Law is a stimulating degree that sharpens your thinking and your powers of persuasion while giving you extensive legal knowledge. This prestigious qualification opens doors, not only into the legal profession but to many other areas, such as politics, business, the civil service and the NGO sector. On this programme you also develop valuable quantitative research skills which are in high demand by employers.
At Kent, we have one of the top law schools in the UK. Kent Law School is renowned for its world-leading research and its distinctive ‘critical approach’ that places law within the wider context of society. This creates an exciting environment in which to gain your Qualifying Law Degree.
Adding a quantitative research minor to your programme opens your mind to new ways of thinking. Starting with no assumed statistical knowledge, you graduate with an advanced package of practical quantitative skills alongside your subject-specific knowledge.
You study the detail of the law, as well as its history. You analyse judgments and legal developments while taking into account the political, ethical and social dimensions of the law. This ‘critical approach’ enhances what is already a fascinating subject. It helps you to fully understand the law and there are many chances to discuss and debate its role in society.
Teaching is via lectures, small group seminars and case studies. Our popular mooting programme, hosted in a dedicated space within the £5m Wigoder Law Building, gives you the chance to develop advocacy skills in a simulated courtroom setting before a bench comprised of local judges, practising barristers, solicitors and lecturers.
Kent Law School has a supportive environment and your lecturers have office hours where they provide guidance on a one-to-one basis. We also provide:
In addition to your Law modules, you study compulsory modules focusing on Quantitative Research. Statistics and data analysis are becoming more and more important in a
huge range of fields, including policing and criminal justice, business
and finance, and the media. Quantitative methods are also important in the academic study of law,
offering a toolkit to compare legal systems across time and space,
analyse policy and explore the relationship between the law and wider
society.
Kent Law Clinic is based within our new, purpose-built building. It is ideal for developing your practical skills and has a replica courtroom for mooting.
Our academic resources are extensive. You have access to a wide range of materials, including:
The Q-Step centre boasts a team of world-class quantitative researchers,
and innovative technology-based teaching methods. Our Placement Officer
provides one-to-one support in arranging your placement if you choose
this option in Stage 3. Please see www.kent.ac.uk/qstep for more information.
There are plenty of activities related to your studies, including:
Kent Student Law Society and Kent Temple Law Society arrange events that are attended by members of the legal profession, many of them Kent alumni. They include QCs, judges, barristers, solicitors and members of the Bar Council and Law Society.
In previous years, events have included the:
Kent Critical Law Society has also put on events where students, academics and practitioners can debate topical – and often controversial – legal issues.
We have approximately 100 legal professionals registered on our Professional Mentoring Scheme, and leading law firms visit the campus to attend the annual Kent Law Fair, offer mock interviews, or run workshops.
We regularly hold careers talks given by practising lawyers (many of whom are Kent alumni) and host guest lectures given by some of the leading legal figures of our time.
Please also see our general entry requirements.
AAB-ABB
The University will not necessarily make conditional offers to all Access candidates but will continue to assess them on an individual basis.
If we make you an offer, you will need to obtain/pass the overall Access to Higher Education Diploma and may also be required to obtain a proportion of the total level 3 credits and/or credits in particular subjects at merit grade or above.
The University will consider applicants holding BTEC National Diploma and Extended National Diploma Qualifications (QCF; NQF; OCR) on a case-by-case basis. Please contact us for further advice on your individual circumstances.
A typical offer would be to achieve Distinction, Distinction, Distinction.
34 points overall and 17 points at HL
Pass all components of the University of Kent International Foundation Programme with a 60% overall average including 60% in Academic Skills Development and 60% in the Law module (plus 60% in LZ013 Maths and Statistics if you do not hold GCSE Maths at 6/B or equivalent).
The Law School welcomes and accepts a range of domestic and international qualifications for entry (including but not limited to BTEC qualifications and Access to Higher Education programmes). We welcome enquires about the required level in individual qualifications.
All applicants are also expected to meet the University’s general entry requirements.
International students should visit our International Student website for further specific information. International fee-paying students who require a Student visa cannot study part-time due to visa restrictions.
Please see our English language entry requirements web page.
If you need to improve your English language standard as a condition of your offer, you can attend one of our pre-sessional courses in English for Academic Purposes before starting your degree programme. You attend these courses before starting your degree programme.
Duration: 3 years full-time (standard route), 2 years full-time (Senior Status route)
The LLB Law with Quantitative Research methods is carefully designed to take you from a basic level, with no assumed prior knowledge of quantitative methods, to a complete package of practical quantitative skills, all while gaining a thorough grounding in law.
