Education

Singapore Management University (SMU): Law

Category Law, Singapore, Singapore Management University (SMU), Undergraduate
Tags Law, Singapore Management University, SMU

The SMU Law School believes that legal education with a contextual orientation and a cross-border appreciation will enable its law graduates to be better commercial and corporate lawyers. In addition to corporate and commercial law practice in a local and offshore law firms, SMU law graduates can choose to work in a wide array of other legal fields including legal practice in non-corporate and commercial fields such as criminal law and family law. They can also choose to work in other law-related jobs such as in-house counsel work in an MNC or any corporate organisation, state counsel/prosecution and judicial work in the Singapore Legal Service and international legal practice in a foreign law firm or organisation.

To achieve this, the LL.B curriculum, which was formulated by legal academics and practitioners after extensive discussions, and endorsed by Singapore ’s Board of Legal Education and Ministry of Law, comprises law courses as well as specially selected law-related courses. This mix of law and law-related courses consists of a compulsory component of law courses (referred as Law Core courses), an optional component of law courses (referred to as Law Electives) and a compulsory component of law-related courses (referred to as compulsory law-related courses). The law-related courses in particular will help provide the desired contextual and cross-border knowledge and expertise.

The SMU Law School will also require its law students to take a 10-week internship with a law firm, the legal department of Government-linked Corporations / Multi-national Corporations, or a public sector regulatory body and a 2-week (80 hour) attachment at a Voluntary Welfare Organisation (VWO) or organisations involved in pro-bono and legal aid work. Other organisations, bodies and companies may be added to the internship programme and 2-week attachment from time to time.

A distinctive feature of the LL.B programme is that legal practitioners from law firms would be invited to participate in the classroom teaching of LL.B courses. This provides our students the opportunity to learn first-hand, their expertise and experience.

Teaching Approach

The LL.B programme bears the SMU’s distinctives of holistic learning, active seminar-style pedagogy and international and practical exposure, amongst others. Classes are deliberately kept small, especially in the first year of study. Significant assessment weightage is allocated to class participation, term assignments, oral and written presentations, whilst the end of term written examination (usually open book) typically accounts for a maximum of 50% of the final grade in a course.

Award of the LL.B Degree

The LL.B is a four-year meritorious honours programme. On successful completion of the LL.B programme, students will be awarded the LL.B degree accordingly, depending on their overall performance: LL.B (merit), LL.B (high merit), LL.B cum laude (with distinction), LL.B magna cum laude (with high distinction) or LL.B summa cum laude (with highest distinction).

A Pass degree with merit will be the minimum criteria for legal practice in Singapore.