Law

• Why Study Law at Christ's?
• Course content and structure
• Teaching
• Mooting at Christ's
• What do our students think?
• How to apply
  • Subjects: what do you need?
  • LNAT (registration between 1 Aug and 15 Sept required)
  • Interviews
  • Offers
• Helpful resources
• Open Days and Online Events
• Want to know more?

Why study Law at Christ's?

At Christ's College you have the chance to study law in a rigorous, collaborative way. One of our strengths is that our staff offer expertise in many of the qualifying compulsory papers. We have a diverse student body from around the world and an extensive network of distinguished alumni.

Since Christ’s beginnings our students have thrived in the law, starting with Thomas Gent, appointed a judge in 1584. One graduate, Lord Alexander Irvine of Lairg (Honorary Fellow, 1996), achieved historical and constitutional significance as the last Lord Chancellor to sit as a judge in the House of Lords.

Other notable alumni include Sir Martin Moore-Bick (Honorary Fellow, 2009), a serving judge in the Court of Appeal and barrister Nicholas Fuller, imprisoned for challenging Church courts’ punishment of people with different religious views. Some have written key legal works, including Henry Finch (Nomotechnia), Lord Patrick Devlin (on the boundary between law and morals) and Basil Montagu, one-time friend of Wordsworth.

The College is usually home to a friendly community of 20-25 law students who make frequent use of our well-stocked  library. The active student-run law society has strong links to the legal profession and invites solicitors, barristers and others to give talks throughout the year. It organises all kinds of events including a party for new undergraduates, informal and formal dinners, plus a summer garden party.

After graduating many of Christ's lawyers go on to work in the legal profession as solicitors and barristers, as well as in areas such as accountancy and academia.
 

Course content and structure

The Law course (or ‘tripos’) is normally a 3-year degree, although there is an opportunity for current students to apply for an additional year between the first two years and the final year in order to study abroad under the Erasmus+ scheme.

Please visit the University website for full details of the undergraduate Law course content and structure, including the course film. You will also find information on the BA Law course page. If you have further questions about course content, please contact outreach@law.cam.ac.uk.

Teaching

The Faculty of Law, internationally renowned Squire Law Library and Institute of Criminology are just 15 minutes’ walk from the College.

You have lectures at the central Faculty of Law and are also taught in College in weekly one-to-one or small-group 'supervisions’. These tutorial sessions give you the advantage of personally-tailored guidance and tuition. Christ’s Director of Studies for Law Dr Richard Williams organises your supervisions and can advise on your choice of subjects.

Other fellows in Law:

• Dr Dominic de Cogan
• Dr Lewis Graham
• Ms Hend Hanafy
   

Mooting at Christ's

All our law students are welcome to take part in moots. (In fact, first-years can’t miss the College moot in Michaelmas Term.) At these simulated court cases, you make submissions about how the law should apply to a set of facts, acting as barristers in front of a ‘judge’ – usually a Director of Studies, or a former Christ’s student who is now a real judge.

Moots raise questions of law rather than fact, so there’s no need to cross-examine any witnesses. You learn to hone skills such as public speaking, legal research and thinking on your feet. Not to brag, but Christ's undergraduates have had a pretty successful record in recent years!

What do our students think?

Read about the experiences of Christ's Law students Ayomide, Eri, Page, Emily, and Emma.

To hear from other students at Christ's, please watch the Christ's student Q&A film, and visit our Student Profiles page (you can look at the profiles by subject or by country / region that the students are from).
 

How to apply

Visit How to Apply for full details and a timeline of the application process. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and school types, all over the world. If you're applying from outside the UK, please read our international students section.

Subjects: what do you need?

We admit students taking three A-levels, the International Baccalaureate, Scottish Advanced Highers and a range of equivalent qualifications. Applicants for Law will generally have studied an essay-based subject as one of their post-16 subjects but there is no ‘ideal’ combination of subjects and we are happy for students not doing an essay subject to apply. Successful applicants take all sorts of subjects from Mathematics and sciences, to arts and social sciences or various combinations. All of these teach skills that can be useful to the undergraduate lawyer.

