Law Student 2000

UKCLE PDF project

Project leader: Mike Cuthbert, University of Northampton (e-mail: mike.cuthbert@northampton.ac.uk)
Project summary: a questionnaire based study following a cohort of students through the three years of their law degree at English universities
Completion date: June 2005
UKCLE funding: £5,000

The Law Student 2000 project followed a cohort of students at over 40 law schools in England through their law degree. The project came under the umbrella of the Association of Law Teachers’ Legal Education Research Project (now LERN), with additional funding secured from the Nuffield Foundation. A similar project, Law Student 2002, followed a cohort of students at law schools in Scotland.

Project aims

Law Student 2000 aimed to give a picture of the expectations of the student cohort starting their degree in 2000, and to track how these changed over the course of their studies. The project focused on the issues of fees, debt, part time work and aspirations to enter the legal profession, but in each year included other questions as appropriate:

• year one – choosing a law course
• year two – placements with solicitors and work with advisory bodies such as citizens advice bureaux
• year three – the reasons why students decide not to go into professional practice

Outcomes

• A career in the legal profession: worth getting into debt for? – paper at LILI 2002
• Eat, drink and be merry – for tomorrow you have to pay off your debts! – paper at LILI 2003
• Law Student 2000: the final questionnaire – summary report
• Law Student 2000: prelude to the finale – article on project progress from the autumn 2003 issue of Directions

Project findings were presented at LILI 2005.

Last Modified: 4 June 2010