Hi,
I have just been accepted to City University's postgraduate international law program (LLM) and I would like to ask you, for those in London, what's City University's reputation. Is it a good school to go to??
Thanks in advance.

Safaa
fifa_s@yahoo.com

In a word: no.

I did another nonlaw degree at The City University and was very disappointed in the facilities and level of instruction.

Don't be fooled...not being a part of the University of London is a major disadvantage in terms of your ability to access major research facilities. Socially, as well, it dampens things a bit.

Sorry. If you go I hope you have a better experience than I.

Wow, thanks for teh advice. It's hard now as it was the only school I applied to.
Did you do law at City?? And besides the facilities, were the professors okay?
I'd love to hear from you again.
Thanks,

I wish I could be more positive for you.

I did a Communications Policy degree there and I had contact with several law students. None seemed to be very happy.

The library facilities are pathetic for law. City's business school at the Barbican has O.K. facilities. The main campus really stinks. You DO NOT have access to the Senate House or other University of London facilities. It's like you're in the middle this great legal centre but you're not really part of it.

A lot of part time faculty with limited office hours. I graduated three years ago and most of my faculty have left the school for better environs.

I know it's late to apply. Are you wedded to London? I know Bournemouth is still accepting applications, they have a brand new library, good career services...I'm sure there are others.

For housing, if using University housing, do your best to get into Sickert. By far the best at City.

I think Sickerts halls are for undergrad students only. I have been offered a place in Alliance court. I am really having second thoughts about City and the whole thing but I really cannot not go to school this year.
I might go part-time instead of full-time if they don't let me pay home fees (although I am an EU citizen they are so many complications when it comes to payment and fees).
I really want to go to London to experience life there as one of the busiest places in the world. if I am going to be a part-time student, I should defintely be in London to be able to find a job.
BTW, I come from a communication background too. I did my BA in communication in the States.
Thanks again,

Fifa

City University is hopeless! They have tried to build a reputation by annexxing themselves with other colleges/school to boost their reputation. For example: ICSL. Although there is an advantage in saving admin costs for the good schools, the difference between service, teaching facilites etc. between, say for instance, ICSL and City University is like day and Night-> City University being the latter. Save your money and peace of mind. Am a student at ICSL but living at City Halls, Francis Rowley!

Go to City University law School if you want to do BVC(they are more famous for their BVC course than their LL.M programme).

My advice for international students is to steer WELL CLEAR of City University. It is an awful place, and very poorly resourced.

The BVC is part of the Inns of Court School of Law, and is a separate course for UK students seeking to become barristers. It is on a separate site, and not relevant for international students. There is no shared resources/kudos about going to City. ICSL is more or less a separate institution.

Seriously - you can do better than City. Try Queen Mary, or UCL, or KCL. The big London colleges are definitely much better value for money.

As Director of the LLM Programme at City Law School I have no option but to reply directly to the comments made about the Law School.

First, the factual inaccuracies. It is untrue to say that City does not have access to world class library facilities. All postgraduate LLM students at City have access to the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies, just like students at UCL, Kings ect. Second, it is true we have a few ahem-"stalinist" buildings-but so do most of the other London university law schools. Third, while a lot of the LLM teaching will take place at the City site, we also make use of the ICSL for LLM purposes. For instance, I run the Law and Practice Forum lectures at the ICSL-and my specialist competition law Masters I am leading from September 2006 will have staff from both the ISCL and City site teaching on that programme.

More fundamentally, City is offering a strong and attractive offering which challenges and in some respects overshadows the other London law schools. For instance from September 2006 it will be possible to specialise entirely in competition law or Maritime law on City's International Commercial Law LLM, something that any prospective student would pushed hard to do anywhere else in London.
For further details
See http://www.city.ac.uk/law/llmprogramme/index.html

It doesn't do much to help a programmes credibility if the Director of the programme starts defending it and indirectly starts plugging for the programme.

The moment a Director jumps into the fray of what is essentially 'exchanging of notes' by prospective students on this forum, a lot of potential students start viewing the course with renewed suspicion. Ultimately if the quality of a University is excellent, I don't think remarks by ex-students or members in this forum should make too much of a difference to the reputation of the Univ. or the programme.

Ultimately the market feedback is the best response. A lot of people in this forum had earlier insinuated that LSE has leftist leanings that could have effect on finding employement in countries like USA but I did not see any official comment from LSE. The LSE LL.M programme is still popular and actively competing with Cambridge and Oxford LL.M( I have not applied to any LL.M this year nor am I in any way connected with LSE).

Earlier on this forum, a spokesperson for Edinburgh University, under the guise of helping answering students was trying to 'sell' the long distance LL.M of Edinburgh.

City University has that image of a former polytechnic which it is finding very hard to shrug off.

Secondly, my feedback is there is a lot of politics going inside the University as it has a very strong 'Greek professors lobby' v/s 'English professors lobby' and this tension and rivalry has not done much to improve the teaching level at City Univ. I am not talking of Law deptt. but City Univ in general.

