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
• Join our University of Exeter, Cornwall Offer Holders Facebook page. This will allow you to meet and interact with fellow offer holders and find out any information about the campus, prior to joining us in September.

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

Welcome Week 2023: Monday 18 September - Friday 22 September

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!

During Welcome Week you should attend the Academic Induction events and activities for your subject/s, as detailed below. If there is any reason why you may not be here for Welcome Week, please contact the Penryn Hub, who support History Penryn students, as soon as possible by emailing info.penryn@exeter.ac.uk.

For information regarding the Student’s Union and Society-led events during Welcome Week, visit the Falmouth and Exeter Student’s Union website. Events (thesu.org.uk).

Please check your academic timetable during Welcome Week, so that you know exactly where and when you need to attend your first classes and lectures! If you have any timetable-related problems or questions, please contact the Penryn Hub at info.penryn@exeter.ac.uk.

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.

On Monday, 18th September, ‘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. In the afternoon, 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, 19th and Thursday, 21st September your cohort will be divided into five groups (of around 45 students each) and will then take part in five activities (three on each day). The activities will be as follows:

• Activity 1: Miracle Theatre Workshop: Join Miracle Theatre for activities around getting to know people, remembering their names and ‘faking it until you make it’ when doing new things.
• Activity 2: Active Plus Bootcamp: The Active Plus will take you through a mini teamwork bootcamp
• Activity 3: Learning at Exeter (Thrive): An introduction to how you learn as an undergraduate at Exeter and how to get the most out of your degree.
• Activity 4: Library Escape Room: Take part in a virtual escape room to allow you to explore the library spaces and its resources
• Activity 5: Exeter Learning Environment and Campus Tour Our second and third years lead this session on how to find your way around our virtual campus (ELE – which is our Moodle / Google Classroom) and the Penryn 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 here safe and well, and we look forward to seeing you soon!

Your induction week at the Law School (beginning on 25^th September) is aimed at easing you into university life as a law with business undergraduate.

During the Law School induction you will attend a mix of lectures and seminars. Do check your timetable to find your seminar group and times/places of all your classes. In these lectures and seminars, you will cover some of the essential skills that a law student needs, focusing on teamwork, reading and note taking and problem solving.  In addition to these classes, throughout the week you will work with your ‘Law Firm’ (and we’ll tell you more about how you will work in firms of about ten students throughout the term when you get here) on a ‘Hack’.

So, 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.

And what is it for?  

Hacks are often used to introduce new people to the way of working within a company or organisation, and 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 to ease you into thinking like a lawyer.

Your challenge

This year’s hack is based broadly on the ‘Housing Crisis’ and in particular the law on no-fault evictions. We will explore the problem with you, guide you to research what the law is and what the recent proposals for reform are and challenge you to come up with your own legal solutions to the ‘Housing Crisis’.

The Hack Final!

You will present your solutions together as a law firm at the Hack Final on Friday, 29th September, where one firm will be crowned the winners of the Hack 2023! 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), Firm 6 (2021) and Firm 3 (2022) but each year so far, it has been a hard to choose a winner! Will your firm be next to create a valuable solution to one of the biggest problems law faces? 

The induction week is 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. 

Further ‘Induction’ Activities!

There will be further induction activities in week 4 (getting you going with the different referencing systems used in Law and Business) and week 5 (working with our librarians on how to find legal sources). At the end of week 5 we will also ask you to complete a task to earn your certificate of ‘Completion of Induction’- but more on this when you get here!

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.  

• New students website
• Welcome 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:

• Before You Arrive
• Visa Webinars
• Global Chums Mentoring Scheme
• Accomodation
• 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: HaSSCornwall-Education@exeter.ac.uk

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