Don't study law if all you want to do is make a lot of money. That's the advice of Paul O'Connor, who is dean of UCD's faculty of law. O'Connor fears that many young people are being attracted into law for the wrong reasons. Hearing of the large amounts of money earned by some tribunal barristers, youngsters are deciding that law's the career for them, he says. Other students have developed what O'Connor describes as "highly populist views of law", as a result of watching too many crime series on TV.
People come to university, he says "with grave misconceptions about the law. They don't realise that law is studied in an academic sense. We use analytical and intellectual skills. We study doctrine, principles and perspectives. It's not a trade school. You don't learn how to draw up a will. You need writing skills and the ability to express thought with clarity."
Law, O'Connor points out, is a highly technical subject. People often regard it as arid and dull with little intellectual excitement. "They think it simply comprises a lot of rules which you learn off. People fail to realise the scope for creativity. Law is an uncertain discipline and there's lots of scope for personal interpretation. O'Connor recalls an anecdote of the late John Kelly, who used to tell his students that when he started practising at the bar, he discovered that very few of the cases he dealt with had legal precedents.
Despite what you may be led to believe, law is in fact an area that contains plenty of subject choice. Inevitably, some people will prefer some subjects more than others.
"Constitutional law, jurisprudence and legal history, for example, involve a degree of abstract teaching and analysis. Some students, though, prefer more pragmatic subjects - company law, commercial law or revenue law. Others are looking for a broader perspective. Some subjects, including human rights law, have an altruistic or moral appeal. Others - comparative law - offer an international perspective." It's important, too, UCD's dean of law notes, to disabuse students of the notion that unless you're good at English and good at history, you will be bad at law.
Over the years UCD has established links with law faculties abroad - in Europe, Australia and the US. Students on the civil law programme can apply to spend an additional year on an Erasmus/Socrates programme in a European university, to spend a year as an intern in a US law firm in conjunction with the University of Minnesota or DePaul University, Chicago, or spend a year at the University of Melbourne, Australia. According to O'Connor, up to 40 per cent of students who have completed second year civil law go abroad. "The international dimension is very important and extremely successful," he says, "the academic performance of students improves enormously." Getting students onto the US programmes - which are postgraduate - was a particular coup. `We needed the approval of the American Bar Association. They came over and site-evaluated us and gave us approval for three years." The faculty is now enjoying its second three-year period of approval.
There's been a lot of talk recently about the possibility of medicine becoming a postgraduate programme. But what about law? Should it convert to a postgraduate study - as it is in the US? "Yes", says O'Connor, but he stresses that his view is a personal one. "Law is a complex subject," he says. "Coming straight from school, students have no prior exposure to law - unlike the humanities where they would have done many subjects to a high level. We are producing the youngest law graduates in Europe," he notes. "Because of the central importance of law in our society, it is important that we produce high quality lawyers.
If you are practising law you need intellectual maturity. I believe it would be better if our law graduates had a greater foundation in a range of disciplines." This, he concedes, is unlikely to happen. The HEA would be unwilling to fund a more costly legal education process. UCD's law faculty has come along way since it was first established back in 1908 to educate the Catholic middle classes. For decades, the three-year bachelor of civil law programme was the mainstay of the faculty.
In recent years, though, a number of new programmes have come on stream. Five years ago, the faculty launched the four-year law with business studies degree programme in conjunction with the faculty of commerce.
Then, last autumn, law with French law was launched as a four-year degree course, which combines a BCL and a diploma in French law. At diploma level, UCD now offers a range of programmes, including EU law, domestic arbitration, international arbitration and financial services law. The Irish Centre for Commercial Law Studies was established to provide an interface with the legal and business communities, O'Connor adds. "We are trying to anticipate new emerging areas and provide education in these areas," he says.
UCD law faculty's most recent addition is the Institute of Criminology, which O'Connor says is an important new development in the fight against crime. The institute will operate at postgraduate level and carry out research into crime detection, crime prevention, trial and punishment. Specialised master's programmes in commercial law and European law have also been established. According to O'Connor, the number of graduates who go on to postgraduate study has risen from 5 per cent to 40 per cent over the last ten years. Nonetheless, relatively few students are interested in degrees by research, he says.
"You don't need a PhD to practise at the bar," he says. The lack of financial incentives to encourage students to stay on and get involved in research is another contributing factor. Research is important, O'Connor argues. "Sophisticated, high quality research feeds back into teaching."
Law in the Irish culture he says is important but undervalued. "We have the second oldest common law jurisdiction in the world. The wellbeing of society is founded on law and the concept of justice."
