Undergraduate Law at Penryn Campus: New students

• Look at the New Students website to find what you'll need to do before arriving in Cornwall
• Register with the University and activate your IT account to access your timetable (see the section entitled ‘Activate your IT account’)
• Choose your optional business modules

For law and business preparation, please see the ‘Pre-reading and academic preparation’ section below.

Ahead of your arrival, please complete our online pre-arrival induction which is available via FutureLearn; your Exeter email will have a message with the link. The induction is full of important information and advice about your studies and life as a student here. It also contains activities and discussion boards so you can start to get to know other students even before you start your course.

We strongly recommend that you access this as soon as possible and make the most of this fantastic opportunity to learn more about us, your peers and your programme.

Join course.

When you come to the University of Exeter, you’ll be joining the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, which is home to the Law School as well as Humanities and Politics. We have a big induction week planned for you to enable you better to understand what it means to be a student, to get to know the people around you, and how to get the most out of your time at university. We want you to get off to the best possible start!

This schedule may be subject to change - please check your personal timetable online, via My Timetable, for the latest information.

Please note: all times below are UK time.

Last updated: 9 August

On Monday, 19 September, you will attend a ‘welcome to the University of Exeter’ talk with all staff, in which we’ll introduce you to how we teach, and you’ll undertake some short activities delivered by academic and professional services staff and members of the Students’ Union and Staff-Student Liaison Committees. This is followed by a lunch. After lunch, you’ll take part in an introductory workshop for your particular programme of study.

We’ll also take a photo of your cohort in the amphitheatre on campus as a record of your first day at university – and we’ll take one on your graduation day, too, as a reminder of how far you have come!

On Tuesday, 20 and Thursday, 22 September your cohort will be divided into six groups (of about 40 students each) and will then take part in six activities (three on each day). The activities will be as follows:

• Activity 1: Miracle Theatre Workshop (Discover): Miracle Theatre will lead you in activities which have been co-created with the Department over the last three years. They revolve around getting to know people, remembering their names and ‘faking it until you make it’ when meeting lots of new people and doing new things.
• Activity 2: Active Plus Bootcamp (Grow): The charity Active Plus will take you through the mini-teamwork bootcamp which they have delivered for us for the last three years. This is an activity of mental and physical expression which will help foster a sense of belonging and show you something of the difference between being part of a community of learners and just being an individual learner.
• Activity 3: Doorstep Arts Workshop (Thrive): Alumni from the University of Exeter and members of Doorstep Arts will run their very successful wellbeing & mental health session – and you’ll play an active part in its shape!
• Activity 4: Library Escape Room (Discover): You will take part in a digital library escape room which you will complete in a small group in the physical space of the library, using a tablet to allow you to explore the physical and virtual spaces of the library to find clues to unlock the next ‘door’ of the escape room.
• Activity 5: Getting your head around the change (Grow): Co-created with staff and led by our peer transition student tutors, this workshop is all about how you transition to the new identity of undergraduate student, and the different ways of being and doing that this entails.
• Activity 6: Navigating your wide empty calendar (Thrive): Co-created with staff and led by our peer transition student tutors, this workshop is designed to help you think about how to organise your time in such a way that you will thrive at university. We will be looking at how to plan effectively, thinking about choice and maximising all the opportunities you have at university. Getting on top of this early on will allow you to engage much (much) more effectively with your studies.

On Friday, 23 September you’ll take part in scavenger hunts as you explore and map the environment that you’ll be living and working in. You’ll take part in two activities on campus and a trail and hunt in the town of Penryn, supported by the Penryn Museum. You’ll create maps in your small groups which you’ll display at the end of the day at a tea with staff from campus, with prizes for the winners. Your maps will go on display in both the Penryn Museum and on campus.

A message about your first three weeks from Year 1 Co-ordinators Dr Swastee Ranjan and Dr Janet Keliher:

We are absolutely thrilled and delighted to welcome you to the Law School at Penryn! We hope your journey brings you safe and well here, and we look forward to seeing you soon!

Your induction weeks, that is, your first three weeks of the term here at the Law School (beginning on 26 September), are aimed at easing you into your university life as a law with business undergraduate. We want to introduce you to some of the different kinds of law that exist, the way we study them, and most importantly, why we should study them at all. 

The theme for the induction this year is borders and boundaries.  Law, as we all know, governs not only our social, political, and economic system but also human conduct and behaviour more generally. In this process it creates boundaries, restricting and enabling how we live together. These boundaries can vary in nature. For example, they might take the form of borders that surround countries and protect their sovereign status, or they might operate at the level of individual conduct, where they allow us to exercise our rights and freedom while respecting others’. There are plenty of examples where it is necessary for boundaries to be present. Yet, it can also be equally necessary to push those boundaries – to widen their scope so that we may live and coexist in a more diverse, equal, and fair world. 

In the three weeks of your induction, we will explore some of the ideas underpinning boundaries and borders as they exist in law, to help introduce you to broad themes in law and legal studies. Your induction will help not only in exploring the different kinds of law that exist, but also in understanding how we study it, why we study it, and what can you expect in the next three years of your time in the Law School. 

