This is the transcript for the video Juris Doctor and Legal Studies
So this slide that you’re seeing now is really what I would call the summary of
00:07
why study the JD or Legal Studies here at UTS and it’s
00:12
very much about what sets us apart from other law schools. I’m not
00:16
going to suggest that we are a better law school than any other law school but
00:19
what’s different about us, and some of that you may have
00:23
already found out with your research about the JD,
00:26
about the Legal Studies or indeed about the Law Faculty, or as I’ve said if
00:31
you are an alum of of UTS or you have friends or
00:35
family that have studied here you will you will know about
00:37
really what it is that’s different about UTS.
00:42
As you can see from the points on the slide
00:45
we have worked very hard and we’ve been acknowledged by being the number one
00:49
young university in australia now for four years in a row and that’s something
00:54
that we are extremely proud of. What that means for you as students is
00:59
that we have, as a young university, the
01:02
ability to be very much cutting edge. Now as you probably know a
01:07
law degree is an established traditional course but it does enable us to have
01:14
some flexibility about the way that we deliver
01:16
the JD and the Legal Studies and it also gives us
01:19
that ability to be a little bit creative about the electives and the programs
01:24
that we offer in sync with the JD. So
01:28
you’re very well placed I think at a young university to
01:31
undertake a course that is relatively young
01:34
in Australia. UTS was the first New South Wales university to introduce the
01:40
JD over 10 years ago and we were the second
01:43
university in Australia, Melbourne University being the first.
01:47
So to australia the JD is still relatively young and I think it fits well with the
01:51
fact that we are a young and vibrant and really
01:56
a cutting edge law school.
02:00
One of the things the advantages of undertaking a JD
02:05
here at UTS is that we have a really strong mix of academics and
02:11
practitioners that teach into our juris doctor and
02:15
I think that’s one of the the real pleasures of working with colleagues so
02:19
that we have our academics here in the Law School who
02:23
teach and who research. In terms of our courses
02:26
we then also have practitioners. Now we’re well placed
02:30
where we are located down here at Central
02:33
for many of the practitioners that are working up in the
02:36
CBD to travel down and to teach in our night classes
02:40
or to take our block subjects. Many of our
02:44
casual academics are practitioners that have been
02:48
graduates of the law school so they also know very much about
02:51
our approach and our philosophy about legal education here at UTS.
02:57
And just to give you one example of that mix or that blend of academic and
03:01
practitioner one of our subjects that we’re
03:03
delivering now and all our teaching at the moment is online
03:07
for autumn and we’ll continue to be online in spring but one example I’d
03:10
like to share with you is our subject, it’s a compulsory subject called
03:14
Civil Practice and in Civil Practice we have two of our
03:18
permanent academics teaching that program one is a subject
03:22
coordinator one of those academics is a practitioner, has her own
03:26
practice and the other three teachers in that
03:29
team are all current practitioners so again you’re bringing together that that
03:35
scholarship of academia as well as that practice based
03:38
education. I think one of the advantages of starting at UTS
03:42
is our flexibility. Here at UTS we don’t have definitions for full-time students
03:48
or for part-time students we allow students to design their own
03:53
03:57
out of study that they of course we have a progression and particularly for a
04:00
regulated course such as the JD you need to do a
04:04
number of core subjects that Bronwyn will speak about
04:07
later on but in terms of when and how you study those
04:10
is is flexible and we are very lucky also to now have and we have for
04:16
several years had a summer offering and summer is the time that we
04:20
we offer primarily our electives we find that summer
04:24
many students and teachers really enjoy a little bit more of a relaxed
04:28
session and it’s a good time for students to undertake electives so
04:32
areas of interest across the three sessions of
04:36
we offer our electives some of which are offered
04:40
online but as I said at the moment we’re all online and some of which are offered
04:44
in block mode so students come in for a couple of
04:47
days to really have that focused concentrated learning
04:52
around a particular area of an elective. All our subjects though in usual
04:58
times not in the Covid 19 time at the moment but in our usual sessions are
05:03
delivered in blended mode so there’s a face to face
05:06
component as well as the online component. Another strength I think here
05:13
about the law faculty and again something that we have had in place
05:16
for for many years is the ability to undertake practical legal training and
05:21
Bronwyn will speak more about that as well as I said Bronwyn’s a program head
05:25
for PLT but as you probably know from your research
05:28
to be a legal practitioner in new south wales you need to have your academic
05:33
qualification which is a juris doctor and you need to
05:36
have a practical qualification which is our practical legal training program.
