Why study Law at Christ's?

Student at desk in the Law Library
  Law Library

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 law 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.

3 students and supervisor at table

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:

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?

Student Q&A film
  Watch the Christ's student Q&A film

Read about the experiences of Christ's Law students Ayomide, EriPage, 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.

 
  • If you are considering an application in October 2024 for October 2025 (or deferred Oct 26) entry, we recommend that you sign up for the next College Open Day, which will include a Law subject meeting.
  • All students applying in Oct 2024 for Law will need to sit the LNAT (see the LNAT section below for details).


Subjects: what do you need?

Law students 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.

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 assessment dates, which are normally earlier than the dates for other assessments.

  • August & early Sept (deadline tbc) 2024 - create a Pearson VUE account online, and register for the LNAT by the deadline.
  • Mid-October (date tbc) 2024 - Sit the LNAT before, or at the latest on the deadline.

Information about the LNAT including example papers will 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 dates and costs for 2024 applicants are expected by the end of March.

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 three 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:

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.

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

Think Cambridge Law (blog)A really helpful set of posts from the Faculty of Law at Cambridge
Cambridge University Exploring Law course on FutureLearnA six-week University of Cambridge course for 16-18 year olds.
Websites for exploring your subject in Law (I)Suggestions from the Law Faculty
Websites for exploring your subject in Law (II)Suggestions from the Law Faculty
LNAT websiteSee how to prepare and sample essays and practice test.
Reading suggestionsBook recommendations from Cambridge Law students
Gresham College Law lecturesFree online lectures including, for example, lecture series on the Practice of Law, The Politics of the Courtroom and Death, the State and Human Rights, as well as the Gray's Inn Readings.
Public Law for everyoneBlog exploring public law ideas, by Cambridge Law Professor Mark Elliott
Law Open Day resourcesScroll down to find the open day transcripts and Faculty virtual tour
Cambridge University Law Society Speakers
Faculty of Law public lectures
Law in Focus
Short talks and online lectures
The Modern Judiciary: Who they are, what they do and why it mattersFuture Learn course  introducing you to the role of judges in the legal system of England and Wales
Supreme Court websiteIncluding information about the court and online films, You may also want to consider visiting a local court.
Cambridge Sixth Form Law ConferenceFor Year 12 students interested in studying Law at degree level
Information about Work Experience for LawInformation and advice
Supercurriculars in a pandemicLots of good suggestions here
HE+ LawWebsite for secondary school students who would like to explore Law.
CamGuidesIntroducing the academic and information skills that you will need during your studies, as well as how and where you would be working

 

Attend an Open Day / Event

Lecture theatre
  You can explore Christ's and the Law
  department in the Virtual Tour

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 proporton 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 2 students walking through Second CourtUndergraduate 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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