Thankyou izzy88. My only concern with Sydney is that amongst a large cohort, i feel that opportunities will be restricted, such as mooting, internships and discussion. Also, what can you say about the curriculum? Furthermore, for one with an ambition and ardour for criminal law, what does the uni have to offer?
Thanks, it's been difficult finding legitimate information amongst propaganda. Sorry if the questions are annoying.
Although class sizes may be large, I am not sure whether USYD law is necessarily bigger than UNSW law. USYD law to my (relatively uninformed knowledge), has perhaps 250 undergrad LLB students each year.
Mooting is not done in classes, but is instead an extra-curricular activity generally organised through the USYD student law society. I have not been involved in mooting, but there are both mooting introduction/training courses run each year, and there appear to be about a dozen moots to get involved in. Here is a link to the SULS (Sydney University law Society) competitions page -
http://suls.org.au/competitions/internal.html if you click on the internal competitions page, there appear to be about 5 different moots run each semester. I know people who have been involved in mooting, and have liked it. But it is outside of the law degree as such. There is however one subject that is a moot and that is the International Jessup Moot that runs over the summer holidays. I'm not sure if you can get credit for other moots, I don't think so.
Internships are also separate to classes or even the university (and I believe this would be similar at UNSW). Job opportunities and internships/clerkships are advertised through the law school (basically involves students getting forwarded emails with job ads/opportunities attached - this is actually quite frequent and sometimes we can get a dozen emails a week this way!). There are also some internships in special areas which are organised by the academics if they require student help for research eg. The Constitutional Reform Unit which wants interns for one day a week in semester 2. Some academics will also hire students as researches, but this is on a case by case basis, and you generally approach individual lecturers.
The main clerkship season though is for penultimate year students and is officially run through the NSW Law Society, and the Law Firms. The university really has no involvement in this. However the student law society will release publications on what each firm does, past experiences from students, and help for cv's and cover letters etc.
Discussion in class really depends on the lecturer, what their style is, and how big the class is. There are some classes which are basically pure discussion based (eg. most jurisprudence subjects, of which you have to take one in 5th year). Most of the black letter law style subjects (corporations, evidence, contract, torts) will have problem questions every week or two weeks, that should be looked at by students before the class, and then will be gone through in class. Some lecturers/tutors will allocate problem questions to particular students or group of students to do each week, and others will just ask anyone. There is no standard way a law subject is run. Especially for electives in 5th year - very dependent on the lecturer and what style they like. Some use the socratic method, but students don't really tend to like this when this occurs - and can lead to some very awkward silences.
I guess the only complication of the usyd curriculum is that with a change a couple of years ago from 3 subjects a semester to 4 subjects a semester (a university wide thing), some compulsory usyd law subjects were calved up. So for example, you do torts in first year, contracts in second year, and then you have a bits and pieces 'torts and contracts II' course in third year. Its actually not that bad, and it means you get revision of those courses in third year after you've left it for a bit, so it works out in the end. Similar situation with 'public law' which you do in second or third year, which is the beginnings of constitutional law and administrative law, and then you do those proper subjects later in fourth year.
hope that helps.
As for the curriculum - well I'm not really sure how different nsw law schools will actually be in the compulsory material that is taught. Every law school has to teach certain things to be accredited (effectively) - generally called the 'Priestely 11': Criminal law, Torts, Contracts, Property, Equity, Administrative Law, Constitutional law, civil procedure, evidence, corporations law, and legal ethics. They aim to give you the basics in that topic, so that if you had to go on further, than you would know where to look, what the law is founded on, how to interpret statute etc. As for electives, they are extremely varied, and can differ from year to year as lecturers tend to have a pet topic or course they teach, so if they are not there that semester, the subject won't be taught. A list of electives for this year at USYD can be found here:
http://sydney.edu.au/law/fstudent/undergrad/uos.shtml
Specific to criminal law, I don't really know much about. I did the crim compulsory subject and realised it wasn't really for me - I am more into the corporate law stuff. There are advanced criminal law units that are offered as electives, and advanced evidence subjects as well.
oh dear sorry for such a long post.