05:41
You then are able to apply for admission as a
05:44
legal practitioner to the supreme court so we offer both
05:48
the JD and the PLT here at UTS and as I said
05:52
for many years we have had practical legal
05:56
training as part of our offerings both a face-to-face component and an
06:00
online component.
06:03
If you undertake the JD as a
06:05
stand-alone course and then you move on to do
06:08
the graduate certificate in professional legal practice which is our practical
06:12
legal training course you are entitled to a 10% alumni savings
06:16
and to any alumni participants that are here this evening that have
06:20
undertaken another degree at UTS you are also entitled
06:24
for the JD or the legal studies to get a 10%
06:27
savings as an alumni. The final point on this slide that i’d like to stress about
06:32
what’s different about studying with us is that we are very much around what we
06:37
call as teachers authentic assessment and that goes back to one of my early
06:41
points around the philosophy and the practice of uts
06:44
being around a very professional based practice based
06:48
university so that the assessment tasks the
06:52
activities that you’re doing as students with your
06:54
uh with your colleagues in class with your tutors
06:58
is very much about what you would be doing in practice,
07:05
thinking about being in practice as a lawyer either a solicitor or a barrister
07:08
but also taking a law degree into other areas so
07:11
it will examples of what we would call authentic assessment might be writing a
07:16
submission it might be putting a policy together
07:19
it might be working in a collaborative space to produce a presentation
07:23
around the law. So we we see the value of making what we’re teaching
07:31
to be very real world. And indeed that’s
07:33
the feedback that we see from the profession in a broad
07:38
profession definition that our graduates are, to put
07:41
it very simply, ready to hit the ground running when they go into the workforce.
07:46
Thanks very much Maxine. So Maxine has already referred to the
07:52
fact that to become a lawyer in new south wales or
07:58
really any state in australia you need to
08:01
not only have your law degree, and that can be the
08:05
undergraduate LLB or the postgraduate juris doctor so you need to have
08:12
that degree but before you can be admitted you have to undertake
08:16
a course of practical legal training. And again as Maxine mentioned we’re
08:23
very lucky at UTS that we offer the course of practical legal training
08:28
that you need to do prior to admission. Once you get
08:34
to that stage of completing your practical legal training you have to
08:37
apply for admission to the supreme court of
08:41
new south wales and you get admitted as a lawyer into the supreme court of
08:48
new south wales. Once you get to that stage
08:52
you then make a decision as to whether or not you want to
08:56
practice as a solicitor or as a barrister
08:59
if you want to be a solicitor you don’t have to do
09:02
any further training at that point you apply for a practicing certificate
09:07
from the new south wales law society. That practicing certificate that you get
09:13
is what is referred to as a restricted practicing certificate
09:18
you have to undertake two years of supervised
09:21
legal practice so that means you have to have a supervisor
09:25
who is keeping an eye on what you are doing
09:28
and is supervising your work. If you decided that you
09:35
then wanted to have an unrestricted practicing certificate
09:39
you could apply for that unrestricted practicing certificate and you would
09:43
have to undergo a another course of practice
09:47
management which is a much shorter course that you have to
09:50
undertake to get that unrestricted practicing certificate.
