Hi! I’m Sadia and I am a first year law student at Brasenose College. I knew law was the perfect subject for me as it combined a lot of my favourite aspects of academia – debating, logical reasoning, critical thinking and analysis.
My interview experience was very memorable: after my first interview, I went straight to my room and cried, and for my second interview, I almost missed my pre-reading time. There are some valuable lessons to be learnt from this experience. Firstly, for law interviews, there is usually going to be one interview that is harder (perhaps because of the scenario you will be given or the tutor you are interviewed by) and if you are like me, that interview may be the first one you do. So, if you feel that a tutor is grilling you particularly hard during an interview, or giving you seemingly impossible scenarios, don’t feel disheartened, usually, this is a good sign. The most important thing to do in these situations is to keep talking. Ensure to explain your thinking and back up your arguments – do not feel afraid to stick to your position if you are sure that you have argued it well. Equally, remember it is okay to change your position if you feel that new evidence or a different scenario means that it has to change – just ensure you explain why you have changed your position. If you need clarity on a question, ask! Interviews resemble what tutorials are like so make sure to treat it like one.
Tutors aren’t looking for you to know the right answer, they simply want to see if you are teachable and if you can convincingly make an argument. One of the best ways to prepare for law interviews is to get used to reading case judgements so ensure to familiarise yourself with key aspects of them: what is the key issue of law being debated, can you summarise the case in a few sentences, are you able to identify what court it is held in and how this may affect the judgement made, what ruling have the judges applied etc. Finally, make sure to remember to get to your pre-reading room in time!
One of the easiest ways to organise a personal statement for law is to split it up into themes. For my first paragraph, I explained what caused me to want to study law and how I built on this desire through things like attending lectures and writing an EPQ. As debating about international law is what made me want to study law, this formed the theme for my first paragraph. My second paragraph focussed on EU law and I explained how I explored it through work experience, joining law programmes and reading books. My third paragraph was based on a key area of interest – either your second or third paragraph should focus on a specific area of law/a specific case where you explain how you explored that (was it an EPQ? Was it your own individual research project?), what you learned from it and what your opinions/reflections are on that law/case. I decided my theme for my third paragraph would be contract law and I spoke in detail about Ruxley v Forsyth. Finally, your fourth paragraph should be on your extracurricular activities e.g. sports you play. I linked the extracurricular activities I did to the skills they helped me to develop and explained how these are transferrable skills which would be beneficial for a law student.
Studying law at Oxford is very different to what I imagined. Firstly, it is extremely independent: Tutors like explaining that their purpose isn’t to teach you the law as that is something you will do on your own through completing the reading lists and writing the essays. Their role is to help clarify key issues in the law, any questions you may have and discuss and debate the law in depth with you. Usually, you will learn two modules at the same time. For example, I had one Roman law tutorial every week (it was 1 hour long) and a Criminal law tutorial every two weeks (which was 1hr 30mins). As you don’t get many contact hours, studying law means you can be very flexible with your time. Lectures are not compulsory, they are optional. I usually have two or three essays to write a week and, during your first year, you will also have to do the Legal Research and Mooting Skills Programme and do tasks for that too. So, as you can see, an Oxford Law degree is very intense, but as long as you are genuinely interested in it, there is a lot to enjoy.