Course overview

Law

What are your rights when you enter a mobile phone contract?

Is it right for courts to grant superinjunctions?

In what circumstances can someone be arrested and charged?

These are the sort of topics that you will discuss as part of your law course. You will learn about the key rules of English and European law and see how they develop from cases and government-made law. In some units you will focus on who makes the law and what influences them. The course also offers opportunities to put your developing legal knowledge into practice in ‘real world’ situations where you can perhaps choose to train to be a Citizens Advice Bureau adviser or a mediator.

Law is perceived as a difficult subject. It does involve a lot of reading. However, because of this law graduates are much in demand, not only from law firms but other organisations where legal knowledge may be useful, such as commercial companies or public bodies. There is no doubt that a law degree will give you a valuable qualification.

As this is a qualifying law degree, students who pass the degree are able to go on to vocational training as barristers or solicitors.

Criminology

Why do people commit crimes?

What makes some individuals resort to terrorism to make their political demands?

How should those convicted of crimes be punished?

Criminology is the study of criminal behaviour, its causes and the responses (and workings) of criminal justice agencies and others. It has a strong sociological focus, looking in detail at the reasons why people commit crimes and the effectiveness of the criminal justice system in dealing with them.

Work placement

This degree has the option to undertake a one-year placement working in a paid, full-time role with continuous progression and a suitable level of responsibility. More information on the placement year can be found in 'Course content'.

The Placements Office will support you during your placement search, the subsequent recruitment processes, and when you have secured your placement and are working away from the University.

Practical hand-on experience

You will also have the opportunity to take part in mooting and negotiation (key practical skills) in internal and external competitions also as part of the assessment in some units. Take a look at the video of one of our mock trials to see students and staff in action as lawyers and judges.

Professional accreditation

This course is recognised by the Bar Standards Board and Solicitors Regulatory Authority as a qualifying law degree, allowing students who pass the degree and the foundation of knowledge subjects the right to go straight on to the Bar Professional Training Course or the Legal Practice Course required as part of the professional qualification to become a barrister or solicitor.

Unusually, our law degrees also offer the option to sit the Chartered Institute of Legal Executive (CILEx) practice papers, gaining full exemption from the academic stage required by the Institute. Graduates who successfully complete their degree and the ILEX papers with us will be able to go straight on to seek work as a paid trainee Legal Executive.

Contacts with the profession

Many of the activities which are part of our Pro Bono Initiative would not be possible without the support of the local legal community, and the School of Law prides itself on the good reputation it has in Portsmouth and Hampshire. We maintain good links with the Court Service in Portsmouth and with local judges, allowing us to facilitate court visits, marshalling and even work experience. Our mentoring programme also brings in members of the legal profession who work in local solicitors firms, for the government and in a variety of other contexts, and links them with individual students.

Course content

All LLB students follow a common core of legal subjects. This includes the foundations of legal knowledge units, which allow you to progress to vocational courses and into the legal profession. In addition, there are many opportunities to experience law first hand through our pro bono initiatives.

You may participate in other schemes that include our in-house Employment Advice Clinic or volunteering with Portsmouth Mediation Service, Portsmouth Trading Standards and Hampshire Police Constables.

There are also many other practical opportunities and you can also have a look at law students in action in one of our mock trials held in our mock courtroom.

Course structure

Year one

In your first year you will study the following law units:

• English Legal System
• Contract Law
• Criminal Law
• Public Law

You will also study the following criminology units:

• Introduction to Criminology
• Introduction to Criminal Justice

Year two

In your second year you will begin your training with some of the pro bono projects. You will also study the following core law units:

• Employment Law or Elements of Consumer and Commercial Law
• Land Law
• Law of Tort

You will also have a choice of Employment Law, Elements of Commercial and Consumer Law or Family and Child Law or a Language.

You will also study the following core criminology units

• Issues in Criminology
• Issues in Criminal Justice

Instead of a law option, you will also have the option to choose a criminology option called Police, Law and Community, which will give you some exemptions from initial police training in some police forces.

Placement year

This degree includes the opportunity for a one-year placement working in a paid, full-time role with continuous progression and a suitable level of responsibility. You will return to your studies from your placement with contemporary business experience, which will improve your ability to engage in debate and develop your strategic thinking, and perhaps indirectly boost your degree classification.

