LAW DISSERTATION - 2024/5

Module Overview

LAW3005 provides students the opportunity to engage in sustained independent research and critical writing in defence of a legal thesis, under the supervision of a member of staff.

Module provider

Surrey Law School

Module Leader

TAGGART Christopher (Law)

Number of Credits: 30

ECTS Credits: 15

Framework: FHEQ Level 6

Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A

Module Availability

Year long

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

Students may only be enrolled on this module if they achieve a minimum 60% average in Level 5. Students who have not achieved the required average will be asked to select alternative module/s.  

Module content

LAW3005’s legal content is determined by the student, with the advice of a supervisor.

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

N/A

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is the only strategy appropriate for assessing an LLB law dissertation.

The summative assessment for this module consists of:

• a 15,000 word coursework. 

Formative assessment and feedback:

Students are required to submit a proposal to be allowed to continue the module.  If a proposal is deficient, the student is provided feedback by the module administrator to improve the proposal to meet the standard.  In addition, students must submit to their supervisors a chapter’s-worth of draft to receive feedback for improvement.  Further, feedback will be provided throughout the academic year by the student’s supervisor as the student develops the dissertation by turning in successive drafts to and holding meetings with the supervisor.

Module aims

• Enable students to develop responsibility and aptitude for independent work
• Enable students to improve legal analysis and critical thinking skills
• Enable students to improve legal and related research skills
• Enable students to develop the ability, with a supervisor, to negotiate and execute an academic year-long working plan

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

Because LAW 3005 is not a taught module, it has no learning and teaching strategy as such. 

Through independent work, students will:

• Develop responsibility and aptitude for independent work


• Improve legal and related research skills


• Improve legal and related research skills.

Three seminars are offered at the beginning of the module.  The first two help students decide whether enrolling in this unique module is the best choice for them, given what they personally want out of the final year of their course. The third introduces the students to library resources that are especially apt for undertaking and completing an LLB law dissertation.

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: LAW3005

Other information

The opportunity LAW3005 provides is committed to developing graduates with strengths in Employability, Global and Cultural Capabilities, and Resourcefulness and Resilience:

Employability

Key to being a good lawyer is the ability to make rigorous legally-informed arguments and to defend them both verbally and in writing. The opportunity LAW3005 offers to develop the research, critical thinking, and writing skills necessary to excel in these areas is unique to the curriculum.  By the end of the module, students will be in the position readily to transfer these skills, highly coveted by legal employers, to the students’ legal employment.

Global and Cultural Capabilities

Because students can write their dissertations on international comparative legal topics that require a sophisticated understanding of cultural differences, students who opt to write such dissertations receive an unequalled opportunity to explore and develop their global and cultural capabilities. 

Resourcefulness and Resilience

The uniquely sustained, independent nature of LAW3005 offers students an unequalled opportunity to develop personal resourcefulness and resilience.  No other module in the curriculum depends as much as LAW3005 on the student’s ability independently to work toward achieving a complex long-term research goal by a hard deadline.  Students who successfully complete LAW3005 do so only by developing and exercising resourcefulness and resilience over the course of the academic year.

Programmes this module appears in

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2024/5 academic year.