Studying Law at Goldsmiths

As a law student at Goldsmiths, you will:

• Work closely with influential legal thinkers and professionals, barristers and politicians
• Take field trips to Legal London and develop your own legal and transferable skills
• Gain knowledge across a range of law specialisms, and pathways to shape your future career

Teaching and learning

Beyond learning the core legal modules and knowledge, you will have the opportunity to immerse yourself in the legal world, via trips to legal London and taking part in developing your own skills. This is all integrated into our teaching and contact hours.

Trips to legal London have included:

• Visits to the UK Supreme Court, Parliamentary Committees, the Law Society and the Inns of Court
• Visits to technology firms such as Facebook London and ‘Magic Circle’ law firms
• Mock trials at the Royal Courts of Justice
• Law film screenings, theatre and AI exhibitions

Developing your skills

You will be continuously engaged with debating and analysing controversial socio-legal issues and initiatives that will empower you to raise awareness and effect change. Below are just some of the ways you will develop your skills, and benefit from gaining experience for your future career path:

• Mooting opportunities - mock legal debates simulating real court proceedings
• Simulated parliamentary debates and immersive jury trial experience
• Taking part in human rights workshops in secondary schools, as part of our Knowing Our Rights research project
• Advocacy and public speaking workshops
• Client interviewing and contract negotiations
• Debating club and meet the expert sessions

Our teaching experts

Studying law at Goldsmiths means that you will be taught and have access to highly experienced academics, experts in their specific areas of law.

Professor Dimitrios Giannoulopoulos is Head of the Law department. He holds the Inaugural Chair in Law at Goldsmiths, and is a Master of the Bench (Academic) at the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Other academic teaching staff are experts in cutting edge areas of law such as AI and the Law, counter-terrorism and human rights, immigration law, reproductive rights and international environmental law. 

Visiting professors

Our visiting professors are internationally leading legal thinkers who bring their unique knowledge and expertise to our students, including:

• Former Attorney General, Dominic Grieve KC
• Director of Liberty, Martha Spurrier
• First Black Gresham Professor of Law, Leslie Thomas KC
• First chairwoman of the UK Bar Human Rights Committee, Kirsty Brimelow KC
• Clive Stafford Smith has earned global admiration for his anti-death penalty work in the US
• The barrister who prosecuted notorious cases of crimes against humanity and genocide at the Hague, Sir Geoffrey Nice KC

Opportunities for law students

Our programmes strongly appeal to students who go the extra mile and want to get the most out of university, giving themselves the flexibility to pursue traditional career paths or more modern avenues for legal practice.

At Goldsmiths, you will learn the law in action, whilst helping local communities and developing crucial professional skills by participating in a wide range of extra-curricular activities to supplement your learning.

Law clinics

This is an opportunity for you to develop and practise your legal skills, with the supervision of professionals. Our law students have taken part in:

• The University of London Refugee Law Clinic, which allows five of our LLB students every year to work on litigation involving fresh claims for asylum, under the supervision of experienced solicitors and leading law firms
• Our Goldsmiths Law and Policy Clinics on immigration, counter-terrorism, financial wrongdoing and suspects’ procedural rights, are modelled upon observation of the work of pioneering Law Clinics at Stanford Law School and Berkeley Law
• The Pro Bono Community Clinic, which gives students the opportunity to do 3-6 month placements in legal advice centres across London, where they specialise on advising on welfare benefits law amongst other things.

Access to Harvard Law School course

We are the first Law department in the UK to offer free access to Harvard Law School’s pioneering Zero-L course.

Taught by 18 leading Harvard Law faculty members, it has hours of video lectures, vocabulary, and periodic comprehension checks that you can take at your own pace, and provides you with instruction and practise in basic skills, including how to read a case.

