The School of Law at Trinity College Dublin is the oldest established law school in Ireland. It teaches law to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as conducting legal research and holding conferences.
There are approximately 700 undergraduate students and 150 postgraduate students in the Law School. It publishes the Dublin University Law Journal and the Trinity College Law Review. The Law School is located in House 39 on New Square.
Degrees
It offers five undergraduate degrees. The Bachelor in Laws (LL.B.), Law and French (the LL.B. (ling. franc.)), Law and German (the LL.B. (ling. germ.)), Law and Business (LL.B. Bus) and Law and Political Science (LL.B. Pol. Science) degrees are all four-year honors degree programmes in Law.
The School offers five taught Master in Laws degrees. Applicants who already hold a good honors (II.1) law degree or law related degree, can apply to study for the LL.M. (Master in Laws), Master in International and Comparative Law, Master in International and European Business Law and Master in Intellectual Property Law. All four postgraduate degrees are one-year taught programmes. The School of Law also offers two postgraduate research degree programmes - the M.Litt. or Ph.D., which are conducted by research. Finally, the LL.D. is an honour reserved for outstanding legal academics.
The LL.B. In the freshman years of the LL.B., students study eight obligatory core law subjects: The Irish Legal System (including Legal Skills) Torts Constitutional law I Criminal law Contract law Administrative Law Private Law Remedies Equity Land law European Union law Constitutional law II Mentoring Freshman law students can also choose to take a language course in the university.
Sophisters (third and fourth year students) choose 60 ECTs (European Credit Transfers) in each of the two years from a wide range of modules including commercial law, tax law, human rights law, corporate governance and criminology. They are also entitled to take a module in a different field under Trinity's Broad Curriculum programme. The marks obtained over the two final years count equally for the final degree grade.
Coursework
Each module generally has three hours of lectures per week throughout the year. There are also seminars attended by groups of approximately twelve students. Freshman modules have four seminars of one hour in length throughout the year. For sophister subjects, the number of seminars varies.
The Law School does not operate in semesters, so the examinations are all at the end of the year, in the May–June period. The only exception is the foundation scholarship exam, which Senior Freshmen may elect to sit in order to win a scholarship. Many subjects allocate part of the grade for a major assignment submitted during the year.
International study
Junior Sophisters may study abroad for their third year on an exchange. Trinity has both Socrates or Erasmus exchanges with European universities and other reciprocal exchange agreements with universities in Canada, Finland and the USA. The Law School has exchange agreements with the following universities: Austria Johannes Kepler University, Linz Belgium Leuven University Canada Osgoode Hall Law School Denmark University of Copenhagen Finland University of Helsinki France Montesquieu University – Bordeaux IV University of Strasbourg University of Strasbourg University of Toulouse Panthéon-Assas University University of Poitiers Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) Germany University of Erlangen-Nuremberg Hamburg University Humboldt University, Berlin Mainz University University of Würzburg Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Italy University of Bologna The Netherlands Leiden University Spain University of Granada The United States of America Emory University Washington and Lee University Indiana University Maurer School of Law