Why Maynooth?
NUIM Law is for students who are ambitious about what they want to achieve with a law degree. Law graduates are welcome not just in the legal professions but in the NGO sector, in management consulting, in government, in the European institutions, in journalism, in policy development and in business. We are developing a student body equipped to bring credit to the law school in each of these fields. We don’t expect you to know what you want to do, but we do expect you to be ambitious and hard working.
At NUIM Law we appreciate that a successful law graduate is one who has distinguished themselves from their competitors - we take exactly the same approach to being a law school. That’s why we offer options that aren’t available at other law schools – options like taking Tax Law, Commercial Litigation and Banking and Financial Law as undergraduate degree modules. It’s why we make moot courting and legal writing an integral part of our undergraduate programme. It’s why we give you the chance to spend a year at a leading Dublin law firm, or a leading law school in the US or China. And it’s why those who do best in their assessments will be invited to join the editorial team on the Irish Law Review. An NUIM Law graduate gets experience that other Irish law graduates aren’t typically offered.
For graduates, NUIM Law offers a suite of Masters’ degrees designed to complement and add critical value to existing experience and qualifications. Each degree is tailored for a particular kind of graduate. Our Master of Legal Science degree is for graduates from a non-law background seeking to broaden their range of competencies and enhance their professional profile within both the workplace and the job market. Our Master of Laws is designed for law graduates who aspire to be able to offer expertise in a selection of advanced legal subjects. Finally, our Master of International Business Law is a dual degree offered jointly by NUIM Law and the Catholic University of Lyon in which candidates spend one semester in Lyon and one in Maynooth. This English language degree is for law graduates seeking to obtain both a systematic understanding of the critical issues at the forefront of international business law and evidence of the ability to succeed in an international milieu.
A research degree in law is essential for those aspiring to teach law at university level here or abroad. At NUIM Law we offer both M.Litt and PhD degrees in law by research. These offer the opportunity to pursue an extended research project under the supervision of an internationally recognized expert in the field. The academic employment market has recently become highly competitive in Ireland and the UK. With the most recently appointed faculty of any law school in the country, faculty members at NUIM Law are alert to the changing nature of this market and what their students must do maximize potential as future academic applicants.
Work Placements through NUIM Law
NUIM Law has arranged special work placement schemes with leading Dublin law firms. The scheme gives our students the opportunity to experience working in a top commercial legal practice. These opportunities allow students to build their skill sets, their confidence and their effectiveness as team members. A successful placement not only earns our graduates credibility with a particular employer, it shows performance in a workplace environment that other graduates can only promise.
Entry
The CAO offers four ways of joining NUIM Law. You can enter as a pure law student in our LLB programme (starting Sept 2011), as a joint honours student in our Law and Business law programme (BBL), as a joint honours student in our Law and Arts programme (BCL), or, finally, as a general Arts student who chooses Law as a first year course and competes successfully in the first year Law assessments to join the Law and Arts programme in the second year.