Law

The course

The undergraduate law course in Cambridge is intended to promote detailed study of the principal areas of English law. The aim is to achieve a deeper knowledge of the relevant legal doctrines than a purely vocational training would allow, enabling the student to examine the development of the law through general Parliamentary legislation and judicial 'common law' reasoning in individual cases. The academic study of law offers a rigorous intellectual discipline in a subject of wide human and social interest.

At Pembroke, we encourage applications from those who have a general intellectual interest in Law as well as from those who intend to practise as a barrister or solicitor in due course. All students normally take the 'core' legal subjects as part of the Law Tripos - Constitutional and Administrative Law, Contract, Criminal Law, Land Law, Tort, Equity and EC law; and a law graduate who has studied these subjects may obtain exemption from the first (academic) stage of professional qualification.

In addition to the 'core' subjects, Cambridge offers a wide range of options including, for example, Legal History, Criminology, Criminal Procedure and Evidence, Commercial Law, Company Law, Conflict of Laws, Family Law, and European Community Law. There are also seminar papers, where a dissertation is written on a subject chosen by the student. The Pembroke lawyers are permitted to take whichever papers they wish, and strongly encouraged to pursue their own intellectual (rather than purely career-orientated) interests.

Pembroke Law

The University provides lectures for all law undergraduates in each of the major legal subjects; and the College arranges for regular supervision of students' work (usually in small groups of three students). Supervisions are usually conducted by one of the Law Fellows, or sometimes by a Fellow of another College who is a specialist in the subject concerned.

The College has five Fellows in the Faculty of Law:

• Nicholas McBride is the Director of Studies in Law. He teaches Criminal Law, Tort Law, Contract Law and Equity; he is a specialist in Private Law (the law of obligations).
• Professor Trevor Allan teaches Constitutional Law, Administrative Law and Jurisprudence (philosophy of law); his chief interests lie in public law as well as the area of overlap between law, politics and legal philosophy.
• Professor John Bell, a specialist in European and Comparative Law.
• Professor Loraine Gelsthorpe is a criminologist (with a background in sociology, history and philosophy). She teaches Criminal Justice and the Penal System, one of the optional subjects taken in the second or third year. Her special interests concern the discretion to prosecute and discrimination in the criminal justice system as well as juvenile justice and the politics of criminal justice policy.
• Sarah Nouwen is the Mayer Brown Research Fellow in Public International Law. She teaches International Law. Her research interests are primarily focussed on the workings and significance of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, and in particular its effect on legal systems in Africa.

The Law Library

Pembroke has a first-class Law Library which is located in the extension to the refurbished College library. The Law Library contains a complete set of the main English law reports, complete sets of the principal law journals published in the UK (the Law Quarterly Review, the Cambridge Law Journal, the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, the Modern Law Review, Legal Studies, Public Law and the Criminal Law Review), a computer providing access to a range of legal resources on the Internet and up-to-date textbooks and monographs on all the legal subjects that are currently taught in Cambridge. The Law Library is continuously being expanded and kept up to date.

Spending a year abroad
Every year a few Cambridge Law students spend the third year of their course studying at a foreign university. They return to Cambridge to complete the Tripos in the fourth year. Exchange arrangements currently exists with the Universities of Poitiers (in France), Utrecht (in the Netherlands), Regensburg (in Germany), and in Madrid. The Law Faculty selects students for these schemes from those who apply early in their second year and must be satisfied that each student has the requisite language skills (assistance is provided in improving such skill, when necessary). A successful applicant from Pembroke could expect the College to co-operate with the Faculty to facilitate the exchange.

Admissions

Pembroke usually admits around eight undergraduates a year to read Law, though numbers vary to reflect the quality of the field. In recent years we have usually had between forty-five and fifty-five applicants per year.

No A-level subjects are stipulated or deemed inappropriate. Candidates apply with a wide variety of subjects. About equal numbers apply with an arts and science background. All applications are judged on an individual basis, and strictly on their merits. Many successful applicants have had a background in the International Baccalaureate, or Scottish Higher or Advanced Highers.

Cambridge University no longer requires its applicants for Law to sit the national LNAT (legal aptitude) test. Instead those who are called for interview will be required, when they come to Cambridge for interview, to sit a written test set by the Faculty of Law. No previous knowledge of the law or familiarity with legal judgements will be assumed or expected, and therefore no special preparation is needed or desirable. The purpose of the test will be to assess the candidates' abilities to think and argue logically and express themselves clearly and precisely. We are looking for evidence of intellectual skills needed by a law student, not for existing knowledge about law.

Those who are called for interview will be given two interviews, each lasting 15 - 30 minutes. One interview will be a Law-related interview, almost certainly with Nicholas McBride and Professor Trevor Allan. As with the written test, no previous knowledge of, or familiarity with, the law will be required for this interview. Applicants may be asked to read some legal materials shortly before the interview and asked to discuss them in the interview. The other interview will be a general admissions interview with the Tutor for Admissions, or another Fellow with responsibility for admissions. This interview will focus on the applicant's general academic interests, and ability to discuss topics (not necessarily law-related) of mutual interest to the interviewer and the applicant.

Suggested reading Prospective laws students may be interested to read "Letters to a Law Student: A guide to studying Law at university 2nd ed" by Nicholas J McBride (published by Pearson Education, 2010).

Further enquiries should be addressed to Nicholas McBride, Director of Studies at Pembroke.

See also the University Prospectus entry for Law.

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