LL4BK Half Unit
Corporate Crime
This information is for the 2025/26 session.
Course Convenor
Prof Jeremy Horder
Availability
This course is available on the LLM (extended part-time), LLM (full-time), MSc in Law and Finance, MSc in Regulation and University of Pennsylvania Law School LLM Visiting Students. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process.
How to apply: Priority will be given initially to LLM, MSc Regulation and MSc Law and Finance students on a first-come-first-served allocation.
Spaces permitting, requests from all other students will be processed on the same first-come-first-served allocation from 10am on Thursday 2 October 2025
By submitting an application, students are confirming that they meet any pre-requisites specified. Providing an additional written statement will not aid a student's chances of being accepted onto a course, and statements are not read.
Deadline for application: Not applicable
For queries contact: Law.llm@lse.ac.uk
This course has a limited number of places and demand is typically high. This may mean that you’re not able to get a place on this course.
Course content
This course focuses on crime committed within the commercial and business environment. The course considers the principles of corporate criminal liability and different models of corporate criminal liability. The exercise of prosecutorial discretion in corporate crime cases, with a consideration of deferred prosecution agreements, is examined. The course addresses the challenges in the international fight against corruption. As well as exploring the nature, extent and consequences of corruption, the course examines the law of fraud and false accounting, as well as international responses to corporate crime and their implementation into domestic law. The increasing emphasis placed by the law on a company’s obligation to prevent the occurrence of corporate crime is also examined, in relation to fraud and the abuse of human rights. There is no overlap between this course and the course on Financial Crime in the Winter (second) Term.
Teaching
20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.
This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.
Formative assessment
One 2,000 word essay.
Indicative reading
Reading is prescribed for each lecture and seminar. There are no core textbooks available for the course, although Ashworth’s Principles of Criminal Law (10th edition) has an online chapter – available through LSE library at Oxford Scholarship online - on Financial Crime that may be of assistance. All the reading material is available from resources easily accessible through LSE Moodle, LSE Electronic Library and the internet. Preliminary reading is not required but for an understanding of the areas covered in the course students may read Wells: Corporations and Criminal Responsibility, 2nd edition, 2001, Oxford University Press; Gobert & Punch: Rethinking Corporate Crime, 2003, Butterworths LexisNexis; Green: Lying, Cheating and Stealing: A Moral Theory of White Collar Crime, 2007, Oxford University Press.
Assessment
Exam (100%), duration: 150 Minutes in the Spring exam period
Key facts
Department: LSE Law School
Course Study Period: Autumn Term
Unit value: Half unit
FHEQ Level: Level 7
CEFR Level: Null
Total students 2024/25: 49
Average class size 2024/25: 25
Controlled access 2024/25: YesCourse selection videos
Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.
For this course, please see the following link/s:
LL4BK Corporate Crime Course Guide Video https://youtu.be/8o8gYJQAKgI
Personal development skills
- Communication
- Specialist skills