Athens summer school 

The law department organise an annual summer school in Athens, in collaboration with leading universities based in Greece. This 10-day intensive programme provides a range of courses including refugee law and migration studies, EU law, criminal law and law and technology. Students who take part in this valuable opportunity, will gain experience of connecting with high profile individuals and institutions, such as the British Ambassador and British Council in Greece, as well as cultural visits.

Studying and working abroad

A dedicated team will support you to gain international experience by studying and working abroad or undertaking virtual global opportunities. You can apply for funding towards the costs of international placements.

In recent years students have volunteered for NGOs in Sri Lanka and Greece, completed online law summer schools at the University of Geneva and Amsterdam Law School, and studied the French language in Toulouse. Funding is reviewed on a yearly basis.

The Gold Award

The Gold Award, our personal and professional development programme, is designed to help students identify their current skills and gain new experiences through co-curricular activities.

These include our Law Clinics, which will appear in the transcript received at your graduation.  

Careers and support

As a Goldsmiths law student, you will be supported in pursuing a career to practise law as a barrister or solicitor.

Choosing to study law, also provides students with a range of legal and transferable skills to pursue careers not only in the legal industry, but also in other sectors.

Preparing you for a career at the Bar

If you want to become a barrister, our advocacy, public speaking, and excellence in written and oral argumentation, are skills we inject into a range of modules, to help to prepare you for this pathway. We integrate professional skills and career orientation sessions delivered by the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, one of the historic Inns of Court.

In our legal skills module, we give you access to mini pupillages and Inns of Court information evenings on careers at the Bar.

Preparing to become a solicitor

Qualifying to become a solicitor changed in 2021. Students now have to study for the Solicitor's Qualifying Exam (SQE) and undertake the required amount of Qualifying Work Experience. 

Goldsmiths was one of the first law schools in the UK to embed the SQE preparation elements into the law degree, offering students the option to take a bespoke SQE module in their final year of studies.

Goldsmiths graduates also have access to an exclusive discount to the BARBRI SQE programme, successfully preparing them to sit the SQE examination.

Preparing you for other career destinations

Throughout your journey at Goldsmiths, we will continuously bring you into contact with third-sector, human rights and NGO experts, journalists, technology experts, civil servants and individuals working in the creative industries. We will support you to plan a career for yourself in these areas and beyond, if practising law is not the path you wish to pursue.

There are opportunities to study modules from various departments, including from Politics and International Relations, Media and Communications, and the Psychology department.

You can also study modern, interdisciplinary modules, such as AI, Disruptive Technologies and the Law, Art Law, Intellectual Property, and Immigration Law.

Facilities and resources

Deptford Town Hall's Council Chamber and boardroom

The Grade II listed ex-Deptford Town Hall building built in 1905, is home to the law department.

We have unique access to the imposing Council Chamber and boardroom, where we stage mock trials, debating competitions, immersive jury trials, simulated contract negotiations, and research seminars. You will exercise crucial legal skills in an environment resembling the atmosphere in law courts and commercial board rooms in the country.

It is also home to our common room and offices, where personal tutorial meetings and student activities take place.

Virtual reality and multiscreen

We use VR handsets to immerse you in experiences that allow you to see Law in its cultural context. In our Criminal Law module, we use it for a documentary that shares the stories of five survivors of sexual assault and their healing journey.

We have a state of the art collaborative workspace that allows both students and session leaders to share content on individual screens and groups on each table – or for the whole group present in the room.

Law Library

Our Law Library has all the key legal databases - including Westlaw, Lexis Library, Hein Online - and the key practitioner resource, Practical Law. Through Practical Law international, Westlaw International and Nexis, our students can access materials from many jurisdictions around the world.

We also have subscriptions to Cambridge University Press Law eBooks (around 3,000), Oxford University Press Law eBooks (around 2,000), Hart eBooks, Lexis Library eBooks and Westlaw eBooks on top of the paper collection. This means all the core textbooks are available both in paper and in digital format.

The Law Library is supported by a very experienced law librarian, who has worked both in major City law firms and the primary academic law library in London, the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.