Halfway through UoL distance LLM. Some notes.

Free advice is so often worth what you pay for it, but I found this forum useful so I wanted to try to contribute. Some notes on the LLM, studying independently.

1. It's a solo adventure.
The message boards are a ghost town other than the occasional person howling into the abyss about forming a WhatsApp group, or post-exam/post-grade troubles.

2. The convenors and director are available by e-mail to answer course-specific questions. More general questions (admissions, payment...) take much longer to get replies.
Inside PG Laws replies are clear and fast. If you need assistance on broader things, it can take three weeks--well, unless you're trying to give them money.

3. It's a serious programme, and I think it'll provide value for money.
As an international student it's going to cost me just under GBP 10k materials included, which can't be beat in my country (Canada). I already have a graduate degree so I know what legitimate grad school looks like. Minus a research component, this programme feels familiar.

4. Make sure the format suits you.
This is strictly a taught masters, with no research requirement.

5. Make sure the assessment method suits you.
The LLM is 16 modules, each graded 100% on a one-hour, typed essay exam (two topics, choose one). If that appeals to you, great. If the all-or-nothing nature is unsettling, look elsewhere. (Fans of doubling down can take double-credit Jurisprudence modules based on a single, two-hour exam.)

6. Skim the study guide before taking the class.
Reading the 60-ish page study guide alone won't get you a pass of course, but can tell you what you're in for (how much reading, the type of analysis required, etc.). If I'd read the Comp. Russian Law Study Guide, I would not have taken the class: the Study Guide was written in the Socratic method, and my brain just doesn't handle that approach well.

7. PG Laws has gone all-in on the Inspera exam tool. Get comfortable with it.
The good news is you can do your assessments from the comfort of where you're most comfortable. The reality is, you need to use Inspera software. When loaded, it locks your computer so no other software can be accessed.
My day job requires an up-to-date Mac and a rock-solid internet connection, so I had no issues. It seems that some people with older hardware, spottier connections, or logging in from countries with weaker infrastructure struggled. I have no idea what redress they received, if any.
About a month before assessments, UoL asks us to download the latest version of the software and do "test" exams (content free... write a paragraph about what you ate for lunch). By all means do that. It's crucial. But know that it's no guarantee that everything will work on the day.
If, on exam day, you're struggling with software, abandon ship and telephone the UoL help desk. May this never happen to you.

8. If you're not admitted to LLM proper, you may be admitted to a stepping-stone program (PGCert, PGDip) with the promise of a 'seamless' transition upon completing the lesser qualification. It isn't seamless.
In my own case, I have eight modules complete and want to sign up for four this term. Enrolled in PGDip which requires precisely ten, I'm only allowed to sign up for two. I then need to wait for passing grades, which take three months to come back, before I can officially enter LLM and take modules 11-16.
This is annoying. Some random soul can likely sign up for a standalone course of four modules off-the-street but here I've passed eight modules and am only trusted to take two more. This will likely delay my graduation.

9. Yes, it takes three months to get your grades.
In class sizes less than 100 (mine less than 30 so far) where the entire assessment is a single essay approaching 1,000 words, this is abjectly ridiculous. I have lectured at universities in N. America: if we didn't hand in grades within ten days of the exam, the Chairperson and Registrar were all over us like a cheap suit.
I am sure the examiners want to get the papers read and graded to get on with their own summer research/teaching/holiday. No way they are sitting on these papers for months.
There is probably a delay to run papers through anti-plagiarism software, but where submission is all electronic through Inspera, that shouldn't take long either.

10. There seems to be no way to appeal a poor grade. You don't even get commentary on your submitted exam.
You can pay 60 pounds for an "administrative re-check" where a non-examiner verifies that actual examiners saw your paper, agreed a grade, and that the agreed grade was properly assigned to you. But if you think you did well on an exam and scored poorly, that seems to be a mystery lost to the mists of time.

11. Read the programme rules very carefully.
For instance, there's a gloriously broad range of courses to sample and none are obligatory--but to earn the LLM you must do all four modules from four courses.

12. (Personal opinion) For each exam season, choose modules from the same course. If doing four modules, for instance, do A-B-C-D from one course, not four A-modules.
You can log in to Inspera any time during a 15-hour window to start an exam, but there is an exam schedule: all A-modules are written on the same calendar day. All B-modules are written on the same day 2-3 days later, then the C-modules 2-3 days after that, then D-modules 2-3 days later.
Again suppose you are taking four modules. I would rather write a one-hour paper on each of four connected subjects every couple of days than to have to write four papers on potentially very disparate material all on the same day.
There is some overlap in A-B-C-D modules in the same course, so revision time can be more efficient. Further, as your mind links ideas from the related modules, it might help you write stronger papers.

13. In each course, review the past exam questions. Some have old exam questions dating as far back as 2008.
Any exam question that gets repeated every 3-4 years is certainly worth preparing for.
Check the style of the questions asked. Sometimes, they are broad. Unfortunately, sometimes they are extremely narrow. Thinking of my own time in the Russian Law course, one question hinged completely on knowing the precise definition of the "Government" in Russia.

Right. I'll stop for now. That's 13 points, and Moses himself only felt the need to come down the mountain with ten.

Reply 1

tjmcgowan

Thorough and very helpful, thank you.

Reply 2

shawnino

Right, that's me graduated. A few more thoughts:

Test Inspera before every exam season.
So my computer died a month before exams and the company splashed out for a fancy new one. Bored one afternoon, I figured I should just do the Inspera simulation login as best practice--and it didn't work. Turns out Inspera did not behave properly with Apple's-then latest OS. After a week of back and forth, I just borrowed someone else's older machine for a week and wrote the exams on that.

Despite the show around Inspera, a determined ring of cheats would find it easy.
Not going on a long philosophical/morality journey here, just posting facts. For all the web-proctoring and anti-plagiarism touted, there's a 14-hour window to complete a 1-hour paper. "Criminal A" logs in early and completes his exam, then feeds his cronies the questions that they can intensely study for a few hours before logging in and writing. Not good. A more-than-partial fix would be to set six questions, with the two questions presented any one student randomly pulled from those six.

Carrying my last post further, if you're unsure about a course, check not only the study guide but past exam questions for guidance.
I just finished up with LWM55 and had I known the exam questions would be so narrow in scope I would have chosen another course. I tried to study all the material in a module, but each exam question seemed tailored to only use 5-10% of it and there was no way to work in broader/adjacent knowledge gained. So much of what we covered went unexamined. As a counterexample, LWM79 offered broad questions where you could pull in evidence from all over the module to bolster your essay's argument.

Suspicion: Essay content counts, but writing style counts a lot as well.
English is my first language and I used to be a copy editor. No one ever accused me of rivalling Shakespeare, but several of my exam scripts have been chosen as exemplary samples now available to future students. I am not, and will never be, a "real lawyer". Re-reading, I think my arguments were OK, but structure and clarity (and occasional black humour) pushed what might have been high-60s essays into the 80s. If you struggle to write effectively, fix that before signing up for the LLM.