Your quantitative research studies are completed alongside a complete grounding in law, with scope to specialise with advanced optional law modules in Stages 2 and 3.
The course structure below gives examples of the kinds of module you can expect to take during the programme. This listing is based on the current curriculum and may change year to year in response to new curriculum developments and innovation.
Students studying other undergraduate programmes in Law may convert to LLB Law with Quantitative Research after Stage 1 (subject to completion of the compulsory first year Law modules and consultation with the Director of Studies for Law or their nominee).
To catch up on the quantitative research skills learned in the first year of a quantitative research minor, converting students must attend and pass the Quant GROUP Summer School, in the summer after Stage 1, in order to be eligible to convert.
The module will introduce students to critical legal techniques grounded in critical legal and social theory. Throughout the course, concepts are introduced through socio-legal and critical investigation of selected case studies - such as new pieces of legislation, emerging political campaigns and prominent litigation - ensuring that the course maintains a focus on 'law in action'. Particular attention will be paid to developments in foreign jurisdictions and in the international arena. Accordingly, case studies will alter from year to year, and draw heavily on research projects on-going in the Law School. The course has a heavy focus on primary legal materials and core critical texts, but will also draw on film, museum artefacts, art and literature as appropriate.
Section 1 Introduction to Obligations
a) The nature of the common law and its development.
b) The idea of precedent and legal reasoning.
c) The distinction between public law and private law.
d) The main divisions of obligations.
e) Drafting case notes
Section 2 Introduction to the law of contract
a) The historical development of contract law and its functions in the modern world.
b) A special area of study in contract e.g. formation and modification of contracts.
Section 3 Introduction to tort
a) The historical development of tort. An overview of different types of tort. The centrality of the tort of negligence and its role in the modern world.
b) A special study in tort – e.g. trespass to the person.
Section 4 Conclusion
A summary; critical approaches to the study of contract and tort; guidance to legal problem solving.
Following on from 'Introduction to Contract and Tort', 'Introduction to Property Law' continues the study of private law by introducing students to property law. 'Property' is something we tend to presume we know about, and rarely examine as an idea or practice closely. Most often we use it to connote an object or 'thing', and presume that it has something to do with ‘ownership’ of that object; we use expressions such as, 'This is mine,' and often do not examine the detail of what that really means.
This module begins to unpack and examine the ideas and practices of property more closely, looking in particular at land to ask questions such as: what do we mean by ‘ownership’? What happens when a number of competing ‘ownership claims’ in one object exist? What are the limits of 'ownership'? Does 'ownership' entail social obligation?
When preparing for the module it will be useful to think about (and collect material on) current debates over contested ownership (or use) of property and resources, especially in relation to land.
Part A: English Legal System
This module provides an overview of the English Legal System, including the following indicative topics:
1. An introduction to Parliament and the legislative process
2. The court structure and the doctrine of precedent
3. An introduction to case law, including how to identify and the importance of ratio decidendi and obiter dicta
Part B: Introduction to Legal Skills
The module also gives students an introduction to the basic legal skills that they will develop further in their other modules throughout the degree. The focus here is on specific exercises to support exploration and use of the library resources that are available, both in paper copy and electronically through the legal databases, and on understanding practices of legal citation.
TERM 1
• Constitutionalism: history, theories, principles and contemporary significance
• Models of Government at national, local and supra-national levels
TERM 2
• Human Rights – history and contemporary significance and deployment
• The scope of governmental authority and its limits
• Judicial review and other forms of citizen redress
The module aims to develop the understanding of the policy making process and the role of the different actors within the wider context of the tools and limits of the ability of the UK national government to influence behaviour. It has a particular focus on processes of social control as they relate to social policy. Learning will be centred around two main tasks:
i. Understanding the links between social policy and the regulation of behaviour e.g. the uses and outcomes of incentives, sanctions and educative communication to promote behavioural changes sought by policy makers.
ii. Taking topical examples of policy issues, contextualised analysis of the policy making process, its 'stages', key actors and institutions will be used to explore how and why particular policy options emerge and evolve. A central concern will be to help students understand the nature of support and opposition for particular policy proposals and the implications for developing alternative policies.
This module is designed to help students understand and critique the numbers and research they encounter in their everyday lives. The first half of the course focuses on teaching the knowledge and skills need to critically evaluate factual quantitative claims. Each lecture uses example quantitative claims, largely drawn from the news media, to teach a particular quantitative skill. For example, highlighting a statistic based on a biased sample to teach students the principles of sampling. The seminars build on the content of the lectures and aim to teach students the practical, computer-based skills needed to evaluate quantitative claims.