09:54
If you’ve decided that you would prefer to be a barrister
09:58
once you’ve been admitted to the supreme court there are a few
10:02
extra steps as you can see on this slide and what happens is that you have to
10:08
undertake the bar exams and it might seem a bit
10:13
back to front because to get to the bar
10:16
you have to do the exams and pass the exams
10:20
before you’re qualified to undertake the bar practice course.
10:24
So you pass the exams and oh once again UTS has the bar
10:30
preparation course so we can help you with that as well.
10:33
So keep that in the back of your mind once you’ve passed those exams
10:38
you then have to read with a tutor for 12 months and
10:44
that tutor has to have at least seven years experience before they’re
10:48
qualified to take you on under their
10:52
tutelage for that 12 months. The majority of people would go into
10:58
practice as a solicitor rather than go directly
11:02
to the bar the reason for that is most
11:06
practitioners believe that they need to do a couple of years
11:10
working in an office, working as a solicitor and building up some networks
11:16
and contacts of people who hopefully are going to
11:19
brief you when you go to the bar. So as you’re just about to
11:25
commence hopefully on the path of a JD, making that decision as
11:32
to whether you’re going to go as a solicitor or a
11:35
barrister is much further down the track. But while
11:40
i’m concentrating just at the minute on becoming a legal
11:44
practitioner or a lawyer a solicitor or barrister
11:48
the jd is an excellent qualification even if you don’t intend to practice as
11:55
a lawyer at any time. Some people actually start
11:58
in the course not intending to practice as a lawyer
12:02
but do change their mind along the way and then we have other people
12:06
who think that yes i do want to be a lawyer and they change their mind along
12:10
the way and decide that they’re going to use
12:12
their law degree in some other way. So for example many
12:18
people in business will have a law degree
12:22
and find it very useful to have that legal knowledge
12:26
while they’re making judgments about what directions to take a company in.
12:31
OK so as Maxine mentioned the juris doctor
12:38
is a fairly new concept in australia, we’ve been offering it for more than
12:44
10 years. The profession i think now is much more
12:48
aware of what it means for someone to have
12:51
a juris doctor. It’s certainly the degree, if you were studying law in the united
12:57
states of america, in most states
13:01
you would be undertaking a postgraduate JD.
13:04
And so that is where the idea of the JD comes from
13:08
so it is an internationally recognized graduate entry qualification
13:13
and if you’ve got a degree of any kind it doesn’t matter what degree that is
13:18
you might have a business degree your communications
13:21
degree you might have a science degree it could
13:24
be a music degree it doesn’t matter what your first degree is if you’ve got
13:28
a degree then you might be eligible to
13:32
undertake the juris doctor. So what you have to do is make the
13:39
application and your application will be considered
13:43
and we’ll talk a little bit more about that shortly.
13:47
We offer the straight jd which is the three-year
13:52
course of studying law and if you do a law degree anywhere in
13:57
australia there are a certain number of core law
14:01
subjects that you will be required to complete – doesn’t matter
14:05
whether you’re doing your degree in western australia, new south wales
14:09
anywhere – we all have to meet what are referred to
14:13
as the Priestly 11, the core subjects that everybody has to do. Each law school
14:19
packages up those subjects in different ways so in a lot of cases
14:24
you’d be able to tick one off and say okay well that’s that
14:28
subject that they offer at UTS but here they call it
14:32
something else, so you have to cover a lot of subjects that
14:37
are core subjects and law schools don’t get any
14:40
say in whether or not you have to do it
14:43
because our law degrees have been accredited by the legal profession
14:47
admission board for us it’s the new south wales legal
14:51
profession admission board and that’s a requirement of our
14:55
accreditation is that we cover those subjects and
14:59
require all of our students to complete those subjects.
