Law with Foundation Year

The LLB Law at Birkbeck prepares you for a career in legal practice along with teaching you the transferable skills and specialist knowledge needed for a broad range of other professional pursuits.

Why choose this course?

• This LLB is an academically rigorous course that gives you the opportunity to study beyond the seven foundations of legal knowledge that are essential for professional legal qualification, and the chance to graduate with a specialised pathway in human rights, commercial law or legal practice.

• It offers you extensive career support and strong links with the legal professions including internships and clinical practice opportunities, scholarship schemes, and the opportunity to join our award-winning mooting team.

• It prepares you at the academic stage for vocational qualification as a solicitor, barrister, or chartered legal executive.

• You can build your study timetable to work around other commitments with pre-recorded lectures you can watch in your own time and a range of daytime and evening or online seminars to choose from.

What you will learn

You will learn the seven foundations of legal knowledge: Contract Law, Constitutional and Administrative Law, Criminal Law, Land Law, Tort Law, Trusts, Law of the European Union, Legal Systems and Methods, and Jurisprudece.

Upon graduating, you will be ready to:

• prepare for the Solicitors’ Qualifying Exam (SQE)

• apply for a place on the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC), or

• pursue a range of other careers.

You will also learn to identify the political, economic, commercial, social and cultural factors that inform how we understand the law and the problems, tensions and contradictions within certain legal theories and doctrines. You can then choose from an extensive range of option modules to follow your interests or career aspirations.

How you will learn

This LLB law is available to study full- or part-time. Depending on the module, we offer classes in the daytime, evening, on campus or online. For core/compulsory modules you can choose your own timetable selecting whether to study them in the daytime or the evening.

Foundation Year

If you opt for the Foundation Year route, this will fully prepare you for undergraduate study. It is ideal if you are returning to study after a gap, or if you have not previously studied the relevant subjects, or if you didn't achieve the grades you need for a place on your chosen undergraduate degree.

Highlights

• Birkbeck is an international centre for world-class legal teaching, research and scholarship. You will be taught by field-leading academic staff, alongside experienced solicitors, barristers and judges.

• You will have access to Birkbeck's Careers Service linking you with top UK employers and offering help with job applications, interviews and career planning.

• You will be able to take part in our Legal Practice Conversation series.

• Gain valuable experience and hands-on skills through our Birkbeck Law Clinic, including placements with: University of London Refugee Law Clinic, Environmental Law Foundation, and Release. Placements involving the provision of legal services count towards your Qualifying Work Experience if you are seeking to qualify as a solicitor.

Careers and employability

We offer you lots of ways to enhance your career and employability prospects, including:

• work with our law clinics

• sharpening up your advocacy skills with our Mooting team and networking with our Law Society

• attending a bespoke commercial awareness course

• networking with legal professionals through our Mentoring Pathways Scheme, Legal Practice Conversations, Legal Professionals Insight Evening and Careers Fair.

Graduates may go on to pursue a career path as a:

• barrister or solicitor

• CILEX lawyer

• chartered legal executive

• legal advocates

• policy analyst or researcher.

For information about course structure and the modules you will be studying, please visit Birkbeck’s online prospectus.

Assessment methods include essays, problem questions, seen/unseen examinations, open/closed book examinations, group projects, dissertations and oral presentations.

Professionally accredited courses provide industry-wide recognition of the quality of your qualification.

• Bar Standards Board
• Solicitors Regulation Authority