UK LLM Classes


I am American and got my JD in the US. I am seriously considering getting an LLM in the UK. What are UK LLM Classes like? Is it the Socratic method similar to US law schools? Is it just as rigorous? I would like to have an idea of what I should expect. Thanks.

I am American and got my JD in the US. I am seriously considering getting an LLM in the UK. What are UK LLM Classes like? Is it the Socratic method similar to US law schools? Is it just as rigorous? I would like to have an idea of what I should expect. Thanks.
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P_Martini

It sort of depends on the instructor and to a lesser degree on the program. My experience was that it was not at all like U.S. law school. The Socratic method - as you probably know it - was not used. You were not cold called. Some instructors liked to ask questions rather than simply lecture so you could record notes. Others preferred not to deal with the students much at all and didn't engage them. They just sort of worked their way through the material. In either case, you had WAY more reading than you could reasonably accomplish - and, yes, that's in comparison to U.S. law schools which already assign quite a lot. You're buried under mountains of reading, which you have to obtain yourself from various sources in the university library and on-line. You're a massively busy secretary for weeks until you figure out it's not worth it.

I've said it before, and I will say it again: The first thing you need to do after you've decided which courses you want to take is to find out what the exam is going to be like (if you have one for that course). I didn't have any courses with set exams, which is to say that the courses provided a set of questions, but you were only required to answer a select few from the possibilities given. In addition, again in my experience, you didn't get questions with all possible legal issues incorporated. The questions tended to deal with one discrete area of the course, and other questions dealt with other areas. The combination of those two factors meant that you could really just study the most important parts of the course in preparation for the exam, and if you omitted Islamic finance or something, you could be fairly sure you wouldn't find yourself in the position of having that kind of issue incorporated as a sub-issue in a question you absolutely had to answer. That's a long explanation; but it is to say that there are good ways and bad of dealing with LL.M. courses. The reading load is FAR in excess of the expectation at American law schools, but it affects what instructors reasonably expect from students (whether they admit it or not), the lecture format, the exam format and, really, your approach. The LL.M. (and obviously I only have the benefit of one perspective from one program) is just a different creature compared to law school, and . . . It's like this: if you have ever tried to understand cricket, it's not that difficult. But if you try to figure it out because it looks like baseball, then you're probably making the task harder than it has to be.

It sort of depends on the instructor and to a lesser degree on the program. My experience was that it was not at all like U.S. law school. The Socratic method - as you probably know it - was not used. You were not cold called. Some instructors liked to ask questions rather than simply lecture so you could record notes. Others preferred not to deal with the students much at all and didn't engage them. They just sort of worked their way through the material. In either case, you had WAY more reading than you could reasonably accomplish - and, yes, that's in comparison to U.S. law schools which already assign quite a lot. You're buried under mountains of reading, which you have to obtain yourself from various sources in the university library and on-line. You're a massively busy secretary for weeks until you figure out it's not worth it.

I've said it before, and I will say it again: The first thing you need to do after you've decided which courses you want to take is to find out what the exam is going to be like (if you have one for that course). I didn't have any courses with set exams, which is to say that the courses provided a set of questions, but you were only required to answer a select few from the possibilities given. In addition, again in my experience, you didn't get questions with all possible legal issues incorporated. The questions tended to deal with one discrete area of the course, and other questions dealt with other areas. The combination of those two factors meant that you could really just study the most important parts of the course in preparation for the exam, and if you omitted Islamic finance or something, you could be fairly sure you wouldn't find yourself in the position of having that kind of issue incorporated as a sub-issue in a question you absolutely had to answer. That's a long explanation; but it is to say that there are good ways and bad of dealing with LL.M. courses. The reading load is FAR in excess of the expectation at American law schools, but it affects what instructors reasonably expect from students (whether they admit it or not), the lecture format, the exam format and, really, your approach. The LL.M. (and obviously I only have the benefit of one perspective from one program) is just a different creature compared to law school, and . . . It's like this: if you have ever tried to understand cricket, it's not that difficult. But if you try to figure it out because it looks like baseball, then you're probably making the task harder than it has to be.
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Kerfuffle

P_Martini has given a very good answer here.

To add... the teaching structure of an LLM is generally based on the structure of the English LLB degree i.e., lectures and seminars (exc. Oxbridge that use a tutorial system). Lectures are very much a passive experience: mostly you take notes and follow a handout. Then you go away and work through the reading from that lecture (some lecturers will give the handout a week before so you can read before the lecture, but many don't). As said above, you often get huge amounts of reading, so you have to become quite savvy about what parts of the course will be found in the exam.

It's important to pick modules with good lecturers otherwise the module becomes purely self-study (you may as well be doing it as a distance course).

For seminars, you'll have a list of questions/scenarios and prepare answers (usually exam qu's), which are then discussed in the seminar. Not all LLM programmes run seminars. Seminars are probably the most useful aspect of the teaching experience as they offer a chance for you to engage with the lecturer/prof, and ask for clarification on points etc.

P_Martini has given a very good answer here.

To add... the teaching structure of an LLM is generally based on the structure of the English LLB degree i.e., lectures and seminars (exc. Oxbridge that use a tutorial system). Lectures are very much a passive experience: mostly you take notes and follow a handout. Then you go away and work through the reading from that lecture (some lecturers will give the handout a week before so you can read before the lecture, but many don't). As said above, you often get huge amounts of reading, so you have to become quite savvy about what parts of the course will be found in the exam.