15:03
So we offer the juris doctor but in addition to the
15:07
juris doctor we do offer a number of combined degrees
15:12
so we do offer the juris doctor which is combined with the graduate
15:17
certificate in professional legal practice so this is the
15:21
practical legal training that you need
15:24
to be able to be admitted to practice. And by working very creatively with
15:31
the progression of subjects and making use of the summer session
15:36
it’s possible to complete the juris doctor
15:39
combined with the graduate certificate in professional
15:44
legal practice in three years. It’s certainly
15:48
you’re very busy during that time and that’s if you do it on a full-time
15:54
basis but it is possible to complete that double qualification
15:59
within the three years. We also offer a combined juris doctor with the
16:06
master of business administration, the JD MBA, and so you would graduate with the
16:12
juris doctor and an MBA – this is a four-year degree
16:17
and if you are intending to go into business
16:21
this might be the degree that you would be most
16:24
interested in. For those of you who are particularly
16:28
interested in pursuing studies in intellectual property then i could
16:34
recommend the combined juris doctor master of intellectual property and
16:40
if you wanted to do a shorter version but still
16:43
involving intellectual property study you could
16:50
undertake the juris doctor combined with the graduate certificate
16:53
in trademark law and practice. So lots of different offerings there
17:00
if you are determining on doing the juris doctor then you’ve got some
17:07
further decisions to make as to whether or not you would do the straight jd
17:12
or go into one of the combined degrees. One of the benefits of that juris doctor
17:18
graduate certificate in professional legal practice
17:21
doing that as a combined degree is that you can complete
17:25
the double degree within the two years and there’s no requirement for you to
17:30
apply to the new south wales legal profession
17:33
admission board to commence your practical legal
17:36
training studies prior to the completion of the
17:41
three-year juris doctor. So that is certainly a bonus.
17:45
In addition to the juris doctor we do
17:49
have the master of legal studies which takes
17:53
two years if you’re studying on a full-time
17:56
basis or you can do it over a four year period. You can’t really do it on
18:04
a faster basis than that but if you wanted to take a little
18:09
bit longer or if your life is taking up a bit more
18:13
time and is reducing the amount of time that
18:16
you have available to undertake your studies you
18:19
can move between full-time and part-time it’s really up to you we can be very
18:24
flexible about how you undertake the
18:27
progression in the course. In addition to the master
18:31
of legal studies we do offer the graduate diploma in
18:34
legal studies so this means that you would be studying
18:38
one year full-time or two years on a part-time basis.
18:43
We also have the graduate certificate in legal studies which
18:47
takes half a year or one year on a full-time on a part-time basis.
18:54
So the benefit of these courses is that it does give you a
19:01
taste of what studying law is all about.
19:05
So if you’re not feeling ready to commit yourself
19:08
to undertaking a JD which will be three years of study and quite a lot of
19:15
reading but very enjoyable and interesting
19:18
reading then you might want to consider
19:22
starting off with a master of legal studies or
19:25
the graduate diploma or graduate certificate in legal studies.
19:30
Now none of these legal studies programs of themselves will allow
19:36
you to apply for admission to practice, you have to complete either the JD or
19:42
the LLB to get that qualification, the law qualification that
19:48
you need before you can apply for practice.
19:52
So you can look at these degrees, the master of legal studies
19:56
or the shorter diploma or certificate either as a pathway
20:01
to the JD or you can think “well i know i don’t want to become a lawyer i
20:07
think i just need some legal knowledge that will assist me
20:13
in what i’m already doing” so you can use these courses to enhance
20:19
your current career. So there are a couple of other
20:23
courses to think about.
20:28
This slide is just showing how these courses can be pathways
20:34
to the JD, you would be eligible if you do undertake the masters or the
20:40
graduate diploma in legal studies you would be eligible for an internal
20:45
course transfer into the juris doctor following the
20:48
successful completion of at least three core subjects in your legal
20:53
studies candidature. So that would be it’s good for you to
20:58
have a bit of a test to see how you’re finding law study.