With employers now requiring graduates to have the key business competencies and experience alongside a good degree, work experience is more vital than ever. Due to its very nature a placement year is the best and most involving type of work experience you can do during your time at university. As such, a placement will help insure you are as employable as possible upon graduation.

The Portsmouth Business School Placements Office will support you not only during your placement search and the subsequent recruitment processes, but also once you secure your placement and are working away from the University. Our students have gained much from their work placements – listen to some of our students' experiences.

Year three/four

In your final year you will study the following law units:

• Equity and Trusts
• EU Law
• Discrimination and Human Rights

You will also have to choose one of the following:

• Legal Dissertation
• Legal Project
• The Reflective Practitioner Course where you can gain credit for practical experience. This can be:
  • in our new debt and consumer advice centre
  • as a special constable
  • working with trading standards
  • working for a community mediation organisation
  • as a student volunteer with the University of Portsmouth's Employment Advice Clinic

Law options include:

• Company Law
• Intellectual Property law
• CILEX Level 6 Practice Papers
• Family and Child Law
• Evidence and Advocacy
• Public International Law

You must also take a core criminology unit, Contemporary Criminologies

Teaching and assessment

The School of Law is praised by its students for the level of student support offered by staff. All academic staff have regular office hours and are almost always able to offer ‘open door’ access – if we are in and not doing something else then we are happy to see students.

In every year of your degree you will be assigned a personal tutor. You will meet regularly with your personal tutor in timetabled sessions to discuss your progress and to help to resolve problems or questions that you may encounter along the way. In year three, your personal tutor will also be your dissertation tutor or the member of staff supervising your pro bono work.

Teaching is undertaken usually in the format of a one-hour seminar and one-hour lecture per week. Some units will be different – they may be taught in the format of seminars alone or may involve you working more independently with the supervision of a member of staff.

Assessment is varied, with examinations forming an important, though not exclusive, part of the core law subjects. Other types of assessment include coursework essays, presentations or written moot arguments.

Opportunities for mooting (a sort of mock trial) are given in both the Criminal Law and Law of Tort units, and help to develop the practical advocacy skills needed to be a lawyer.

Career prospects

Graduates on this course may wish to become a lawyer. Lawyers come in a variety of forms, from the traditional professions of the barrister and solicitor, to the legal executive (the third legal profession), paralegals, and those working for advice centres, public bodies (such as trading standards) and legal departments within commercial or voluntary sector organisations. However, law offers a wide variety of different careers opportunities and many law graduates do not pursue careers as lawyers. Because the degree is viewed as very demanding law graduates are in high demand on graduate trainee schemes in a variety of different sectors including human resources/recruitment, financial services and other areas of industry. University of Portsmouth graduates have gone on to become qualified solicitors, human resources managers and have worked for large financial organisations, as well as gaining paid work within the voluntary sector.

Students wishing to pursue a career as a solicitor can come to Portsmouth confident in the fact that if they obtain a 2:2 or better they are guaranteed to be accepted on to Legal Practice Courses at the College of Law and the University of Bournemouth.

The combination of law with criminology on this degree offers further career opportunities. Graduates on such a combined course may still wish to become a lawyer (perhaps working for the Crown Prosecution Service) or they may consider working for one of the criminal justice agencies (e.g. the police, Prison Service, or Probation Service). Criminal justice research is also a very rewarding career with several organisations requiring researchers in this area. A number of law with criminology students also go on to seek graduate entry to the police.

CILEx offers Graduate Membership, for further details please visit the CILEX website.

Facilities and features

Based in Portsmouth Business School’s Richmond Building, the School of Law has state-of-the-art teaching facilities and staff with both practical and academic experience of law. The School has developed an innovative portfolio of undergraduate law degrees which places a special emphasis on giving students the opportunity to gain practical experience of the legal system whilst studying for the degree.

Mock courtroom

You can be part of our full-blown mock trials and moots in our mock courtroom. The £1 million development is an exact replica of a crown court, complete with dock, witness box, public gallery, jury room and interview rooms. You can have a look at it being used in a recent mock trial involving staff and students.

Entry requirements

View all the entry requirements for LLB Law with Criminology for the academic year 2013/14 (opens in new window).