to expect there to be a simple book about law available ?

[adogcalledbetty]

DS 18 is starting a law degree in September .

He didn't do law A level and wants to do some reading around the subject before he gets to uni just to give him a bit of confidence. He's been sent an enormous reading list by the uni, but can anyone recommend some introductory type reading for him? He had a look at the Dummy's guide to law but it seemed very Americanised. Any suggestions?

If they still teach law the same way (it's been 7 years since I graduated!) then he'll study the seven foundation areas of law before specialising. They are:

Contract
Land
Equity and trusts
EU law
Criminal
Public law
Tort

Grab the nutshell books on all of the above and he'll be all set.

I teach law at a university. We don't expect students to have prior knowledge of the law. If they have law 'A' level it won't hurt them, but even where we cover the some of the same cases we expect a much greater depth of understanding at degree level so it does not help them much either.

I think the advice above is generally right. Read a quality paper every day, any practical experience is good, and there are some good books about how the law works to read. If his uni sets Glanville Williams (it is still in print even though Williams has been dead 15 years - it is just updated by new authors) it will probably be required reading in his first term anyway. He might enjoy some lighter reading for now. I read Geoffrey Robertson's 'The Justice Game' and Crimes against Humanity before I started my degree. Good stirring stuff which makes law seem a bit more exciting.

On the whole he should avoid Nutshells and the like. I've never seen a really top class student who uses them. They are for cramming later in the year. But the challenge when studying the law is to try and work out how it fits together and why cases have been decided as they have even where they appear to conflict. Simplistic books which only precis the facts and give a very basic ratio for a decision do not really help students develop this insight.

Lol at everyone who studied law recommending Nutshells and the law tutor saying they're rubbish.

Bad students!

he's not actually started yet, noones saying he can use nutshells etc for his assignments they're just useful for an overview.. of course they don't go into anything enough for the actual coursework but that's a while away yet

Having done under and postgrad law degrees there really aren't any general texts. He'll get a reading list in September and FWIW on our first day we were told to 'forget everything' we'd been taught at A Level as none of it was relevant to the degree course.

He'd be better placed spending his time seeing if he can get some unpaid work experience in a law firm over the summer, even if it's just filing. Training contracts are notoriously hard to come by these days so it wouldn't do him any harm to make a good impression on a local firm ready for when the time comes.

I second the vote for Glanville Williams as an introductory text. I didn't do A level law and did just fine on my degree. Most people won't have studied law before They don't expect prior knowledge.

Oh, and I should add, he should spend his summer hols having fun (if he can afford to) and not reading dull law books. He has very few long holidays left before he hits the daily grind of working life.

A bit late, but I would say don't do law as a degree - superficial and boring - although I would recommend law as a career.

I've only studied criminal law in any depth (police) but what I would say is that a lot of law topics do require a certain degree of explanation and that is often far better coming from a teacher rather than a book. Eg the explanations in books of the difference 9.1(a) and 9.1(b) burglary (point at which intent is formed) is quite flummoxing unless you have someone with a total grasp of the topic to explain it. I ended up totally getting the wrong idea about an element of civil law I had researched, when one of our CPS lawyers explained it to me it all fell into place
I would second all those who say just encourage him to get up to date with current affairs and wait till his course starts to learn.

Never heard anyone describe a law degree as superficial and boring before!

Penelope would your students admit to you that they used nutshells?! The only subject I got a first in at uni (Oxbridge) was criminal law and I pretty much crammed using nutshells/cases. No way would I have admitted that to my lecturers/tutors!

I was under impression a level law and to some extent even undergraduate law degrees were undesirable from future employer point of view (did the graduate diploma) it's all in the course and it's not a difficult subject, it's just not as much as fun as others I can think of.

Why on earth would a law degree be undesirable for a lawyer at a law firm?! It is much more in depth than the GDL!

Not a difficult subject?! I guess it depends where you study it!

I don't know, perhaps was given questionable advice at the time (some time ago) but generally the advice then was to do a solid and sort of relevantly analytical academic subject (history, ppe, that sort of thing) and then qualify