21:02
Is it what you thought it was going to be like? Are you
21:05
enjoying it? Is this for you? And then if you think
21:09
“i’d like to continue with this” then you’d be eligible for an internal
21:13
course transfer, subject of course to you completing
21:16
those three core law subjects in your legal studies
21:21
candidature. When we look at the graduate certificate
21:24
in legal studies students once again must successfully complete the
21:31
three-subject graduate certificate and apply for the juris doctor degree.
21:38
The subjects that you would be studying in that first semester
21:42
are core law subjects so these subjects are the ones that you
21:48
must complete and this will give you a very good idea
21:52
about how much time studying law will actually take and for you to make
21:59
an assessment of the next few years of your life.
22:03
If you don’t meet the eligibility criteria for the jd
22:08
an automatic offer for the graduate certificate or the graduate diploma in
22:12
legal studies may be made even if you haven’t applied
22:16
for these courses. So if you do put in an application for the jd
22:21
and you just don’t quite meet the criteria that is supplied
22:26
to be eligible to undertake the jd then you might get an offer into either the
22:32
masters or the graduate diploma in legal studies.
22:36
So our academics here are really driven in their research by a
22:43
desire to achieve impact and they have
22:48
a motivation to engage with the community
22:51
so they’re really focusing on what is happening
22:55
in the world and how we can improve
22:58
the situation of many groups within our world.
23:03
Of course we also have people who study legal history so
23:07
we can learn lots from legal history about how we can proceed
23:12
moving forward. But we do have some fabulous academics here who are
23:19
wonderful experts and they are wonderful teachers and
23:23
they would be the people who would be teaching you in
23:26
many of these electives and also in your core law subjects so
23:31
we do have a policy here within the faculty that
23:36
all of our academics teach into core law subjects in addition to
23:40
offering the electives in their area of research expertise. So
23:47
there’s lots of exciting research that is going on in the
23:51
faculty and that is informing what is being studied in the electives.
24:00
We do have a very flexible timetable and UTS
24:05
actually started its law degree as a part-time
24:09
law degree and i think this has really influenced our attitude as to
24:15
how our law faculty is run and the timetabling of our subjects. When
24:22
the part-time law degree was offered back in the 80s that was the first time
24:27
it was offered it enabled people who wouldn’t have been able to commit to
24:33
a full-time law degree because of their other responsibilities
24:36
to be able to study on a part-time basis and come along to
24:41
evening classes. So all of our core law subjects have daytime
24:47
and evening classes and so long as you get in early you can enroll yourself
24:54
into the time of your choice. Obviously it’s not possible for us to be
25:00
able to create a timetable where absolutely every class that you have
25:03
is on at the premium time for you but most of our students find that
25:10
there is a great deal of flexibility in our timetabling and as i mentioned
25:16
before you can move from full-time to part-time, you
25:20
don’t have to make any formal applications about that,
25:24
you can fit it in with what’s going on in your life at the moment.
25:29
With our lectures, our core law subjects if it’s in the format
25:34
of a lecture and tutorial, when the lectures
25:38
are given those lectures are recorded and so
25:41
if you’re unable to get along to the lecture time
25:44
you can listen to that lecture on your portable device and it’s also good if
25:51
you have been able to attend a lecture if there was
25:54
some part of the lecture that was a bit tricky
25:58
a bit complicated you can go back and check your understanding
26:02
and often students use those recorded lectures when they’re preparing for
26:07
their assessments as well they go back and listen to them um for a second third
26:12
and even more times i understand.
26:16
Alright this slide just shows some of the
26:19
graduate outcomes that are recorded in the
26:22
QILT – the quality indicators for learning and teaching survey
26:27
of recent postgraduate law students so it showed that 79
26:32
of uts postgraduate law students were satisfied with how their degree
26:36
improved their skill and that was seven percent above the national
26:40
average so that’s something that we are
26:43
very proud of. 84.3 percent of graduates were in full-time employment
26:49
within four months of graduating so employers
26:53
do recognize that the uts law
26:57
graduate is very well equipped to get straight to work to hit the
27:02
ground running in their new legal position
27:07
and also the median salary of full-time employed graduates was 10 percent
27:13
above the national average so they’re things to be keeping
27:18
in mind as well.
