Hi,

I have received a Unconditional offer from "Swansea University" and "City University" to make a LLM in Maritime Law in sep. 09.

Are there a big difference between these univesities?, I have read many comments in the forum recommending to study in Swansea, but most of them are old comments (2006), so I would like to know what is the situation nowadays.

If anyone has studied at these universities, I would like to give me their opinion about their experience.

For me is very important to make the right decision.

Thanks

I have looked through Swansea's prospectus and found it is particularly strong in Maritime Law (staff, publications, affiliated research institutes, association with professional bodies, etc). I have not found City comparable in these terms. My personal choice (I stress "personal") is Swansea.

Hello Ocean,
when it comes to your choice I would not overrate the statements given on the reputation of both Swansea and City, as they are necessarily subjectively biased.

Of course we could discuss all night long, whether Swansea or City has the better reputation. In the end this will be futile, as chances are quite high that you will later encounter lawyers in the maritime law field who will tell you that the reputation of Southampton/Tulane (depending on the continent you are on) is second to none in this field and that the other law schools have to be ranked as also-ran.

Please do not get me wrong, that is not my personal opinion, I just want stress that "reputation" is a flawed decision criterion.

In the end the overall success of the LLM year will depend a lot on the "soft factors" such as the quality of life in the university town, the standard of your accommodation, the people you meet and so on...

If you rather picture yourself studying in London - go for City, if you like to spend a year living by the Welsh seaside - go for Swansea...

Bye
flori

Following on from Flori's point (with which I agree) I would suggest checking out the range of options available (and whether they will actually run- University's sometimes don't delete course offerings when the person primarily involved with their development has moved on) and whether they fit with your specific interests. You might also like to consider what else the institution offers in terms of value added stuff and whether it is directed to the p/gs or u/gs.

City, no question about it. City has a very good reputation among the City shipping firms and banks in many respect due to the best shipping MSc in Europe, Shipping Trade and Finance. That's where most London based shipping firms get their staff. The MSc reputation rubbed off on to LLM. By the way, manu people on the MSc courses are sons and daughters of famous Greek ship owners-this connection cannot be bad, once these guys grow up a bit they will be hiring their friends for various positions. Swansea has no reputation among these firms. Another alternative for you is UCL

I am a student studying ship management but I have a friend who is very upset that City decided not to offer LLM in Maritime Law this year without giving him too much notice. As a result he had to look at alternatives in the last minute which is not a good position to find yourself in!

I am the Programme Director for the LLMs at City Law School and I can tell definitively that we are running all our LLM Maritime law courses this year and offering an LLM in Maritime Law, in 2009/2010 as we have done in previous years and as we intend to do in the future.

We are currently running:
Marine Insurance
Carriage of Goods by Sea
Admiralty, and
International Sales
We will also be offering a couple of paid Maritime Law Internships with shipping firms including one from Thomas Cooper in this academic year.

I do not know where you got your information but yesterday I took some of our LLM class on our annual Southdown Way walk...and we had a lot of the Maritime lawyers taking the Maritime Law courses at City walking along with us....the courses exist and so do the students!

Professor Alan Riley
Director LLM Programme
City Law School
City University
4 Grays Inn Place
London, WC1R 5DX
Electronic Mail: alan.riley.1@city.ac.uk