The second half of the module is based around students conducting their own research, and also brings in qualitative skills element. Students apply the critical and quantitative skills they have learned to conducting their own mixed-methods project.
This module introduces the student to the jurisprudence of equity and trusts. Building on knowledge and understanding developed in LAWS3160/LAWS5316 Introduction to Property Law and LAWS5990 Land Law, but also LAWS6500 Law of Contract and private law more generally, the module examines equity's contributions to private law and jurisprudence. The module is designed to challenge the somewhat dull image of this area of law and to encourage a critical and imaginative understanding of the subject. Departing from conventional approaches, this module does not study equity merely in regards to its role as originator of the trust. Equity is instead acknowledged to be what it really is a vital component of the English legal system, a distinct legal tradition possessing its own principles and method of legal reasoning, and an original and continuing source of legal development in the sphere of remedies. The law of equity and trusts is contextualised within a historical and jurisprudential inquiry, providing a wider range of possible interpretations of its development and application. What then becomes central to the module's approach is the complex interrelation of law with ethical, political, economic and jurisprudential considerations, and of that between legal outcomes, pragmatic concerns and policy objectives.
The focus of the module is private property in English land: title by registration; squatting; owner-occupation; leases; covenants and land development. It builds on the Foundations of Property module to develop an in-depth understanding of English land law, its conception of property and its politics and effects. And it gives experience in how to advise clients on land law problems – and on how to avoid problems for clients.
In contrast to LAWS5080 (LW508) Criminal Law (at Level 5), this Level 6 module will consider each of the following discrete, but identical, topics to a much greater depth making use of, and improving, skills developed in earlier years of their degree programme:
• Introduction to the concept of crime, the structure of criminal justice and the general principles of liability
• Harm and the boundaries of criminal law
• Considering cases – how to effectively summarise cases and write a case note
• Murder
• Defences to murder
• General defences
• Manslaughter
• Non-fatal offences against the person
• Sexual offences
• Inchoate offences
• Complicity
• Property-related offences
This module aims to develop standard research skills into a quantitative research skillset that will enable the student to work with data, from working with different types of datasets/variables to analysing this data and presenting it in oral and written form.
Learning will be orientated towards:
• Learning ways to work with and manipulate datasets to make them ready for statistical analysis (i.e. to create tidy data)
• Critically understanding the limitations of simple (OLS) regression, with particular emphasis on endogeneity/confounding and causal heterogeneity;
• Learning a number of advanced methods for investigating the social world through quantitative research (e.g. associative and causal methods). For each method, students will first consider the rationale for the method (its strengths and limitations), and then use the method in hands-on statistical analysis sessions using appropriate statistical software (e.g. R);
• Learning how to communicate and present data and quantitative analysis (e.g. with various types of data visualisations)
This module will involve students undertaking quantitative research in a real world setting, while simultaneously reflecting on the process of undertaking real-life quantitative research (through a log), culminating in an assessed report on their work. This real world setting can be of the form of an individual research project, working in a support role with an academic or within a placement organisation. Students will receive support by a supervisor and receive lectures covering such topics as:
- Turning an organisation's ideas into a viable research project;
- Good practice in undertaking quantitative research projects (e.g. data security, data management, replicability);
- Ethics in applied quantitative research (certainty/uncertainty, power, and 'usefulness');
- Reflecting on research practice (linked to the assessments below).
The 2021/22 annual tuition fees for this programme are:
For details of when and how to pay fees and charges, please see our Student Finance Guide.
For students continuing on this programme, fees will increase year on year by no more than RPI + 3% in each academic year of study except where regulated.*
The University will assess your fee status as part of the application process. If you are uncertain about your fee status you may wish to seek advice from UKCISA before applying.
Find out more about accommodation and living costs, plus general additional costs that you may pay when studying at Kent.
We have a range of subject-specific awards and scholarships for academic, sporting and musical achievement.
Search scholarshipsKent offers generous financial support schemes to assist eligible undergraduate students during their studies. See our funding page for more details.
You may be eligible for government finance to help pay for the costs of studying. See the Government's student finance website.
Scholarships are available for excellence in academic performance, sport and music and are awarded on merit. For further information on the range of awards available and to make an application see our scholarships website.
At Kent we recognise, encourage and reward excellence. We have created the Kent Scholarship for Academic Excellence.