27:19
If someone asked me what sets us apart again from other law
27:22
schools is really the opportunity to have a
27:26
director of students um in the role that really serves as
27:30
kind of the connection between the law student body
27:33
and the faculty and i’m not just saying that because i was director of students
27:37
as Bronwyn was as well before i was but we’ve both had that
27:41
experience and our current director of students Stuart Lowe is one where
27:46
we get to work very closely with students that just have
27:49
questions, have challenges, have issues, have uncertainties around their
27:55
study and need some information that they
27:57
can’t find online that their teachers may not be
28:01
aware of. So the director of students really serves
28:05
a very broad purpose. They work very closely with our professional staff
28:09
around orientation so when you come to
28:11
orientation you’ll meet the director of students and
28:14
that really does immerse you in how to begin your studies. The director
28:18
of students also is involved in our mentoring program so we have a peer
28:22
mentoring program for all our first year students when they’re
28:26
partnered up with more senior students. They also
28:31
work very closely in relation to our high achievers mentoring program,
28:35
so really much with the student body but also
28:38
supporting students on an individual basis. So the director of students will
28:43
help students with their progression, they’ll help students as we’ve talked
28:46
about going part-time or full-time, they’ll help students to know about
28:51
things like leave of absence where students are not sure what they
28:55
want to do with their studies and again this doesn’t just apply
28:59
to jd students but based on our experience we’re aware that more
29:04
things seem to happen there are more challenges
29:06
with postgraduate students because of the other
29:10
activities and events and obligations and responsibilities that are happening
29:14
in their lives so to have someone that you can connect up
29:17
with whether it be face-to-face in non-covid times whether it be online
29:22
whether it be by email we get tremendous feedback from
29:26
students about the the connection that they have with the director of
29:30
students. As postgraduate students, and i’m again
29:34
bringing myself in here, i returned to study after a break
29:38
and i have to say my first assignment took me quite a while to work out
29:42
what what they were asking for. So HELPS is for everybody, again it’s a service
29:47
provided to all students across the university but for postgraduate students
29:51
that might not have studied for a while coming to law obviously for the first
29:55
time it really assists in getting you started
29:58
to build up that confidence and capacity around
30:02
legal skills that you need to undertake assessments whether they be written
30:06
assessments whether they be your first essay your first problem whether they be
30:10
around presentation skills about how to put
30:13
something together to build up that capacity to be
30:17
able to present and to be able to take that
30:22
concern around assessments, and it does get easier obviously
30:26
after your first assessment, but for students that really do need
30:30
that boost and HELPS has a range of activities
30:34
again from one-to-one consultations through to resources
30:38
i invite you to have a look online through to doing some
30:42
small group coaching and training.
30:46
And the final support service that we have or resource service that we have
30:50
again across the university is our career service.
30:53
We’re very lucky that our career service is also here in Building 2
30:57
and we have a very close relationship with the career service.
31:01
They are very much front of mind about opportunities for
31:04
law graduates. And for postgraduate law students we have a dedicated
31:10
postgraduate careers consultant so has experience and expertise in
31:15
knowing that this is not your first degree it’s your second
31:18
degree, how you might want to build on that first area of study,
31:22
how you might want to thread it through, how you
31:25
might want to narrate what your first experience
31:28
your first study experience was your first qualification your working life and
31:33
your career today how do you build on that with a law
31:36
degree? So again the career service has a lot of
31:38
resources that are online. They work with us with the faculty
31:43
during the year to provide some jd- only events, unfortunately the first jd-
31:48
only event that was scheduled for march not long after
31:50
we commenced this year, that was postponed due to covid 19 but
31:55
they are they are focused on jd students as a separate cohort
32:00
with separate interests and needs.