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KCL students launch petition against law school

I have taken the courses the petition refers to and I would like to add to the article that the actions of Kings College do not match their words. As the university has stated in their response, I think it is very valuable for postgraduate students to be offered both legal skills and non-legal skills courses because legal practice expects more from their employees than just applying the law, e.g. lawyers must negotiate settlements, analyse the prospects of a trial from an economic perspective and they must communicate with their clients. Uk and European law schools have not served this need. Therefore, many law firms have started their own inhouse training programmes. Mr Jeklic has offered similar courses based on his education in Harvard and on his experience as a banker in London in an academically sound way. However, in the current LL.M. curriculum (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/prospectus/graduate/master-of-laws/structure) the courses the petition refers to are the only non-legal soft skills courses. Therefore, if the school of law decides to cut these courses, no non-legal skills courses would remain. Further, I assume that by saying 'in a different format' Kings College might refer to the plan that they would like to offer the courses as so called 'non-credit modules'. However, offering these courses in such a format practically equals to cutting them because students in the LL.M. Programme already face a heavy workload. It will be likely that many students will not take the courses if they do not receive credit points for taking them. Further, I personally think that if Kings College wants to offer non-legal courses as an important part of their LL.M., it makes no sense to discourage students from taking these courses by awarding no credit points for taking them.

21-Mar-2012

10:42 am