Law (including foundation year)

Our Law (including foundation year) BA (Hons) is a four-year degree with a built-in foundation year, designed to teach you the important aspects of law. You'll gain all the skills needed during this preparatory year to succeed in the following three years of your course.

During your foundation year you’ll develop an appreciation for law and how it operates within a variety of spaces such as environment protection, human rights, business and intellectual property. You'll also be supported by our academic tutors to help build your confidence and academic abilities.

This is not a qualifying law degree for professional legal training, so it’s not suitable if you wish to become a solicitor or barrister. We offer Commercial Law LLB or Law (with International Relations) LLB which are qualifying law degrees.

More about this course

This law degree with a foundation year is designed to help you enter a career within environments that rely heavily on the knowledge of law, including business, politics, the civil service and the voluntary sector.

Throughout the degree you’ll receive academic and careers support from tutors and academic mentors. There will also be opportunities to attend workshops that focus on improving your interview, essay writing and critical thinking skills.

In your foundation year you'll focus on developing academic skills within the context of a broad range of current themes and social issues, from an interdisciplinary perspective. You’ll also explore the broad topics of media, crime and race, where your critical thinking, essay writing and research skills will be exercised. In Year 0, you will also study a Law module which will introduce you to the fundamental principles of law, rights and responsibilities within the legal system, and the way our legal system works. On this course you'll have opportunities to engage in study visits to legal institutions.

In the subsequent three years of your course you'll engage in a more in-depth academic study of law, gaining much more choice over the subjects and themes you’ll study.

The foundation year on this course is shared with a number of our other foundation year degrees, so in Year 0 you'll get to study with other students interested in a variety of different specialisms.

Following your foundation year you will continue to study the same subjects on the Law BA degree. If you find that you wish to change your degree specialism at the end of your foundation year, there will be flexibility to do so.

On completion of this course you’ll graduate with the same award and title as students on the traditional three-year course.