It's important to pick modules with good lecturers otherwise the module becomes purely self-study (you may as well be doing it as a distance course).

For seminars, you'll have a list of questions/scenarios and prepare answers (usually exam qu's), which are then discussed in the seminar. Not all LLM programmes run seminars. Seminars are probably the most useful aspect of the teaching experience as they offer a chance for you to engage with the lecturer/prof, and ask for clarification on points etc.
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cmars

Its much less Socratic - but it will depend heavily on the size of the class. In a class of less than 20 (sometimes even less than 10) it will be Socratic by default.

Its much less Socratic - but it will depend heavily on the size of the class. In a class of less than 20 (sometimes even less than 10) it will be Socratic by default.
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So from what I'm getting, it's a lot more similar to say if you took Poly Sci as an undergrad where you were given lots of readings and the important stuff was asked on the test. I'm just trying to get a reading on the spectrum here but would that be a good generalization?

So from what I'm getting, it's a lot more similar to say if you took Poly Sci as an undergrad where you were given lots of readings and the important stuff was asked on the test. I'm just trying to get a reading on the spectrum here but would that be a good generalization?
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P_Martini

So from what I'm getting, it's a lot more similar to say if you took Poly Sci as an undergrad where you were given lots of readings and the important stuff was asked on the test. I'm just trying to get a reading on the spectrum here but would that be a good generalization?


Maybe. I didn't do political science. Whether that's an apt analogy or not, however, I think you probably have a sense for it. I should say that part of it is just the difference between the British system and the American system. Under the American system, particularly in law school, you buy one bound volume that encompasses all the course material, and then you get a syllabus of assigned reading from that one volume. In addition, all of the reading assigned is absolutely mandatory. Under the British system, you get a list of readings - both mandatory and suggested - from multiple different sources and are then expected to waste massive amounts of time tracking all of it down on your own in the library, from the general circulation, materials put on reserve and materials posted on-line. Further, even if you just try to complete the mandatory reading, you're going to run out of hours in the day and then days in the week, and so you have to game the entire endeavor quite a bit differently; that means selecting good courses, finding out what the exams will be like (e.g., have all the exams in the last 10 years allowed a very generous list of questions from which you only have to select three to answer, and then do the individual questions stay within one or a relative few subject areas, so that you can start effectively crossing reading off of your list?).

The disadvantages - particularly for American students who are not used to this system - are obvious, and you should expect to be quite uncomfortable with it for quite a while. By contrast, the main advantage is that you have a lot of intellectual freedom within each course. In the end, you're supposed to want to be there and want to learn; you're supposed to be genuinely interested, and, frankly, if you're not, then don't waste your time and money because I'm not sure how valuable a LL.M. is in the U.S., anyway. You are expected basically to work yourself up so that you can become part of the intellectual discussion; and so, on the one hand it's regrettable that you do have to approach the LL.M. in this practical (cynical?) way (or, at least, that's how I had to approach it in order to survive the workload, though that's, I trust, apparent at this point), but on the other, it's really enjoyable because if you are truly interested in the subject, you really don't need to be led around quite so much as in law school in the U.S. You pretty much just need to be shown the way to start and let loose, which my course at least did a pretty great job of.

<blockquote>So from what I'm getting, it's a lot more similar to say if you took Poly Sci as an undergrad where you were given lots of readings and the important stuff was asked on the test. I'm just trying to get a reading on the spectrum here but would that be a good generalization?</blockquote>

Maybe. I didn't do political science. Whether that's an apt analogy or not, however, I think you probably have a sense for it. I should say that part of it is just the difference between the British system and the American system. Under the American system, particularly in law school, you buy one bound volume that encompasses all the course material, and then you get a syllabus of assigned reading from that one volume. In addition, all of the reading assigned is absolutely mandatory. Under the British system, you get a list of readings - both mandatory and suggested - from multiple different sources and are then expected to waste massive amounts of time tracking all of it down on your own in the library, from the general circulation, materials put on reserve and materials posted on-line. Further, even if you just try to complete the mandatory reading, you're going to run out of hours in the day and then days in the week, and so you have to game the entire endeavor quite a bit differently; that means selecting good courses, finding out what the exams will be like (e.g., have all the exams in the last 10 years allowed a very generous list of questions from which you only have to select three to answer, and then do the individual questions stay within one or a relative few subject areas, so that you can start effectively crossing reading off of your list?).

The disadvantages - particularly for American students who are not used to this system - are obvious, and you should expect to be quite uncomfortable with it for quite a while. By contrast, the main advantage is that you have a lot of intellectual freedom within each course. In the end, you're supposed to want to be there and want to learn; you're supposed to be genuinely interested, and, frankly, if you're not, then don't waste your time and money because I'm not sure how valuable a LL.M. is in the U.S., anyway. You are expected basically to work yourself up so that you can become part of the intellectual discussion; and so, on the one hand it's regrettable that you do have to approach the LL.M. in this practical (cynical?) way (or, at least, that's how I had to approach it in order to survive the workload, though that's, I trust, apparent at this point), but on the other, it's really enjoyable because if you are truly interested in the subject, you really don't need to be led around quite so much as in law school in the U.S. You pretty much just need to be shown the way to start and let loose, which my course at least did a pretty great job of.
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