The scholarship will be awarded to any applicant who achieves a minimum of A*AA over three A levels, or the equivalent qualifications (including BTEC and IB) as specified on our scholarships pages.
Kent Law School emphasises research-led teaching, which means that the modules taught are at the leading edge of new legal and policy developments. Kent Law School is renowned nationally for research quality, being ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’. All of our research-active staff teach so you are taught by influential thinkers who are at the forefront of their field. We also have one of the best student-to-staff ratios in the country, which allows small, weekly seminar-group teaching in all of our core modules, where you are actively encouraged to take part.
Most Law modules are assessed by end-of-year examinations and continuous assessment, the ratio varying from module to module, with Kent encouraging and supporting the development of research and written skills. Some modules include an optional research-based dissertation that counts for 45% or, in some cases, 100% of the final mark.
Assessment can also incorporate assessment through oral presentation and argument, often in the style of legal practice (such as mooting), and client-based work and reflection through our Law Clinic.
For the Quantitative Research modules, in addition to learning through lectures, seminars, workshops, project supervision, and statistics classes, you have opportunities for hands-on research in the ‘field’ through placements and field trips. Most modules are assessed by examination and coursework in equal measure.
For a student studying full time, each academic year of the programme will comprise 1200 learning hours which include both direct contact hours and private study hours. The precise breakdown of hours will be subject dependent and will vary according to modules. Please refer to the individual module details under Course Structure.
Methods of assessment will vary according to subject specialism and individual modules. Please refer to the individual module details under Course Structure.
This programme aims to:
You gain knowledge and understanding of:
You develop the intellectual skills to:
You gain the subject-specific skills to:
Graduates of this programme will be able to:
Law at Kent scored 93% overall and was ranked 9th for research intensity in The Complete University Guide 2021.
Law at Kent was ranked 13th overall and 8th for research quality in The Times Good University Guide 2021.
Law graduates can go into a variety of careers. Possible career paths include:
The quantitative skills gained in the LLB Law with Quantitative Research programme help set you apart from the crowd as a multi-skilled
graduate able to analyse, interpret and explain quantitative data. These
attributes are invaluable in the field of law; the rise in the availability and use of data means that quantitative
skills are also increasingly in demand in a range of other fields,
including business, finance, government, the civil service, journalism
and the media.
Kent Law School has an active careers programme – leading law firms and prominent members of the legal profession visit the University to meet our students. We also work with employers to create work placement opportunities for our students.
The Law School's dedicated Employability and Careers Development Officer can give you advice on how to:
You also have access to the University's friendly Careers and Employability Service.
Our award-winning Kent Law Clinic gives local people access to free legal advice and representation. As a student, this gives you the chance to work on real cases under the guidance of qualified lawyers. You take on clients and sometimes have the chance to act as the client’s advocate in court or at a legal tribunal.
One of the particular strengths of this programme is the opportunity to complete a quantitative work placement as part of your degree. Workplace experience is highly valued by employers, and the placements offered involve applying quantitative analysis for business and organisations across a range of sectors, giving you the opportunity to add concrete workplace achievements to your CV.
Our approach to law helps you to develop:
On this programme you also gain and develop advanced quantitative research skills through modules that offer specialist training in cutting-edge techniques, as well as training in how to understand, explain and critique data in diverse real-world settings.
You gain intellectual, analytical and practical skills that are vital to lawyers but also useful in many other professions. These include the ability to:
You can also gain extra skills by signing up for one of our Kent Extra activities, such as learning a language or volunteering.
Our degree programmes contain the foundations of legal knowledge required by the Bar Standards Board to satisfy the academic component of professional training for intending barristers. For entrants in 2020 who wish to qualify as a solicitor, our programmes can lead to the award of a Qualifying Law Degree, validated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. They also provide a strong foundation for students who may wish to take the Solicitors Qualifying Examinations (SQE) in the future.
Our critical approach to law and legal practice enables students to develop creative intellectual and transferable skills which prepare them for contemporary legal practice – in the UK and worldwide, and for successful careers in many fields.
This course page is for the 2021/22 academic year. Please visit the current online prospectus for a list of undergraduate courses we offer.
Discover Uni is designed to support prospective students in deciding whether, where and what to study. The site replaces Unistats from September 2019.
Discover Uni is jointly owned by the Office for Students, the Department for the Economy Northern Ireland, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and the Scottish Funding Council.
It includes:
Find out more about the Unistats dataset on the Higher Education Statistics Agency website.