The induction week comprises of a mix of lectures and seminar sessions. In week 1 and week 2, you will have two lectures – one on Monday, and the other on Friday. You will also have seminars in those weeks, on Monday and Tuesday, or Thursday and Friday. Do check your timetable to see which group you are in.

Your first two weeks build up to our Hack Week in week 3. The Hack Week has been designed to introduce you to methods and skills that you will need as a law student. 

What is a Hack?  

• Hacking is creative problem-solving by groups of people within a short time scale.
• The idea behind a hack is that if you put people together with different skills, the tools they need, and a clear challenge to address, things will come together and  they will produce some great new ideas to tackle the problem quite quickly. Hacks are usually accompanied by workshops on skills and our Hack is just the same. You will be introduced to various crucial legal skills – such as how to read case law, the value and role of precedent, how to construct an argument, and how to take notes effectively. 

What’s it for?  

Hacks are often used to introduce new people to the way of working within a company or organisation, and also to introduce those new people to each other so that they start to understand each other’s skill sets and ways of working.

The Hack Week is designed for you to get to know and work with the other people in your law firm on your course and also to ease you into thinking like a lawyer.

Your challenge

This year we challenge you in your firms to push back the boundaries of law and think of an area of law where you think there should be reform. It could be anything that has already been mentioned during your induction or something you have come across in your own research.

You must identify what the law is, why it should change and any reforms you are proposing. You will work on your presentation during the week 3 Hack workshops and meetings and then you will present your solutions together as a firm at the Hack Final on Friday, 14 October, where one firm will be crowned the winners of the Hack! The presentations will be no more than seven minutes long per firm, with three minutes of questions from the audience.  

The previous winners have been Firm 8 (2019), Firm 2 (2020) and Firm 6 (2021), but each year so far, it has been a hard choice to make! Will your firm be next to create a valuable solution to one of the biggest problems law faces?  

The induction weeks are for you! Our aim is not only to introduce you to law as a discipline, but also to introduce you to the active way you will learn it here. We want you to participate, get to know everyone, learn about new topics and ideas, and perhaps most importantly learn how much you can achieve right from the beginning of your studies.

You do not need to conduct any pre-reading before you start; we will provide you with all the materials for the course when you begin studying. If you would like to get a flavour for law with business before you start, though, then take a look at some of our staff and current student recommended resources on our website (note that this is not your course content, but a suggestion of engaging resources to support your learning; some resources we have recommended are not free – please do not feel that you need to purchase these).

Academic preparation (before 13 September)

Your legal hero

In the first week of the Legal Foundations module (compulsory for LLB & BBL students), we will discuss what makes a good lawyer. We will use our legal heroes as inspiration to think about what kinds of skills good lawyers have.

Perhaps you don’t yet have a legal hero yet – that’s fine! Just have a think:

• Is there anyone who inspired you to study law? They don’t have to be a public figure! They can also be fictional or a personal relation.
• Are there any lawyers who’ve caught your eye in the news?

You can also talk about your hero when you meet your firm. Just to get you started here are some of us with some of ours:

Camilla: My legal hero is fictional: Atticus Finch from the novel "To Kill a Mockingbird". It was the book I read in my childhood which first got me interested in law and issues of discrimination. My real-life lawyer hero is Karon Monaghan QC not just for her work in discrimination law, but also for her role in the case of R (on the application of UNISON) (Appellant) v Lord Chancellor (Respondent) 2017 which is such an important case on access to justice and the rule of law.

Caroline: Constance Baker Motley, a civil rights lawyer, fighting nearly every important civil rights case in the US for two decades. She excelled in the quiet, painstaking preparation and presentation of lawsuits that challenged racial segregation across the US. Her legal victories included the landmark school desegregation case of Brown v Board of Education in 1954.

Elif: Leading women’s activist and lawyer in South Africa during the times of apartheid, Victoria Mxenge. She combined activism with her practise of law. This approach to legal practise, which I admire, turned law into a practise of change in the service of freedom and equality.

Janet: In the academic field Alan Norrie is a legal hero. Norrie is a professor of criminal law and legal theory who takes a refreshingly different approach to the ideas that underpin our criminal law and criminal justice system. He challenges us to rethink concepts such as blame, responsibility and guilt which are focused on the individual and in his intriguingly named book ‘Law and the Beautiful Soul’ he explores a ‘relational’ approach to justice which argues that any judgment of an individual must take account of the broader environment and situation in which he finds himself.

Mark: Baroness Brenda Hale. Aside from leading the way in the overdue process of increasing female representation amongst the senior judiciary, as President of the Supreme Court (2017-2020) she was central to legal decisions which held the UK Government to account. Baroness Hale began her career as a legal academic (an inspiration to lecturers!), worked at the Law Commission and progressed through the ranks of the judiciary on merit. She has been an outspoken advocate of judicial diversity, and was well known for her contribution to the development of family law and her accessibility to the public and to law students.

