Business and Law UCD

EatRowSleep

I'm in 6th year now, aiming to do Business and Law in UCD. Just wondering;

1. People always say Law involves loads of reading, what kind of reading? Like are you reading old cases and making your own ideas of them? Or reading technical definitions and trying to get your head around them? I'm very worried It'll be boring!

2. Is there any work experience included?

Perhaps if anybody is doing this course, they could give me an insight into what hours are like and just how they find the course etc

Thanks!

sunshine and showers

EatRowSleep wrote: »

I'm in 6th year now, aiming to do Business and Law in UCD. Just wondering;

1. People always say Law involves loads of reading, what kind of reading? Like are you reading old cases and making your own ideas of them? Or reading technical definitions and trying to get your head around them? I'm very worried It'll be boring!

2. Is there any work experience included?

Perhaps if anybody is doing this course, they could give me an insight into what hours are like and just how they find the course etc

Thanks!

I didn't do B&L, I did a BCL in UCD. To answer your questions:

1) There's reading cases and reading textbooks and academic articles, for the most part. They teach you how to approach reading cases (how to find them, how to interpret them, etc). Reading on technical parts of the law is just so it makes more sense to you when the lecturer goes through it in class. Generally, you go through a topic in class and then you go off and look at chapters of textbooks and legal cases that are assigned for reading and it helps the whole thing make sense.
You learn to understand the law, what it means, and how it applies in different situations. It's not completely boring if you are interested in the law. Obviously some parts of the law will interest you more than others, but overall I really enjoyed my degree.

2) No, there is no work experience offered by the university. You go get that yourself through internships, etc, during your holidays. That's how many of the universities still do it. I think UL and DCU might offer work experience in their degrees.

The hours for B&L are different to BCL. B&L have a very tight schedule so they do not get to participate in the UCD Horizons Programme, which was one of my favourite parts of UCD. It's where you get an 'elective' every semester to study whatever you fancy - whether that's another subject to do with your degree or something totally left field. I had a friend in Commerce who did a Biology module because he was interested in it.

I don't think I ever had more than 14 hours a week with six subjects. Law hours don't tend to be mental, though, to allow time for all that reading.

Phyrexian

Actually for (2) -

You can do a work experience module in Law. As a B & L student you can chose to do it. It used to be called "Legal Practice II", but I think it is being renamed something like "Legal Placement". It is run by the Clinical Legal Education Centre (within the School of Law). You do it in your summer between 3rd and 4th year. You go on a placement with a legal organisation (e.g. a solicitors firm or an NGO) and you write an academic reflective journal on this. You also do presentations on your experiences in work. I think it's only been around 2 years now though.

spillit67

You could do a year out in the Quinn School with B&L for your 4th year with an employer (KPMG, Ebay and the likes) but had to come back and do a 5th year. It was like going for a year abroad to an international university (non Erasmus which is included in a four year programme). I know people were doing it a couple of years ago when the job market was down but frankly anyone I know who went into KPMG for a year regretted it. It was just cheap labour for them during the recession, you were doing the work you would do as a first year trainee without any of that time being counted towards becoming a Chartered Accountant if you went down that route. They had to do an extra year in college whilst classmates were graduated. My advice would be not to bother with it unless the opportunity is brilliant. College is for college - do an erasmus or international year ahead of that. Do internships if you want to pad your CV out. B&L opens doors frankly and is one of the most sought after degrees - hence why Trinity, Maynooth and DIT copied the idea!

Reading in law comes down to how well you want to do. You can be very good at writing with a strong ability to compose arguments and do the bear minimum (ie know some cases and bullet point decisions) and get a high C/low B. Reading judgements, articles from Westlaw and from other books on your reading list gets the top grades. In summary - very difficult to fail but very difficult to do well in. You can get away with slacking but I wouldn't be giving that advice to a LC student.:pac:

OffTheSideBar

Friends of mine did it.

Never had crazy hours in terms of set lectures, but to do well and get your minimum 2.1, they were putting a lot of time into rating cases and memorising the names and details and then applying various laws to them and such. Fair few group things if i remember rightly too.

I don't know about placements but 3 of my friends who graduated from the course did a half year erasmuses abroad and they were always doing projects and case work for the likes of deloitte and kpmg and pwc etc.

Like interesting but i always felt they were under pressure or maybe that's just them. Course seemed to have lots of social benefits, one of the few courses i know of where the students are really close and have nights out and such. Most others that especially arts aren't anything like that.

2 went on to do a masters in law, another is working for kpmg now

spillit67

The ratio of girls to guys is about 55:45 generally. Very good balance socially.

somesoldiers

I did the course but in 93 so quite a lot has probably changed since then. I now work in Hedge Funds and never really used anything I studied as part of my course but it is broad enough that you can go down either route afterwards.

There were no placements at the time, sure it would be impossible to organise in a class of 140 or s as well as some of the Business classes would be in with Commerce so maybe 400 people in theatre L of the Arts block

Yes there was lots of law reading judgements and no criminal included at the time so could get quite technical and boring

Anyhow that's my bit, overall a good broad course with lots of routes to go down. Best of luck with it