If you would like suggestions or to find out more about subjects that Law students commonly take, please see the entry requirements tab in the undergraduate Law course information. Please note that we do not accept Level 3 Criminology qualifications in place of an A level or equivalent.

We encourage students to attend one of our regular Subject Matters webinars for help with choosing Post-16 subjects for competitive university applications. This webinar is pitched for students aged 14-16 though it is also possible to attend when you have started sixth form. 

LNAT (registration required)

Applicants to the University of Cambridge for Law must sit the LNAT (pre-registration required) at an LNAT test centre. There are more than 150 LNAT test centres around the world. The LNAT examines your academic abilities, knowledge-base and potential, and forms part of our holistic admissions process: there is no set score that we are looking for. When applying, it is important to be aware of the registration and test dates, which are normally earlier than the dates for other tests.

Information about the LNAT including example papers is available on the University Admissions website from March each year, and there is also an LNAT website if you would like to have an initial look. Details of costs for 2024 applicants are on the LNAT website. 

Interviews

If we invite you for interviews, these usually take place in early December. At Christ's we continue do all of our interviews online, as we have done for the last four years. You can have your interviews either at home (most applicants do this) or at school (if easier). Those invited for interviews are normally interviewed for 35-50 minutes in total. At Christ’s, we usually split the time into two interviews with academics in Law. Just before one of these, we give you a piece of legal text to prepare for discussion in the upcoming interview.

We don’t expect you to do any special preparation or have particular knowledge of the law. Our aim is to explore your aptitude and potential for legal reasoning and study at Cambridge, rather than assess what you already know.

Further, more general information about interviews (including two useful films) is available in the Cambridge interviews section, and it's worth also having a look at supervisions (short film here), as interviews are similar to what you do every week as a Cambridge student.

Offers

At Christ's we don’t have fixed quotas for places, so the number of students we admit in any year depends on the strengths of the applicants. In Law we aim to admit 6 to 8 students each year.

We assess the terms of each offer individually but our typical minimum conditional offer is:

• A*AA at A-level
• 42 points overall in the International Baccalaureate with 7,7,6 in relevant Higher Level subjects
• A1, A2, A2 in three Scottish Advanced Highers.

You need to be academically ambitious: the majority of Christ's students arrive with higher grades than are required.

If you’re taking another qualification, we expect you to be working at or close to the top of the mark range i.e.

• Option Internationale du Baccalauréat: at least 17/20 overall, with 17 or 18 in relevant subjects
• European Baccalaureate: at least 85% overall, with 9/10 in relevant subjects

You can look up other qualifications in the offer levels for other exam systems and international entry requirements, and if you are applying from outside the UK please read the Christ's international students section for further information and check the country pages.

If you will have finished school when you apply, please also read about post-qualification applications, taking a gap year, and, if relevant, applying from a university.
 

Helpful resources

Attend an Open Day / Event

Online events: Our open days and events page advertises regular online opportunities as well as events you can attend in Cambridge. If you can, attend a College Open Day or attend some of our regular webinars.

Further subject-specific opportunities you might wish to consider include the Sixth Form Law Conference, Subject Masterclasses organised by Cambridge Admissions Office, and the Law Faculty Open Day. If you are a UK student from a background where there is little tradition of entry to Higher Education, you can apply to attend a Sutton Trust Summer School in Law or to shadow a current Law undergraduate via the Cambridge SU Shadowing Scheme (do be aware that there's a high proportion of applicants to places for both of these last two opportunities so please don't be discouraged if you don't get a place).
 

Need more information?

For more detail of what the course involves, read about Undergraduate Law admissions on the University website and take a look at the BA Law degree site.

And if you have any other questions, please send them to us at admissions@christs.cam.ac.uk. We look forward to hearing from you.

 

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