Law (Professional Placement Year)

Our LLB Law degree develops your practical and professional skills alongside your knowledge of legal theory.

• Put the legal knowledge you gin on this course into practice while you develop career-enhancing skills.

• Our Law degree is designed to prepare you for a wide range of careers, both within and beyond the legal sector.

• This LLB Law meets the requirements of the Bar Standards Board and prepares you for the Solicitors Qualifying Exam.

Designed to help you attain many of the skills required to complete the practice elements of the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE), LLB (Hons) Law at Bath Spa develops your legal knowledge, research and professional skills.

This innovative, qualifying Law degree is informed by the new regulatory framework for the training of solicitors and barristers, and meets the requirements of the Bar Standards Board.

Gain a broad understanding of legal systems and criminal law. You'll expand your knowledge to topics such as international law, media and entertainment law, and cybercrime. In your final year, you’ll hone your practice skills in The Bath Law Clinic, which is a collaboration between Bath Spa University, Stone King LLP and the Citizens Advice Bureau, or undertake a law research project.

Learn how to be a lawyer in practice and understand the business of law, so that you can hit the ground running when you graduate. We recognise that many Law students don’t pursue a career in law and have built career planning into each strand of the course, with a focus on the growing number of roles that require related skill-sets. These include roles in governance, risk management, advocacy, public policy, HR and finance.

More about the Professional Placement Year
A Professional Placement Year (PPY), traditionally known as a sandwich year, is where you undertake a period of work with an external organisation for between 9-13 months. The placement occurs between your second and final years of undergraduate study. You can engage in multiple placements to make up the total time and are required to source the placement(s) yourself, with support from the Careers team.

Year one – Gain a broad understanding of English legal systems, the British Constitution, and criminal law. Contextualise your learning and develop your professional identity and employability skills. Develop skills of case analysis, and understand legal research methods.

Year two – Focus on extending your legal understanding to include subjects such as contract law, EU and international law, and settlements. Develop skills of negotiation, advocacy and drafting.

Continue to contextualise your learning and extend your employability skills. Select from a range of law, business, criminology and sociology options such as employment law, marketing, entrepreneurship and exploring violence. You'll also be supported and encouraged to take a work placement.

Year three – Professional Placement Year.

Year four – Hone your practice skills in our law clinic, or undertake a law project. Explore property law and litigation while developing skills of drafting and mooting. Select from an interdisciplinary range of options, such as entertainment, media and intellectual property law, leadership and cybercrime.

The course will include a range of practice based assessments such as drafting, negotiating and mooting. It will also include a limited number of exams to prepare you for the SQE (Solicitors Qualifying Exam).