LLB (Hons) LAW WITH CRIMINOLOGY

Join a top Law School that offers an intimate and engaging, student-focused learning experience. Gain the skills and confidence you need to excel within or beyond the legal profession or the field of crime and criminal justice.

UEA Law School is housed in historic Earlham Hall. You’ll join a welcoming and collegiate community of legal and criminology scholars and students. You’ll be taught by dedicated lecturers with expertise in a range of legal and criminological fields and will be part of a vibrant student body with an active law society. 

This course is aimed at students who want to combine a traditional English Law Degree with the fascinating and popular field of Criminology. This is the study of what causes crime, its consequences and how we respond to it. Combining these will give you a strong understanding of the evolving state of our society and the challenges it faces.  

You will be able to enrol on Sociology modules taught across UEA Schools. This is a closely related subject that focuses on the development and functioning of society. It will allow you to explore diverse and sometimes conflicting ideas of what the key issues are and how they should be addressed. 

Much of your study will be anchored around contemporary events and live issues that are affecting the world today. This course will give you a broad knowledge and skills base with which to succeed in a wide variety of law and non-related careers.  

Our LLB Law with Criminology is ranked in the top 20 for Law by 'The Guardian University Guide 2023'.

About

The course combines the seven foundation subjects of a traditional law degree with a foundation module in Criminology (Crime and Society), a theories of crime module (which explores various explanations of the causes of crime), and a more advanced Criminology module (Contemporary Concerns in Crime and Justice) and the introductory modules of English Legal System and Law in Practice. These subjects enable students to understand the different ways in which the law impacts and regulates our lives, and the relationship between the individual and the state. They will lay the foundation for you to gain an advanced understanding of law and crime related subjects in your final year.

Thanks to the UEA Law School’s semesterised approach to teaching, each of our modules are taught in one semester, freeing you up to have more choice later in the course. You’ll choose seven optional modules across your second and final years of study.

The wide range of choices the course affords allows you to tailor your degree around the subjects that interest you and stimulate your curiosity. Choices combine subjects in law, such as Company, Employment, Family Law, Law and Medicine and Human Rights, with those related to Crime, such as The Criminal Process, Miscarriages of Justice, Crime and Sentencing, and the advanced Criminology module, Contemporary Concerns in Crime and Justice. Uniquely, you will also be able to choose from optional modules available to UEA students enrolled on the BA Sociology programme, including Gender, Victimisation and Offending; Social Policy and Social Justice; Risk and Resilience: Young People as Victims of Exploitation, Offenders and Survivors; Media, Globalisation and Culture; Power and Society, Digital Politics, and Social Constructions of Childhood.

Throughout the course, you’ll develop important skills such as research, writing, critical analysis, and constructing a reasoned and evidenced argument. The point of legal study is not simply to memorise the law, but to be able to engage with it skillfully. Similarly, in Criminology, you will learn how to think critically and apply different explanations of crime and various perspectives on how we should respond to crime to contemporary issues. As such, many of the skills you’ll acquire are transferable and will be valuable in your chosen career path. 

Throughout your degree, you’ll be given guidance on your work and constructive feedback to help you improve. You will be allocated an Academic Advisor to help you get the most from your studies and help you reach your full potential.

You’ll also have many opportunities to build your skills, confidence and professional CV through extra-curricular activities. During your studies, you’ll enjoy the support of our outstanding employability programme and have the opportunity to take part in many voluntary activities. You could, for example, complete an internship at a law firm, or ‘marshal’, spending a day on the bench with a judge during a trial. You could get involved in our Justice Project, where you will work on cases of prisoners who maintain they were the victims of miscarriages of justice. You could also benefit from the alumni-mentoring scheme, where Law School graduates offer career mentoring to individual students. Our many events with law firms, barrister chambers, criminal justice agencies and alumni create great opportunities for finding out about the options for when you graduate. You can also make a difference in the local community, working for the public good (pro bono) with the UEA award-winning Law Clinic, providing free legal advice under the supervision of local solicitors, to members of the local community who cannot otherwise access it. 

You can also have fun, build your profile and hone valuable skills by joining in Law Society activities. As well as social events, these include beginner and advanced mooting contests where a point of law is debated in a simulated court hearing. Finals are judged by actual judges or barristers. The Law Society also holds negotiation, client interviewing, mediation and legal triathlon competitions, the finals of which are hosted by law firms. In 2016, the UEA Law Society won LawCareers.Net award for ‘Best Pro Bono’ activities and in 2019 the award as the best law society for Commercial Awareness. 

After the Course

You’ll graduate ready to begin your chosen career path having acquired and developed a range of transferable skills including, the ability to effectively research and assess the merits of competing theories, approaches and explanations in relation to the law and crime, and more widely. You’ll be able to apply theory to real world situations and make informed judgements about which explanation is most plausible and what can be done to resolve a particular problem. You will also have developed wider transferable skills, such as communicating and writing clearly and concisely, presenting arguments effectively and being able to swiftly extract key information from large documents. 

If you are looking to the legal profession, you’ll progress to the next stage of training and continue the process of qualifying as a barrister or solicitor. If you’re looking at a career within criminal justice, you will also have developed the relevant skills and subject area knowledge to be able to do so. You’ll also be equipped to pursue other routes such as business, accountancy, the civil or diplomatic service, the charitable sector, management and human resources, teaching, journalism or academia, to name a few. 

Many of our graduates have gone on to build careers as solicitors in leading firms in London and internationally, and in a variety of firms of all sizes and types. Others work as in-house counsel in companies, public authorities and the Government Legal Service. We also have a significant number of alumni who are barristers, including several Queen’s counsel. 

Criminology graduates often pursue careers within the many agencies of the Criminal Justice System and with the wide variety of organisations and charities who work with offenders. 

Career destinations

A degree at UEA will prepare you for a wide variety of careers. We've been ranked 1st for Job Prospects by StudentCrowd in 2022.

Career Destinations related to your degree include: 

• Legal Practice (solicitor, barrister (with further study) 

• Other law related careers (NGOs, international organisations, in-house compliance, legal researchers, police)  

• Public Sector (civil service, local government, politics, education, research) 

• Criminal Justice related agencies and organisations (police, prison or probation Services, Ministry of Justice, Home Office, campaigning and reform, charities working woth offenders and their families, youth offending teams) 

• Media/Journalism 

• Financial and Management Services (banking, tax, insurance, investment, accountancy, HR)