Fundamentals of a Law Degree: Criminal Law

The Fundamentals of a Law Degree: Criminal Law

When you ask a person about the law, 9 times out of 10, they will relate their answer to criminal law in some form. It's correct to say that the criminal law is a very large part of law and justice in England and Wales and so this increases the emphasis on studying criminal law at the beginning of a law degree. Criminal law runs through the backbone of the English legal system with an average of 400,000 cases passing through the courts a year. Social awareness of criminal cases and the recent increase in the availability and quality of technology has led to even more awareness surrounding cases across the courts.

At a foundation level, criminal law in most cases is taught at a basic level at a-level showing students the very basics of how the functions of a court and the basics of the criminal justice system in order to understand crime and the criminal process. The use of A-levels to ease law students into criminal law is a good way to introduce a student into the life of a criminal solicitor or barrister on a day to day basis. Criminal law and the way its taught, introduce core values to students who will go on to be the lawyers of tomorrow. A-level law propels students into their degree with the skills they need to unpick and apply transferrable skills from other subjects. For instance, the ability to deconstruct a problem [question] and understand what an examiner is looking for is an invaluable skill when it comes to your university degree and all of the other subjects you may go onto study.

When you have passed your A-levels with flying colours (we’re sure) and you get into your chosen university to do law you’ll find that in most cases criminal law is a first-year core module on your course. This is because criminal law modules are one of the fundamental modules required for a qualifying law degree. You may ask why? Well, criminal law as a stated above has its roots within society and societal norms as most of society are aware that crime is wrong. However, even tho this is the case criminal law is one of the biggest areas of law with the highest level of cases passing through the courts.

Criminal law allows for not only the study of crime but also the study of criminals and why they act in the way they did. These skills of evaluation not only help on law courses but creates and improves criminological skills for criminologists as well. Being critical in your thinking when deciding what type of crime has been committed is a very good skill to improve and adapt for future modules that rely on this greatly.

Criminal law is a very good area of law to work in when you’ve passed your degree, in fact, thousands of people go to work in criminal courts each year. There are many different positions and roles that you can follow from being a civil servant to a barrister as well as a criminal solicitor; they are all very well-respected and interesting jobs to have. Not only is this a good area to work in but criminal law allows you to work within many different areas alongside crime it’s the case that many criminal cases run alongside other non-criminal and mostly tortious cases giving an opportunity for workers to divulge their experiences.

However, it has to be said that those working in the criminal profession work hard and there are not always the grand wages that other areas can offer, and the ever-evolving struggles surrounding legal-aid and criminal law (all perfectly explained by The Secret Barrister in his book which can be bought here) which is leading more and more people away from this area of the profession.

Whether or not criminal law is your true passion, or just a core module that you must do during your first year at university, the benefits that it can provide are worth trying hard, as the skills you will develop from learning about the legal process and approaches to problem questions are skills that are transferrable to pretty much any law based module that you may take later on!