Number of places: 100 FT, 24 PT

The law school campus, situated in the centre of Newcastle, houses state-of-the-art facilities including WiFi throughout, several mock courtrooms and a popular student café– all part of a £76m redevelopment in 2007.

In addition to the usual three-year LLB, the law school also offers a four-year exempting law degree that incorporates the academic LLB and professional BPTC course for students who know early that the Bar is for them. As a result, full and part-time BPTC students study alongside undergraduates. BPTC students can also study towards an LLM in Advanced Legal Practice. Full-timers normally attend four days a week, with Friday designated as a research day and Wednesday as a practitioner evening with members of the Bar speaking on recent developments and offering careers advice. Part-time students can attend on a Monday, Tuesday or Thursday. The majority of students studying the BPTC at Northumbria come from the region, with a handful of international students also thrown into the mix. Around 90% of staff are barristers, of which a large majority still practise, which helps keep the course current.

The school prides itself on its pastoral care and every student is assigned a guidance tutor with whom they meet regularly. The Bar in Newcastle is not as well developed as in certain other UK cities, so there is an acute shortage of local pupillages. Still, the school’s experienced careers service organises networking events with local chambers and practitioners, group marshalling and a mentoring scheme with alumni. Mock pupillage interviews and a CV workshop on the induction programme should also steer students in the right direction. The school runs a Student Law Office which is a compulsory part of the exempting law degree and welcomes BPTC students in the ‘option’ phase of the course. Here, students take on live cases, researching, preparing and even presenting them in court on behalf of clients. The law school’s ‘Grey Society’ organises a mix of social and serious activities from pub crawls to a law ball and sports to mock trials and mooting competitions.