This is interesting news, that the University of Dundee will offer a British Law degree, allowing students to pick and choose modules that will meet the qualification requirements of all Law Societies: Englsih, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish. Since our staff are mostly Scottish qualified, but work in England too, there’s now an overwhelming majority of them who have qualified in English law by taking the LLB. Now, while the LLB is essential and useful, there’s only so much information you can cram into a conversion course, and there’s still gaps in knowledge.
I wonder if this will help sort out the problems we often have, with people not knowing what law applies where, if they have a better grounding in both jurisdictions? Will British qualified lawyers have a headstart in any way on single jurisdiction qualifieds?
Also, I wish they’d do it as a distance learning degree – currently, the library staff have a problem. My boss has a law degree, I have a science degree. We both work with both Scots and English (and sometimes Northern Irish) law. She has a good basis to work from, and can launch straight into enquiries, regardless of jurisdiction. I’m slightly more vague, and need more time to bring myself up to speed on topics when first asked.
But neither of us are English law qualified, and we’re often asked to deal with English issues. We both know we need training, me in Scots and English law, her in English. But there’s nowhere we can find that would provide a course of a basic grounding in each jurisdiction.
If we wanted to be paralegals, we could do courses on specific aspects of Scots or English law – civil court practice, personal injury etc.
But we don’t need specific area training, we need general, basic foundations stuff! Pretty much the equivalent of perhaps the first year of a law degree, laying out the reasoning of things, the main areas of legal work / activity etc.
Does anybody out there know of any sort of (distance) course that would cover a good depth of basic English law? Or Scots even?
Or will I just have to wait until Dundee extend to the British law course to distance learning?
*Thanks to the Inner Temple Library Current Awareness Service for the heads up!*
Dumpling in a Hanky 