with a public-law related module (you can divide public law into civil liberties and human rights, admin law, public international law, even legal and political history, I don't think that any uni has tried something similar with EU law). Of course, I'm guessing you're referring to niche undergrad modules like Shipping law, Information Technology law, even Medical law, which aren't consistently on offer.


Yes, I agree. Any EU Law+ would have to be an additional module to the obligatory (soon to be superfluous) EU Law module. Liverpool manages it with EU consumer law and EU social law modules, as that's where the academic specialities lie. (On a side note, Liverpool actually offers a great number of modules, such as WTO which is only usually offered at PG. Very surprising.)

On the presentation front, yes. They're the same -- sometimes a lot worse. However, they tend to give more a interesting and in-depth perspective of the content, even if delivered in a dry and bitty style. The academic debates are things which are buried deep within them and they are so much more comfortable with them, rather than something read a week ago when researching for a presentation. I remember when an EU assoc professor was lecturing about share capital on my company law module, for example. Disaster. Probably doesn't happen too often at LSE, though.
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by JohnGreek
Oh, LSE shares a lot of assistant professors across modules, but, happily, they stick to their area of expertise. The iffy modules tend to be Tort and Advanced Tort, as well as generalised modules such as Property I (which is more about the history and philosophy of property) and Introduction to the Legal System (which contains everything from drug and citation policy under New Labour to gender and race representation at the Bar... it's an odd one). For that reason, the larger modules get something like 5 or 6 different faculty members teaching one after the other across the year. I think that the most I've seen is 7 or 8... in Public law?

Happily, the smaller modules tend to have dedicated experts teaching just one or two modules nearly in full over the duration of the year (e.g. Medical and Emily Jackson). For that reason, they're extremely popular (imagine being taught 10-to-1 by a leading professor for a whole year at somewhere that isn't Oxbridge!), but also extremely unstable. If that leading faculty member was to leave LSE (something extremely likely - they're probably able to get a tenured position elsewhere with their level of research and fame, and have jumped across several law departments to get where they are already), then that module would be f*cked.


Alright, John. Stop bragging; it's highly unbecoming of a law student.

It was similar at my UG with the number of lecturers across the big modules, we had a weird intro module like too, and mostly the lecturers stick to their expertise. This was just a very odd case of someone exaggerating their expertise in order to meet their quota of teaching hours. It was very educational, simply reading a presentation where sections of a statute are read out line by line. Couldn't have done it without her.
Original post by Notorious_B.I.G.
Stop bragging; it's highly unbecoming of a law student.


Loool is it really :biggrin:

Especially a LSE law student
Original post by mjustliving
Loool is it really :biggrin:

Especially a LSE law student


Haha, aye, that was the joke. We're all arrogant sunsa *****es.

Original post by JohnGreek
(imagine being taught 10-to-1 by a leading professor for a whole year at somewhere that isn't Oxbridge!)


The brag was somewhat relevant to my point. The CVs of the lecturers can improve your intellectual experience. However, whether any 3p would care is unlikely, unless you're applying for PG or the prof is a mate of the interviewing partner.


And you'd not have us any other way.

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