The guide

Law

The systematic study of legal rules, and how they are argued, interpreted and applied. Across most of the countries we cover it is a first degree straight from school. In the United States and Canada it is a graduate degree, taken after an unrelated bachelor's.

This suits you if…

You prepare obsessively rather than improvising. You can argue a position you personally disagree with as convincingly as one you believe. Mapping a multi-year qualification ladder before committing to it doesn't put you off the way it puts off most applicants.

Look elsewhere if…

You assumed you can enter a law degree straight from school wherever you apply. In the United States and Canada it is a graduate degree, not a first one. Political science, philosophy, history or economics are the usual undergraduate routes there. This page mainly describes the direct route that exists almost everywhere else we cover.

What this subject actually is

You will also see it called

LLB · Juris Doctor (JD) · JurisprudenceThe same subject, under a different department in a different country. Search for all of them.

What the first year is really made of

Several hundred pages of judgments a week is a normal reading load from the first fortnight. The shock is less the volume than what you are asked to do with it. Not learn the rule a case decided, but reconstruct the reasoning that produced it. Then argue the opposite side just as convincingly in the next seminar. Students who wanted to learn 'the rules', and spent the term arguing against ones they had just learned, tend to leave first.

The catch

Qualification is national and rarely portable. A law degree earned in one country generally doesn't let you practise in another without substantial further exams and supervised training. So 'where do I actually want to practise' is worth answering honestly before choosing where to study, not after. Commercial practice also runs on closely measured billable hours, and the profession reports high rates of stress and a long-hours culture. Weigh that before you commit, not once you are in it.

The one hard requirement

Whether you can even choose this as a first degree depends entirely on where you apply. Most of the countries we cover let a school-leaver enter directly. In the United States and Canada it is graduate-entry, reached only after another bachelor's degree and a separate admissions test. Check which shape applies to your target country before building a plan around this page.

What to do about it now

The school subjects that actually matter

English
History
A second language where useful

What admissions screens on, and what the first year assumes you already have. The only thing on this page you can start today.

Where it leads

Kinds of work this opens

A list, not a prediction. Most people in these jobs did not study exactly this, and most people who study this end up doing something the list does not name.

Law