Are you looking to top-up your postgraduate legal qualification to master’s-level? The University of Bolton’s LLM Law (Legal Practice) Top-up course is ideal for upgrading your skills, impressing employers and boosting your career. With support from our dedicated team, you can branch into a new area of the law or deepen your expertise in your current specialism while achieving a prestigious LLM award.

Key information

Award:

LLM

Mode of Study:

Full-time

Duration:

1 year

Location:

University of Bolton

Start date:

To be confirmed

Course Details

If you already hold a Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice and wish to upgrade your skills and qualifications to master’s level, this course is for you. It’s ideal if you’ve already completed the LPC, BPTC, BTC, BVC, Bar Course or the new SQE qualification. Our expert team will support you to develop the highly valued research, analytical and critical reflection skills you need to achieve the LLM and take your career to the next level.

The University of Bolton’s LLM Law (Legal Practice) Top-up course offers academic yet practice-relevant content in aspects of substantive law and legal practice. It complements the vocational training you’ve already completed and focuses on enhancing your professional legal practice. Our dedicated and experienced academic team will support you to build your knowledge of research methods and guide you as you learn to apply this in your final project.

For your final project, you may choose to undertake either a dissertation or a self-directed, work-based learning portfolio. The dissertation takes the form of an extended piece of research. This route allows you to develop analytical and reflective skills alongside expert knowledge in an area such as corporate and finance law, employment law, intellectual property law, European law or international law.

Alternatively, you may prefer to complete a work-based learning portfolio, which supports you to reflect critically on your current legal practice activities. This route allows you to demonstrate that you can understand and critically apply complex theories, principles, and models of reflective practice within your specialist area.

Highlights

Our mission to develop innovative, rewarding and career-focused training has led to our rating as second in the UK for student experience and teaching quality by The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2021.
Our challenging but supportive environment gives you the chance to develop the research and analytical skills required to generate a piece of self-managed research relevant to legal practice.
You can join our vibrant, focused and supportive community of legal scholars working towards master’s level qualifications and career advancement.
The School of Law’s dedicated and well-qualified team of research and legal scholars deliver teaching and supervision, drawing on their professional experience as qualified solicitors, barristers and solicitor advocates.
The University of Bolton’s excellent libraries, 24/7 IT facilities, WiFi and learning areas are freely available for your use.

Key Features

Our teaching team offers specialist knowledge of the legal sector, underpinned by their first-hand experience working in legal practice.
Teaching and learning methods will include lectures, tutorials, seminars and workshops, as well as independent research.
Course materials are available online, allowing you to prepare work in advance and ensuring that in-class learning is highly interactive.
At the School of Law, we regularly review our courses to ensure we offer our students the best possible education and opportunities. An industry advisory board that brings together representatives from legal practice, the judiciary and the legal sector supports this process, ensuring our courses reflect the needs of employers and the wider legal industry.
The programme is designed to run alongside your work commitments, allowing you to earn while you learn.

You must hold a Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice. Examples of appropriate qualifications include PgDip Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) and PgDip Legal Practice (for instance, Legal Practice Course (LPC), Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC), Bar Training Course (BPC), Bar Vocational Course (BVC) or Bar Course).
You should also possess at least a lower second class (2.2) honours degree in any subject.
You may be required to attend an interview and/or provide a portfolio of work.
If English isn’t your first language, you’ll also need IELTS 7.0 with normally no less than 6.5 in any band (or equivalent). We also accept a range of other English language qualifications – please visit our English Language Requirements web page for more details.

Where changes are made to material information contained in this course description or a decision is taken to suspend a course between the offer of admissions and enrolment, we will inform applicants at the earliest possible opportunity and will outline the various options available to the applicant.

The LLM is a prestigious qualification and an excellent addition to your CV. If you’re a qualified legal professional wishing to achieve a full master’s award, the University of Bolton’s LLM Law (Legal Practice) Top-up course is ideal. We’ll support you in developing high-level research and critical thinking skills that will enhance your professional practice and advance your career.

As a graduate of this LLM, you’ll possess an in-depth knowledge of your chosen area of law. You’ll be able to demonstrate self-direction and originality in tackling and solving problems and be confident in planning and implementing your projects. You’ll also have impressive legal research and writing, analysis, critical evaluation and logical thinking skills.

What can I do with this qualification?

