Just wondering if anyone is aware of any universities offer professional doctorates in law at the moment. Please help.
Legal / Professional Doctorate
Posted Oct 01, 2007 22:31
Posted Oct 03, 2007 18:31
As far as I am aware, there is no such thing as a 'professional doctorate' in law in the UK. In order to qualify as a lawyer, you either need an undergraduate LLB, or a good undergraduate degree in any another discipline (from Archaeology to Zoology) along with a CPE or Postgrad Diploma in Law. The CPE and PgDL are one year crash courses that cover the professional qualifying units of an LLB.
Once you have done the LLB or CPE/PgDL, you must complete either the Legal Practice Course (solicitors) or Bar Vocational Course (barristers) or Diploma (Scotland) to be eligible to practice - but even then, you will need to complete an employed traineeship (2 years with a law firm for solicitors) or pupillage (1 year with Chambers for Barristers, and very difficult to obtain) before you are a 100 percent lawyer.
If you have a suitable undergraduate qualification, you can do an Master of Laws (LLM), which is normally a one year course, but it is a purely academic degree, and has no relevance for practice as a lawyer.
Likewise, if you already have a law degree (LLB and/or LLM) you can do a research based PhD over three years (minimum), but again, a PhD does not qualify you to practice as a lawyer.
As far as I know, there are no JDs or SJDs in the UK, because the university system is different to the US: a qualifying law degree (i.e. for practice) is an undergrad qualifcation, not a postgrad qualification, except as described above.
Once you have done the LLB or CPE/PgDL, you must complete either the Legal Practice Course (solicitors) or Bar Vocational Course (barristers) or Diploma (Scotland) to be eligible to practice - but even then, you will need to complete an employed traineeship (2 years with a law firm for solicitors) or pupillage (1 year with Chambers for Barristers, and very difficult to obtain) before you are a 100 percent lawyer.
If you have a suitable undergraduate qualification, you can do an Master of Laws (LLM), which is normally a one year course, but it is a purely academic degree, and has no relevance for practice as a lawyer.
Likewise, if you already have a law degree (LLB and/or LLM) you can do a research based PhD over three years (minimum), but again, a PhD does not qualify you to practice as a lawyer.
As far as I know, there are no JDs or SJDs in the UK, because the university system is different to the US: a qualifying law degree (i.e. for practice) is an undergrad qualifcation, not a postgrad qualification, except as described above.
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