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ONCAMPUS Experts Talk: Law Programmes at Birkbeck, University of London

My name's Adam Geary. I'm a professor in the law school. I actually did my PHD at Birkbeck, so I am a Birkbeck graduate myself, so I'm hoping that I'm living proof that Birkbeck can make things happen. So what I'm going to talk about is, actually there's quite a lot of detail in this presentation, so I thought it might be useful to give you a couple of really key things right at the beginning and the first thing is that we are part of the University of London. So if you come to Birkbeck, we are strictly a college of the University of London. You get a University of London degree. We're in the middle of London in Bloomsbury. Our neighbour is the British Museum. So it's a fantastic part of London to be in, a historic part of London, very close to legal London, a couple of blocks away, if you like, very close as well to the city. It's a great transport hub, Euston, Kings Cross, you can walk to Birkbeck from King's Cross, very well served by the tube. So we're at the centre of things.

Research led teaching at Birkbeck, whether you're doing Law or Criminology, you're being taught by people who are active researchers with international reputations. So you're not getting second hand stuff. You're getting cutting edge stuff and I think that's important to say. The school itself, the law school wass founded in 1992, and that's more or less when I started my PhD. So I knew the founders, great set of guys and we are a school composed of two departments, Law and Criminology. I'll say more about that as we go along. We are also linked to the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research, who are an incredibly important research active institution. They do loads of work, for example, on prisons, prison reform and things like that. So again, in terms of the environment, you will be in at Birkbeck, it's research rich. I mean, I think one of the things that we're really keen on is ensuring that cutting edge thinking feeds into practice. We have many kinds of courses, got about 30 members of full time faculty. We are about critical thinking, as I've said. I mean, I'm not going to get into deep water trying to explain what critical thinking means here. But clearly, to be a lawyer, you need to understand the law. You need to rigorously understand the law, legal rules, but you also need to understand how they work and in other words, you need to be able to think about them critically because law on paper is not law as practiced.

We teach in the evening. Classes are held from six to nine, Monday to Thursday. In other words, you have the day free to engage in the activities I've already mentioned and also to enjoy London. This is just really a way in which we organise ourselves to ensure that, for instance, if you're working on a field, you're talking to the like minded and I think as far as what I want to tell you is concerned, this really is the way we organise, the way, we ensure that our research activities feed into how we teach and what we teach and so these research clusters, map onto the kinds of courses we teach, the programmes that we teach and the degrees that we teach. So this first slide here is about our three year law degree. Now, that's called an LLB, a Bachelor in Law and obviously, it provides you with the key skills in relation to knowledge and practice, which allow you to qualify as a lawyer. You don't just have to do that. The next point here is that you are gaining or transferable skills. Law is a training in rigorous thinking. Some of our graduates go on to be lawyers. Others work in other fields. These are useful skills to have. Now you don't have to take a pathway but pathways are a way of showing that you have specialised. Those are the pathways, Commercial or Human Rights and Legal Practice. My next screen concerns some of our new postgraduate courses. First of all, Constitutional Law. Obviously, if you are interested in public law and if you interested in constitutions, how they work, that might be the kind of higher degree that would interest you. Human rights. OK, I'm sure that speaks for itself. Environmental Law, clearly an incredibly demanding and important area. International Economic Law, which we link to themes around justice and development, that's unique. General degree, if you want to do an LLM in Law, but you don't want to necessarily commit to any of these other things, the LLM might be one for you. Law and New Technologies. This is a relatively new programme, cutting edge programme, around regulation of internet technologies and things like that. Law and Political Economics or Political Economy, again, not necessarily Economics, but the relationship between Law, Politics and Economics.

So the BSc in Criminology. Criminology is not Law. It's the study of criminal behaviour, the problems around criminal law, the problems around penology and prisons. The BSc can be studied over three years full time, or fours years part time. Likewise, criminology has higher degrees. You can take an MSc in Criminology with these various pathways here, which pick up on specialisations, for instance, gender, sexuality and criminal justice.

Why come to Birkbeck?  Our staff are specialists in their fields they are committed to teaching. They're committed to the areas of research and I'm hoping that that synergy is one of the things that qualifies our degree and makes our degree distinguished. We support you. One way in which, we have pastoral support mechanisms. In other words, we don't just throw you in the deep end. You have a pastoral tutor. We have academic support officers, who can help you build your study skills and moreover, we have a great portfolio of disability support. We have a Careers and Employability Service. We have, in the law school, we have some good legal practice conversation, which is a series of seminars, workshops where we get practitioners in to tell you about areas of work. So you get a chance to talk to them, to network and that's clearly important, whether or not you want to be a lawyer, networking is clearly an important thing. We also have a mentoring pathway. Current students on the mentoring pathway are mentored by professionals, lawyers, by accountants. We also have a number of people working in the mayor's office for policing and crime. We clearly believe in the synergies between theory and practice. So what our students are doing is providing, as far as a law student can, of course, help to practicing lawyers. We have a partnership with the River House Law Clinic, where students are partnered with professionals to provide advice for people with living with HIV, who are suffering unlawful discrimination in housing and other areas. So a great way of building your CV, working in those areas. This is practical, hard nosed, cutting edge training. Mooting is done, it's a kind of competition around mock trials. We have a sensational team, but if you want to know what being a lawyer is, if you want to build up practical experience, then mooting is incredibly important and as I've said, we have a nationally successful team tutored by some really, truly excellent practicing barristers.

We have a lot of social things going on as well as, you know, kind of professional social things. So research seminar series, Law on Trial. That's coming up. If you go on the website, we're organising this at the moment. We also have a student Law Society. They run events. We also, if you want to get involved in a student Law Journal, that's going on at Birkbeck as well. This is kind of a feature of American Law Schools. I think I'm right in saying that we're the only British law school with a student edited journal. But again, a great way of building your CV, of showing that you're engaged in Law and a Law related field. It's called the International Journal of Critical Legal Thought. One of the features of Birkbeck is that we have an access mission. So the people that you are with are not just, you know, people who have come out of their A-levels or out of qualifications like that. We have an incredibly mixed and diverse student body and so the seminars that you will be in, you might be sat next to a police officer or a bricklayer or an accountant. They are social experiences, it's not a monoculture, in other words. The dynamism to Birkbeck, the kind of insights that you will gain, let's say if you're studying policing with a police officer in your class, is one of, I think, the added benefits to Birkbeck and one of the things that, having taught seminars throughout the world, I think one of the things that adds certainly to the qualities of being at Birkbeck. I will end there. Thank you very much for listening and thank you very much, Peter and the ONCAMPUS team.