Nick: Sir Hersch Lauterpacht, a key figure in the development of the modern international legal order. He made an enormous contribution to international humanitarian law, drafting Article 6 of the Nuremburg charter and “An International Bill of the Rights of Man", itself later contributing to the European Convention on Human Rights which continues to protect us today. Despite flagrantly racist objections from the then UK Attorney-General (who thought Lauterpacht’s immigrant status ought to disqualify him), Lauterpacht was elected as the British judge at the International Court of Justice. He continued to serve until his death in 1960.

Will: My legal hero is Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Holmes was a Justice of the US Supreme Court and arguably laid the foundations for a view which very few people would now disagree with: that the law is not like maths. When a case comes to court, there isn’t always a neat answer ready and waiting which the judge just has to ‘discover’ (perhaps in a book); rather, law is a social practice, and judges are influenced by morality, politics, and other factors, and have an important role to play in shaping law to meet society’s needs. Holmes’ view helps us see much more clearly what law is and how it works, whereas the view of law as being no more than a formula obscures both what judges do and what the law is.

If you are a LLB Law with Business student you will also need to choose the business modules you will study in your first year.

LLB Law with Business students study on six compulsory 15-credit modules in law in the first year across the whole of terms 1 and 2:

• Term 1:
  • Criminal Law 1: Foundations (LAW1040C)
  • Legal Foundations 1 (LAW1023C)
  • Human Rights Law (LAW1028C)
• Term 2:
  • Criminal Law 2: Companies and Organisations (LAW1041C)
  • Legal Foundations 2 (LAW1024C)
  • Constitutional Law (LAW1027C)

You also study 30 credits of business in your first year. You have a choice of two out of four 15-credit business modules: 

• Term 1:
  • Introduction to Economics (BEP1120)
  • Business & Society (BEP1010)
• Term 2:
  • Theory and Practice of Management (BEP1080)
  • Marketing in a Digital Age (BEP1040)

Which modules should you choose?

• If you are particularly interested in economics, choose the term 1 module Introduction Economics (BEP1120).
• If you are interested in the relationships between business and society (business and social, environmental, political, and legal issues), then choose the term 1 module Business & Society (BEP1010).
• If you are more interested in general management studies then choose the term 2 module Theory and Practice of Management (BEP1080).
• If your interest is in the communications methods and technological advances in developing campaigns, recruiting new customers, managing and maintaining crucial existing customer relationships, then choose the term 2 module Marketing in a Digital Age (BEP1040).

 Before you make your choices think about workload:

• Choosing two business modules in one term will make one term much harder for you than the other term.
• If you prefer a balanced workload, consider choosing one business module for each term (either BEP1010 or BEP1120 in term 1, and either BEP1080 or BEP1040 in term 2

How to register your module choice

Once you have registered for your University email account, you will be able to receive the emails which tell you how to log in to the online module selection system (OMS) and choose your modules.

Note: if you are a BBL Bachelor of Business and Laws studentall your modules are compulsoryin your first year and these are:

• Term 1:
  • Business & Society (BEP1010)
  • Criminal Law 1: Foundations (LAW1040C)
  • Introduction to Economics (BEP1120)
  • Legal Foundations 1 (LAW1023C)
• Term 2:
  • Criminal Law 2: Companies and Organisations (LAW1041C)
  • Legal Foundations 2 (LAW1024C)
  • Marketing in a Digital Age (BEP1040)
  • Theory and Practice of Management (BEP1080)

Many of books you need are in the library where you can find both paper and online copies. You can also access many of your law textbooks online using Law Trove (use the ‘Sign in via your Institution’ link on the left-hand side of the main Web page). Many other books are available in electronic formats via the University’s library website, and further materials will be accessible from our digital platform.

You may find that you wish to order some books in hard copy, in which case, these can be obtained from Blackwells bookshop on campus and sent to you or be made available to collect on  campus here. Blackwells are offering a bundle of key books for first-year students, so you may wish to consider purchasing this and we can talk to you about this once you have arrived. You may also be able to find second-hand copies or borrow them from the library.

Please note it is not compulsory for you to buy these books before the start of term.  

• COVID-19 information & advice
• New students website
• Freshers' Week
• Information for parents
• Your studies
• Your health and welfare

What is the campus like?

You can take a virtual tour of the campus with one of our students before your arrival (select ‘Explore by subject’ and then choose ‘LLB Law with Business’).

Please follow the links below to find out more:

• Latest news for international students in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic
• Before You Arrive
• When You arrive in Cornwall
• Airport Collection Service
• Living in the UK - have a look at the ‘Get involved’ section advertising regular events and activities on campus

Original certificates: in week 1, it is important that you bring your original certificates of qualification so that we can register you at the University. Copies of certificates, such as those downloaded from a Web portal for example, cannot be accepted.

We really welcome you to get in touch if you would like to ask questions about your course or how you will study.

We can be contacted at: business-law-cornwall@exeter.ac.uk