Anyone doing a Law Degree?

[SturdyAngel]

I am hoping to get a place at uni for the LLB course. I have been doing some reading and bought afew books. I was wondering if anyone who is currently doing the degree could point me in the direction of some good books & other reading material that would be useful for the course.

I was also wondering about the standard of knowledge expected on beginning the degree and what you think I should know before I start!

Thanks!

hi i am 3rd year law student, its a tough long haul..got exams at the mo i have sonme books if u wanna buy em.

I did a law degree in 1991-94. They give you a reading list before you start, and it will be hefty and expensive. As far as I know, you don't have to know a damn thing before that - they'll tell you what they expect you to have read. Take care buying second hand books - this is not relating to the last post! - because the law changes all the time as new cases and statutes come into force, and law is really about looking up what the last law passed is. I bought a huge stack of books from another student and half of them were out of date - and I paid about £80 for them second hand 15 years ago! I had to buy new ones. Even then I barely used them and just revised from nutshell guides, but you still have to have them to do your essays, I'm afraid, or spend your life in the library.

I didn't use my law degree - I gave up after getting a place at bar school and realising I didn't want to spend any more money. Being a solicitor you earn money earlier and stand a better chance of getting a job. But I ended up doing something totally different instead. I found the law very dry and tedious, and I know lawyers who work every evening till 8pm or later. But don't let this put you off, some people really love the law and the way the language works. There's a lot of fun to be had doing criminal law (they usually put it in the first year because it's interesting) and I liked Equity and Tort, but Contract, Land, Industrial, etc made my eyes and head hurt. Good luck, I hope you love it. Lawyers get some stick, but the ones I know are adorable and funny, and there are worse ways to earn a living.

I read law at university and you really don't need to know anything about law before you start as they'll teach what you need to know - or show you how to find ou the information. As long as you can read and write English fluently - there is no pre-requisite amount of knowledge required unlike say taking a maths or medical sciences degree would. It's surprising what legal know-how we've all instinctively got anyway from everyday life.

Legal publishers often have webpages as 'extras' to their books to cut down how many pages they need to print in their tomes as you could often use the books to prop up wonky tables or use them as doorsteps but you can often team up with someone to share the costs of books or just learn to live in the library to bag the few copies available when they do come back. I found that I could often get the right edition book from a local library - not the uni library - for a whole semester which saved me a small fortune but do check publication dates. You'll probably need 1 book per module per semester (or six books a year) as a rough guide.

Law is great fun to study and don't forget in the third year you can often choose your own topics of law to study once you've completed the seven core elements if you're going for an exemption degree.

I did law years ago and am now doing my LLM. You don't need to do anything. Read what you are interested in or nothing at all. Your professors will assign enough reading in your classes that you will know more than you ever wanted to know. If you ahve a particular area you are interested in, try some books in that area. I suggest maybe reading some books by lawyers about what it is like to practice, I always enjoyed those kind of books to get a feel for hte profession, especially when they talk about their big cases. To be honest, rumpole of the bailey is really accurate about the silly, pompous and fun side of law (and surprising accurate). As one colleague said to me, he says what you always wanted to say to a judge but didn't dare. Good luck!