Professor Bill Butler
Professor of Comparative Law and Director of The Vinogradoff Institute, UCL.
LLM study guide author: 'Russian law and legal institutions'
" The study guide for my own subject is intended to stimulate
your mind, raise questions which lead to further questions and invite you to read and review
the materials from a more profound perspective as you read and re-read them. That is what learning
is all about: not merely the accumulation of information (interesting as it may be) but the use
of that information to develop your analytical skills – in this case using Russian
law and legal institutions as an entrée to, or exercise in, comparative law."
The great benefit of this new programme is its flexible structure. It's up to you whether you study the subjects of most interest to you and/or those that will be most useful to your career. There's a wide range of Courses to choose from and three awards to aim for: you decide the level you want to achieve and the areas you want to cover. And because you can study when you choose, you can plan your studying to fit in with your work and home commitments.
Each course is divided into four sections and there is a separate exam for each section. For some courses, there are set sequences to guide you through the sections (given under the syllabuses). For others, you decide the order in which you study your chosen sections.
You take the following number of courses and sections:
If you begin with the Postgraduate Certificate or Postgraduate Diploma and progress to the Postgraduate Diploma and/or Master of Laws (LLM), you continue to study the courses you have begun until they are completed.
In addition, you choose whether you would like to either cover several areas of the law or to specialise. If you choose to specialise, the name of your specialisation will appear in the final certificate of your award, for example ‘Master of Laws in the specialisation: Computer and Communications Law' or Postgraduate Diploma in Laws in the specialisation: Maritime Law'. View our Specialisations please.
If you have successfully studied five sections and received the Postgraduate Certificate, you can continue studying five more sections and receive the Postgraduate Diploma. After that, six more sections get you the Master of Laws (LLM).
Because, as the Specialisation page shows, some courses do ‘double duty’ (or even more), fitting in to more than one specialisation, making it possible to obtain the Postgraduate Certificate, Postgraduate Diploma and Master of Laws (LLM) in different specialisations.