Some of you former cambridge post grads may be able to help with this one!

I'm about to start the LLM programme at Cambridge come October and I was wondering whether anyone could recommend some classes/subjects to take or not to take.

I've heard that the international banking and finance class is a must, so I'm thinking of taking that one and a couple of public international law classes, as I'm quite interested in that area. I'm not sure what I should do for my last subject. Any good suggestions?

Many Thanks in advance

International Settlement of Disputes - in a word: awesome

Yellow,

can you elaborate a little more?
Also, is there a limit on the number of seminars one can take? Can one take the thesis option as well as a seminar? Id love to take two reasearch based courses and two exam based courses but Im not sure if this is possible.

Skeikbaron,
Irishguy (recent cantab grad) recomends Restitution and says to avoid competition law like the plague

I'm starting this October too so hopefully we can meet up then ;)

I'm intending to do an LLM in commercial law, so my subjects will probably be:

International Commercial Litigation
International Banking and Finance
Commercial Insurance Law
Restitution

skeikhbaron: You should consider international commercial litigation, as it will probably be a good complement to the banking and finance course. Otherwise like what equity's darling said, restitution should be both interesting and challenging :)

You can only take one seminar class or do a thesis. Settlement of Disputes is a really tough class but they use a lots of specialists in particular areas to teach it and it was just an amazing experience. It is also on the more commercial end of the PIL classes which might work if you are interested in commercial law.

I wanted to do settlement of disputes, but was put off it in the subject forum. It seems to have changed since you might have done it Yellow. Professor Gray is teaching it now, and in the subject forum she specifically warned off anyone interested in commercial law, because her main focus was on international war tribunals. She said she would only cover stuff like ICSID and International Arbitration towards the end and not in any great amount of detail. I think she made a joke about some German commercial lawyer frowning at her the entire year previously because of the public international law focus. Anyway, that's what I remember and I think the video of the subject forum may still be online.

Also re wtlow subject choices: Heard great things about International Commercial Litigation (though exam was considered tough); International Banking is amazing; Commercial Insurance only had 2 people in it, so it ended up being a one on one seminar with Professor Clarke for the year, which they really enjoyed.

Crawford was in charge my year so apologies for misinformation.

irishguy, any word IP and/or Intermational IP ?
Also, do you happen to know how the gades turned out in commercial insurance? One would think very high, given only two students, but maybe not.

As I'm currently doing mostly commercial and IP law, I'm planning to take IP and international IP (although I saw earlier in some posts not so good references regarding the international IP). Other two would be the EC Trade law and Corporate Finance Law. But I'll decide for sure when I see all the guys in the subject forum.

thanks guys for your tips and I look forward to seeing some of you next week!!!

one last question does anyone know anything about international criminal law course. just saw o'keefe's presentation from last year online and it seems like an interesting course but a lot of hard work. Is it really that tough! then again, i assume nothing is easy on the LLM programme....

Absolutely hated it. Not for me at all. That said O'Keefe is pretty entertaining and well liked. Focused on institutional aspects which didn't suit me but may suit you. It was really tough though. Probably my most difficult mainly due to the teaching method which seemed to involve shovelling pages at us covered in tiny print (which he basically read to us in class) accompanied by reading lists which contained pages of stuff not all of which we were to read but which we were to pick a few from. I guess in essence although O'K is entertaining I found it really difficult to focus in his class and got nothing from the class itself so was stuck trying to do it all from scratch. I would point out that I may have been alone in this assessment. It just didn't suit me and I feel I would have gotten more from another class.

cheers yellow, thanks for the tip. the class does definitely look interesting and something i would enjoy, but i think it's defo a tough one. thing is i'm quite interetsed in pil subjects, but there is not much on offer. the other alternative is settlement of international disputes, but prof gray's course doesn't seem that interesting, i maybe wrong, but its law about courts and tribunals.... i prefer the nitty gritty stuff of pil such law on armed forces...... maybe i'll just have to bare with with the sheer toughness of icl...

I didn't find that I got what you seem to want from Int'l Crim which focused on instuitutions for much of the year.

<blockquote>irishguy, any word IP and/or Intermational IP ?
Also, do you happen to know how the gades turned out in commercial insurance? One would think very high, given only two students, but maybe not.</blockquote>

Hey ED, I only knew the two guys doing Commercial Insurance in passing so I'm not sure how they got on. IP seems to have gone down well, but I didn't hear good things about international IP. Its a bit of a weird one and not taught very well. You really have to have done IP and be incredibly familiar with it prior to taking the course.
Sorry I couldnt be of much help. You dont really hear about people's individual grades here. They just post the overall grade. You have to request the marks in your individual papers from your tutor in your college. Mine were less than stellar but ok given that I was missing half the year and ill.

I'm currently a new student on the cambridge llm. Having selected my four subjects, I end up with a choice between the concentration of my llm degree - either commercial or european law. I did not go into the subject-picking process with the firm intention of securing a specialisation in a particular field - the subjects have just fallen as such that I'm forced into this decision. I'm therefore unsure as to which to pick...is there any factors I should consider in this decision? And would anyone know whether the perceived strength of Cambridge is stronger in either of these fields? I'd appreciate any help as I truly am uncertain. Thanks.

I really don't think it matters. You could choose to go undesignated too (just to add another option). I think I would probably choose Commercial but that's because I hate EU law and with any luck will never work in that field so I guess my answer is it depends on what you want to do next with the proviso that either or neither will not be prejudicial to what you do next. Hope you enjoy it!

Hi!
I will apply to Cambridge next week. Since you are already there, can you recommend me a college?
Thanks!!

There has been quite extensive discussion on this before so do a search and hopefully you'll find some useful advice. In short I would advise a traditional college that takes a reasonable group of other LLM students so maybe Trinity Hall or Jesus but seriously search for further discussions on this point!