With our guidance, you’ll choose a research project that meets your career development goals. For example, you could extend and deepen your understanding of your current specialism or use it to explore an area of law that your current employer is interested in pursuing. Alternatively, you could use it as a stepping-stone into a new area of law, demonstrating your commitment to the legal field and opening up fresh employment opportunities.

As an LLM graduate, you’ll also be able to explore a career in academia. This top-up course can act as a bridge allowing you to move from practice to research. Your research experience will be ideal preparation for doctoral-level studies. If you choose to pursue a PhD, this can lead to an academic career route.

Alternative career options

Graduates can use the qualification as a stepping-stone into a range of other careers. For some of these roles, relevant experience and/or additional study may be required. They include:

Immigration
Police
Trading standards
Investment banking
Tax advice/inspection
Teaching and education
International aid/development
Human resources
Health and safety
Probation/social work
Accountancy
Political research
Charity and advice work
Recruitment
Stockbroker
Marketing

Course fees

Important note regarding tuition fees for the 2022-2023 academic year: EU nationals who meet residency requirements (have settled or pre-settled status) may be eligible for 'Home' fee status. If you do not meet these residency requirements, overseas fees will apply. Irish citizens living in the UK or Ireland will be eligible for 'Home' fee status under the Common Travel Area arrangement. Please read the student finance for EU students web page on www.gov.uk for information.

The fees for a student's course of study will be set for the normal duration of that course subject only to inflationary increases – measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) recorded in March each year to take effect for subsequent start dates.

Bursaries

Click here for more information on our Master's Bursaries.

For details of how to apply for this course, please choose your status from the options below:

Call Admissions

Please contact Admissions by telephone on 01204 903903 or email enquiries@bolton.ac.uk

Admissions
University of Bolton
Deane Road
Bolton, BL3 5AB
United Kingdom

Tel: 01204 903903
Email: enquiries@bolton.ac.uk

The University welcomes applications from international students from all over the world. We try to make the application process as simple and as fast as possible for our international applicants.

This course is not currently accepting international online applications.

Please contact Admissions by telephone on 01204 903903 or email enquiries@bolton.ac.uk

Admissions
University of Bolton
Deane Road
Bolton, BL3 5AB
United Kingdom

Tel: 01204 903903
Email: enquiries@bolton.ac.uk

We aim to offer an inspirational student experience, and the University of Bolton’s ‘Teaching Intensive, Research Informed’ approach underpins the design and delivery of this LLM. We fully appreciate that you have considerable prior practice experience and education. We’ll build upon and draw from your current knowledge and experience as you develop at the master’s level.

We’ll use various teaching and learning methods to help you acquire and develop the appropriate skills, concepts, and knowledge. You can expect formally-timetabled classes with tutors, including lectures, seminars, workshops and tutorials. You’ll also need to undertake a significant amount of personal study, such as reading, preparing for seminar activities, working on assignments, research activities and critical reflection. Assessment will involve a range of methods such as essays, presentations and in-class evaluations.

The LLM focuses on teaching you essential research methods and developing your master’s-level research and thinking skills. Choosing the dissertation option of this course allows you to undertake an extended and substantial piece of research, gathering data either through deskwork, fieldwork or a combination of both. We’ll support you as you examine your findings in light of your postgraduate-level legal knowledge and critically discuss, evaluate and present your results.

Alternatively, you may choose our specialist work-based learning portfolio module. This module supports you to identify research questions and methodologies appropriate to your professional practice in a specific area of law. This allows you to develop and demonstrate your ability to understand and critically apply complex theories, principles and models of reflective practice in your specialist area.

Modules

The modules listed below may be a mixture of compulsory and optional. You may not have the opportunity to study all the modules shown as part of the course.

Research Methods
Dissertation

Assessment methods

Level	Assesment method
Level one	Coursework 100%

Learning activities

Level	Learning activity
Level one	Guided independent study 90%, Scheduled learning and teaching activities 10%

Disclaimer

The university will use all reasonable endeavours to deliver your course as described in its published material and the programme specification for the academic year in which you begin your course. The university considers changes to courses very carefully and the university will minimise any changes. Please be aware that our courses are subject to review on an ongoing basis and changes may be necessary due to legitimate staffing, financial, regulatory and academic reasons. The content of course modules and mode of associated assessments may be updated on an annual basis. This is to ensure that all modules are up-to-date and responsive to employment and sector needs. The published course material and the programme specification contain indicative ‘optional modules’ that may be subject to change due to circumstances outside of our control. For this reason, we cannot guarantee to run any specific optional module.