 Why should you study law at university? My name is Graham Virgo, and I'm going to answer that question over the next few minutes. If you want to become a practicing lawyer, you don't need to read law at university. You can read another subject at university and then do a one-year conversion course. But a lot of people decide that they don't want to read another subject at university. They want to learn about law at university, study it as an academic degree and then go and become a practicing lawyer. But quite a few other people think I don't want to be a practicing lawyer, but I'm interested in law and I want to study law at university as an academic subject. In both cases, whether you want to be a practicing lawyer, you're not sure about being a practicing lawyer or you're absolutely clear that you don't want to practice law, studying law at university is a perfectly legitimate subject for academic study. And there are actually all sorts of advantages and benefits from studying law at university, regardless of what you want to do. When you study law, you do acquire legal knowledge. That is an inevitable part of a law degree. You acquire knowledge about different rules and about different processes. But that's only a very small part of what academic study of law actually involves. When you study law, what you're actually doing is learning to think like a lawyer and thinking like a lawyer is, of course, incredibly important if you want to become a practicing lawyer. But it also is important, even if you don't want to practice law, because thinking like a lawyer can give you all sorts of skills and abilities that can be of use to all sorts of different professions. So what does thinking like a lawyer actually involve? It requires you to analyze problems, to think about what the nature of the problem actually is, to think about what the law actually says, and then to apply the law, as you understand it, to problems to identify appropriate solutions. Now, when you're trying to work out what the law says, I think really important part of that involves interpretation, working out that when you read a statute, trying to interpret what the words mean, when you're interpreting a contract, working out what the parties intended, and when you're reading judgments of judges from cases, trying to work out what the judges meant in those judgments. There are other skills you require when you're studying law, particularly legal writing skills, the ability to construct a sensible, coherent and logical argument, the ability to use all sorts of different materials to construct a legal argument. And also when you study law, you spend a lot of your time researching law and developing your research abilities, whether that involves searching for materials on the web or in a law library. And when you found those materials, actually working out what you're going to do with them. So when you study law, you learn to think and to work like a lawyer. When you study law, you don't just take the law at face value, you're also encouraged to develop your critical and analytical abilities. When you study law, you actually work out what the law says on a particular point. But then you need to stand back and think, what is the context in which that law has developed? What is the law actually trying to do? What is Parliament saying and trying to achieve when it enacts a particular statute? Or what are judges trying to do when they reach a particular decision? And the social, political and economic context of the law is incredibly important. But when you study law, you also step back further and think, is the law actually right? Do I like the result that I've achieved in this particular case? And if you think the law isn't right, it's entirely appropriate, and you are encouraged to do this, to start thinking, how can we improve the law? How can the judges use their resources and their abilities to develop the law to make it fairer and more effective? And similarly, how should Parliament develop the law? How should Parliament develop the law? Create new laws and maybe abolish old laws that aren't needed anymore. And when you study law, you're not just concerned with law in England and Wales. You're concerned with law in other jurisdictions. You compare English law with the law in other jurisdictions. And you also consider international law, how law works between states, how the United Nations works and deals with global issues. And when you study law, you're not just concerned with law as it is today. You're concerned with law as it has developed from many, many years ago. You're concerned with the development of legal history. Going way back to Roman times and then moving forward to contemporary law. And often by studying law a long time ago, you can get a much better idea of how the law works today. And when you're studying law, you're not just concerned with law in a bubble. You're concerned with all sorts of other disciplines as well. Law students engage with big philosophical and ethical issues. They're concerned with economics. They're concerned with sociology and social policy. So when you study law, you are concerned with working out what the law says. Working out what the legal rules are. But there's so much more to the study of law than that. Studying law enables you to develop really important skills in terms of thinking and writing and analysis and criticism. Studying law at university is very exciting, very dynamic, very important and very interesting.