MA in Law University of Sussex

Are you a non-law graduate looking for a law conversion course to get up to speed with a range of legal concepts?

This course offers you the opportunity to gain a Master in Law so you’re prepared for many different career options. Replacing the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL)/Common Professional Examination (CPE), this degree focuses on the key areas of the law in England and Wales and provides a solid foundation for preparing for the first stage of the Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE), paving the way for a number of career options including:

• Qualifying as a solicitor
• Qualifying as a barrister
• Undertaking legal research
• Undertaking further study

Key areas you’ll explore include contract law, criminal law, tort law, EU law, public law, land law, as well as equity and trusts. You have the opportunity to choose an area of the law that interests you most for your own legal research.

Throughout your studies, you’ll develop legal awareness and engage in informed discussion of the law. You’ll also experience some of the approaches used in vocational legal training such as the SQE.

We’ll make all reasonable efforts to provide you with the courses, services and facilities described in this prospectus. However, we may need to make changes due to significant disruption, for example in response to COVID-19.

The University of Sussex is located at Falmer on the outskirts of Brighton and is the only UK university surrounded by a national park. Brighton is one of the top-10 city beach destinations in the world (Lonely Planet), an hour away from Central London by train and 30 minutes from London Gatwick, one of the UK’s major international airports.

Career paths may include:

• Solicitor (Solicitors’ Qualifying Exam)
• Barrister (Bar Professional Training Course)
• Paralegal/legal executive
• In-house counsel
• Judge
• Legal researcher or librarian
• The Civil, Police or Probation Service
• Local government

We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2022/23. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to COVID-19, or due to staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum. It may not be possible to take some module combinations due to timetabling constraints. We’ll make sure to let our applicants know of material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.

Core modules

Core modules are taken by all students on the course. They give you a solid grounding in your chosen subject and prepare you to explore the topics that interest you most.

Autumn teaching

• Advanced Legal Research and Writing

Options

Alongside your core modules, you can choose options to broaden your horizons and tailor your course to your interests. This list gives you a flavour of our options, which are kept under review and may change, for example in response to student feedback or the latest research.

While it’s our aim for students to take their preferred combinations of options, this can’t be guaranteed and will be subject to timetabling. Options may be grouped and if so, students will be able to choose a set number of options from the selection available in any particular group.

Autumn teaching

• Constitutional Foundations of the European Union

Spring teaching

• Law of Succession (Spr)
• Legal Ethics and Professional Conduct

This course is currently subject to validation, in line with our procedures for assuring the quality of our degrees. This means that some course detail may change. The validation process will be concluded before the course starts.