General Structure of the LLM

At LSE Law, you will be able to choose from a wide variety of courses in composing the subject matter of your degree. The LLM programme is designed to give you flexibility to either expand your horizon and engage with diverse legal areas, or alternatively focus on a particular subject area and obtain a specialist LLM degree. You will select a total of eight courses, usually over a period of one year of full-time study. Seven of those will be chosen from approximately 90 LSE Law courses on offer in most years. The eighth course is a compulsory course on Legal Research and Writing Skills, which is assessed via a 10,000 word dissertation on a topic of your choice and will be supervised by one of our faculty members who is an expert in the relevant area.

Teaching Delivery

Our courses are offered primarily in the form of small-group seminars. We believe that the student experience should be intellectually stimulating and students should have the opportunity to be actively involved in class discussions and be able to interact both with the teacher and fellow students. For this reason, the vast majority of courses are offered in seminar format with a maximum class size of 30 students. You can expect a challenging, but also thought-provoking and ultimately rewarding experience. A limited number of courses are offered through larger lectures which are accompanied by back-up classes of a maximum of 15 students, where the teacher will review and elaborate on issues discussed in the lectures.

Assessment

The taught courses will be assessed generally by written two-hour examination, which will be held during Summer Term in May/June. Essays are submitted in May and dissertations in August. To prepare for the exams, you will have access to past exam papers from our library website and you will be asked to write a minimum of one short formative (unassessed) essay per course.