Find a guide, resource, or page across the whole site.
Select a date and time — we confirm within 2 hours.
Available Times
Your requested time has been sent to us — we will confirm by email or WhatsApp within 2 hours.
Your booking is confirmed once you hear from us.
Resources / Course Guides / Law
Parent Course Guide
Law is the great reading degree — modest contact hours concealing one of the heaviest private workloads in the university. Its recruitment market is also uniquely front-loaded: the top firms sign their trainees two full years before graduation.
The seven “foundation subjects” are prescribed by the profession; every school teaches them:
Contract, criminal and public/constitutional law, plus the legal system and legal reasoning. The reading list arrives immediately and never shrinks.
Land law, tort, trusts & equity, EU/retained law. Vacation-scheme applications open in the autumn — this is the decisive professional year.
Options from commercial and company law to human rights, jurisprudence and international law; a dissertation at most schools.
Lectures set the map; tutorials and seminars (2–8 students at the top schools) are where students are interrogated on the week’s hundred pages of cases.
Lectures & tutorials — 8–12 hours weekly — Oxbridge supervisions are one-to-two or one-to-three
Mooting & pro bono — the co-curricular courtroom work firms genuinely look for
Reading — 30+ hours weekly of case law and journals — the real degree
Written work — weekly essays or problem answers, marked line by line
Law’s placement system runs through the vacations, and it is ferociously structured:
open days and short programmes at the City firms — the gentle tagging begins here.
paid 1–3 week placements at firms in the year-2 holidays; the majority of top-firm training contracts are now awarded through them.
a two-year salaried traineeship (£50,000+ at the magic circle, with the SQE course funded) — typically secured before final year begins.
Magic- and silver-circle firms, barristers’ chambers, and increasingly the consultancies all recruit on campus at the target law schools. Newly-qualified solicitor pay at the top London firms now exceeds £150,000 — and non-law graduates can convert later via the PGDL, a useful safety valve parents should know about. Read our parent’s guide to the Milk Round →
The LNAT admissions test is required at most of the schools below; offers are typical.
| University | Course & variant | Duration | Typical offer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oxford | BA Jurisprudence | 3 years | AAA + LNAT + interview |
| Cambridge | BA Law | 3 years | A*AA + LNAT + interview |
| LSE | LLB | 3 years | AAA + LNAT |
| UCL | LLB | 3 years | A*AA + LNAT |
| KCL | LLB | 3 years | A*AA + LNAT |
| Edinburgh | LLB (Scots & dual routes) | 4 years | AAA–AAB |
| Bristol | LLB | 3 years | A*AA–AAA + LNAT |
| Manchester | LLB | 3 years | AAA |
A law degree from a target school, with the right vacation-scheme strategy, converts into a funded professional qualification and a £100,000+ career — secured while the student is still an undergraduate. But the timetable is brutal: LNAT in year 13, insight schemes in first year, vacation schemes in second. Families who discover this timeline late have already missed it; ours never do.
We help families choose the course variant that fits the child — then build the application that wins the place: subject strategy, personal statement, admissions tests and interview preparation, led by the academics themselves.
Fees shown are the government-regulated home undergraduate cap for 2026/27 (£9,790; rising to £10,050 in 2027/28). International fees vary by university and are typically £28,000–£45,000 per year, and up to £65,000+ for clinical courses. Entry offers, contact hours and placement statistics are typical published figures and vary by institution and year — we verify current details for your child’s exact shortlist during consultancy.
Stay Informed
Occasional emails when we publish a new city guide, course guide, or resource. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.