It must also be said that a lot of ex-students who have studied at City have talked of being victimised by the system while they were students there when they chose to bring the weaknesses of City Univ. to the fore. After passing out, this has left a lot of ex-students very bitter and disillusioned by their experiences at City Univ. Rather then pretending all is hunky dory, maybe City University should try to set its house in order and treat its students with care. Ex-students like someone from this forum bad mouthing is the worst publicity a Univ can have and no amount of damage control can repair it.

I think there is nothing wrong about the director commenting on his programme, if he is open about his position and his intentions. I guess there are some other university staff on this board who are not this honest.

Further to the comments made regarding my intervention. I don't think anyone can expect directors of LLM programmes to ignore directly factual inaccuracies on the LLMguide bulletin boards-such as the LLM students have inadequate library facilities when they in fact have full access to the Institute for Advance Legal Studies.

While I agree we don't want the bulletin boards spammed with LLM directors selling their courses-its reasonable for LLM directors to announce new courses-we launched our new LLM International Commercial Law programme on Friday-as we are providing information.

I also find the discussion boards very useful as they provide information as to student concerns and allow us to fine tune our programmes to the student market.-And in fact some of the questions that are asked on here can in fact only be answered by LLM directors and other University staff members.

btw I have never heard of this division between Greek and English professors please tell me more!

Dr. Alan Riley
Director LLM Programme
City Law School

Alan

I had a couple of questions regarding the LL.M offered by City University.
1.In terms of rankings, what is the latest ranking of City Law LL.M(not LPC or BVC) by Guardian, Times etc?
2. Regarding City's International Commercial Law LLM, there is absolutely no info about this programme on City's site. Please could you tell me the range of subjects offered under this programme?
3.What would be the fees(both for local and overseas students) for this programme for the academic year starting Sept 2006?
4. Some Colleges(like LSE) take non-law students for their LL.M programmes. Though I have 10 years of Corporate background but I have done my MBA and not LL.B(did not study law) in the past? Would I be considered for the programme?
5.Does City University has any intentions of starting a LL.M in Patent, copyrights and Trademarks?

I would appreciate if you could please answer all these questions in detail.

Thanks

Su

Dear Su
My understanding-and someone may correct me on this site but I understand that there are no credible or comprehensive LLM ranking The Times/Guardian do a general one-and the Bar and Law Society rate the BVC and LPC-but we have nothing definitive for LLMs.
Despite the fact that we have a 5-my own view is that the Research rating system itself is flawed-and I would not entirely rely on it.
If I were looking for an LLM I would look for
-Reputation
-Subject areas-are they doing stuff in areas I am interested in
-What are there library facilities like
-Do they have specialists in the field
-Do they have practitioner links which could be useful to me.

2. I don't understand why you cannot get access to the International Commercial Law LLM site. There may be an IT problem-no I've just checked its still up
see:
http://www.city.ac.uk/law/llmprogramme/
We have 16 subjects including 4 Maritime 4 Competition, as well as Government Commerce, International Tax, European Business Regulation, International Commercial Fraud, Conficts, Insurance, British Business Organisation.
3. Fees are on the site-£8500 and £4580
4. We take non-law students subject to checking on references and CV that they can cope with a LLM-if you've spent the last decade working in a corporate legal capacity-then we would heavily take that into account. So yes you would.
5. I am looking at this-we have some significant capacity in-house and I could do the IPR/Antitrust angle.

If you wish to ask any further questions can I recommend you email me on the email address below
regards
alan

Dr. Alan Riley
Director LLM Programme
City Law School
Electronic Mail: alan.riley.1@city.ac.uk

Su

I would personally not advice you to do a LL.M in a 'C' tier school.

'A' tier: Oxford, Cambridge, LSE
'B' Tier: KCL, UCL, Queen's Mary etc
'C' Tier: Metropolitan, Brunel etc.

Do you really want to pay 8000 plus quid to do LL.M at a place which is not even recognised Internationally? Go to USA, Australia or Asia and ask them if they have even heard of City LL.M?

Then look at the amount of electives offered by City. Some top Law Schools literally have choices of 100s of electives to choose from and then look at City.

AND the fact remains a lot of people look at rankings published by Times and Guardian. ALSO the fact is when doing a LL.M it is just not important whether you have done the Ll.M or not but more important is where you have done it from? There will always be some difference between the apples and the oranges.

So try applying to a LL.M in a Law School that is recognised Internationally and no.2 where most of the recruiters go to employ students doing the LL.M programme. realistically speaking, City has a long way to go before it can catch up with likes of KCL, UCL, LSE etc in London as far as their LL.M programme is concerned.

Cathy,
I am not saying that the rankings are irrelevant but they do not focus on LLM degrees per se and its important to be aware of that ( I suppose I could say we came 13th in the Guardian, got a 5 in the RAE and are rated excellent for our professional courses and have 4 British Prime Ministers and the founders of India and Pakistan as alumni-but all that information would not be that relevant to the LLM).

Second I doubt there are many law schools that offer 100s of electives on LLM courses at least in Europe. Again my understanding is that London University Colleges offer around 150 courses and thats the biggest in Europe if not the world. That is a pretty unique offering-and for reasons I don't understand some of the colleges are splitting up and offering separate LLMs which will reduce the overall number of electives on offer. The point is very few indeed offer 100s of electives.

