LLM in Legal Practice

Overview

Our LLM in Legal Practice provides practising, qualified graduates with an additional qualification. With our legal practice postgraduate degree, you can pursue a speciality with support and advice from expert tutors; reflecting on your experience in your career so far.

The programme recognises your professional achievements and helps you to take them further. Graduates from England and Wales, or countries with a common law heritage, can convert their professional law qualification into a masters degree. Examples of these qualifications include PG Dip in Legal Practice, LPC (Legal Practice Course), BPTC (Bar Professional Training Course).

The course is taught online, so you can balance your learning with your personal and professional commitments. The course is ideal for:

• solicitors
• barristers
• practising lawyers
• those about to enter the legal profession

Careers

This course allows you to develop specific expertise within your legal field. A recent graduate, who works in employment law, has pursued a specialism in religious discrimination. Another has covered the increase in remote trials during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the implications this has on the right to a fair trial.

You’ll be confident in overcoming complicated legal challenges with new and interesting ideas. Your research skills and your ability to understand complex policies will be useful in many professions.

Our academic staff will help you explore your career options, and they’ll support you in taking the next steps.

Applicants to the programme must have a prior legal vocational qualification, such as the LPC/BPTC or their equivalent. The legal vocational qualification should normally have been obtained within 5 years of commencement of the LLM (Legal Practice), but currency can be maintained either through continued work in legal practice as a solicitor or barrister or through teaching on a legal professional training course. Students will be expected to demonstrate the ability to work independently in a self-directed way. As a significant part of the programme involves the application of academic research skills, students will be required to think critically, deal with complex issues both systematically and creatively and evaluate research including current problems and/or new insights.