As for where you have done your LLM. How important is it? Well, yes an Oxbridge LLM is very positive-but it depends what you want to do. If you want to become an EU official doing EU law in Brussels with the Commission I would recommend the College of Europe in Bruges and not Oxbridge. At LLM level it depends on what you want to do-the place can be secondary to the course. Clearly doing an Oxbridge degree or its equivalent is valuable- but if you want to specialise on public procurement law I would go and talk to Sue Arrowsmith at Nottingham. If you want to do competition law then talk to me, Richard Whish at KCL or Barry Rodger at Strathclyde-Maritime Law then Southampton or City where we have a group of people teaching Maritime Law.

As for recruitment most major law schools have very strong links to private practice. City is no exception.

Dr. Alan Riley
Director LLM Programme
City Law School
Electronic Mail: alan.riley.1@city.ac.uk

Dear all,

I first think Alan has been brave and honest to defend the reputation of the city LLM. Fair enough.

I totally agree with him when he says that destination of LLM depends on what you want to do, but let me give my experience of the job's market ; pretige of University remains important.

It can appear sometimes unfair but the fact is that :I have been told that top city lawfirms hire mainly a huge proportion of nonlaw oxbridge student. As a continental European (translate French but I know german and italians who think so), it is very strange for me.
Well, I must admit that I thank at first glance it was also ridiculous, and especially humiliating for true UK law students, but the fact is here : It is prestige which leads the job market, as recruiters need to be reassured.
...And what do I know after all ? UK lawfirms are the top in Europe, so it clearly shows their policy work and I can not criticize, definitely.

In France too, lawfirms still heavily rely on Oxbridge or LSE and just do not care if Oxford LLM does NOT teach banking law for eg. Things are however changing in France, as some lawfirms now really look at what you have done in your LLM rather the place and the grades (an hard subject is much more valuated than an easy one with good grades). It is really a good thing.
But well, Oxbridge or LSE remains prestigious and they certainly deserve it.

Personnaly I have choosen the LLM in UCL because I relied on ranking.
Indeed Alan, It remains very hard to have an accurate idea of the value of UK universities for Foreign students ...so students do the same as past generations : rely on Oxbridge. Fair enough again.

I decided not to apply to Oxbridge because it seems not very good in financial and banking law, but I have seen recently Oxford LLM students sucessfully applied in top lawfirm specialised in financial law, even if such students never did financial law. Other applicants were shocked, honest.

Again I do not criticize, it is just a fact I am aware of. I am not enough experienced to criticize the system, really far from it !

Lastly, I know some students who turned down offers from Oxbridge to go Public Law at UCL, because they think like Alan ; what is important is what you want to do. I think they are right and I admire them, but I fear they remain a minority.

As a conclusion, I just hope waht I said will help. Ideally, Students should do like Alan suggest, but doing so, be aware that prestige remains important and that they can take a risk.

Thanks for the kind words from the last posting.

I really don't think we disagree. Clearly an Oxbridge degree is going to be valuable-but if you have the right LLM specialism a firm will be more interested in that specialism and less in the place you got it from, especially if its combined with some internship or practical experience.

Its also interesting what you say about City firms taking non-law Oxbridge graduates.

One of the programmes I organised for postgraduate students is the Law and Practice Forum where I get practitioners to come in and talk about their careers and what working in various city specialisms is really like. I had a bunch of City lawyers in-and they were all asked the same question "do you take Oxbridge only?"-they were absolutely clear you do not have to have gone to the dreaming spires in order to get into a City Law firm.

What they are looking for is a can do, commercial attitude, a practical, aware intelligence. In that context if you have say a passion for Maritime Law, have done an LLM in it at somewhere that specialises in it (such as Southampton or City where I am based), spent six months in the Maritime Unit in DG Transport in the European Commission; interned in the legal department of one of the major Greek shipping companies in Athens and worked your way across the Atlantic as a hand on an oil tanker-that would get their attention!

What is really confusing the issue I think is the practice of City firms taking non-law graduates-which is a different issue. This is a British tradition-which is strange for continentals. The point here is that there is a non-law stream and its not just Oxbridge, but all students from all the major Universities, Bristol, Edinburgh, Durham ect who do the conversion course to law, the CPE-incidentally we run what is almost certainly the toughest and probably most prestigious at City.

The Oxbridge issue is a red herring really for foreign students wanting to work for City law firms. Yes, an LLM from Oxbridge will be valuable, as can a specialist LLM programme. The two things you really need are
-that go getting, practical commercial attitude
-and having worked out what you are applying for?
eg-do you want a Traineeship-and can you fit within the Law Society regulations-do you need also to take the CPE and LPC?
eg2 are you qualified?-you've got your LLM in Maritime law and you'd like a job as equivalent of Assistant Solicitor in a shipping department of a firm. Do you in reality need to do an EU conversion exam as well? Should I see some headhunters?

Hope the above helps!

Dr. Alan Riley
Director LLM Programme
City Law School
Electronic Mail: alan.riley.1@city.ac.uk

Well well well . . .