Advanced Legal Research LLM
London, United Kingdom
DURATION
1 Years
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
Request application deadline
EARLIEST START DATE
Sep 2025
TUITION FEES
GBP 17,500
STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
Introduction
In the face of global challenges, from climate change to disruptive digital technology, the need for innovative and sustainable legal solutions has never been greater. Our Advanced Legal Research LLM is a unique postgraduate course designed to produce outstanding professional legal researchers who will generate professional, academic, policy-focused, and creative research in response to the needs, problems, and challenges of today and tomorrow.
Legal research is a field with several job opportunities, but the route to a career in legal research can often be unclear. This practical course seeks to address this gap by teaching you both the theory and practice of conducting advanced legal research. You’ll develop a broad foundation of the skills and knowledge required to become an agile researcher, whether you wish to progress onto further research through a PhD or apply your learning to a research role in a variety of sectors.
While the broad nature of the course will allow you to apply your research skills to a variety of fields, the final project will allow you to specialise in an area of your choosing through writing a dissertation or producing a more creative project through multimedia or other non-traditional methods.
This is a practical course focused on producing engaged professionals who, upon graduation, will contribute to societal change through impactful, solution-orientated legal research.
Top reasons to study with us:
- Be part of a collaborative research community, building academic and professional networks that are focused on making a positive change.
- Specialise in an area of your interest for your final project, with the choice to produce a dissertation or a unique, creative project using multimedia or other methods.
- Future-proof your career by exploring advanced methodologies and innovative strategies, including the use of AI tools in legal research and communication.
- Our assessment methods draw on real-world examples of advanced legal research, providing you with the opportunity to gain experience in both traditional and cutting-edge legal research skills and different forms of research practice, output, and communication
Admissions
Curriculum
The six core modules structure your learning around key dimensions of life as an advanced legal researcher, helping you to develop an understanding of cutting-edge legal perspectives and build key legal research skills. The range of option modules provides the opportunity to develop specialist doctrinal or theoretical knowledge in a particular area of interest, rounding out your development as an advanced legal researcher.
The following subjects are indicative of what you will study on this course.
Core modules
- Advanced Legal Research Project
- Advanced Research Methods in Law
- Innovation, Technology and Research Communication
- New Normativities and Legal Theory
- Project Design and Development
- The Professional Legal Researcher
Option modules
The course offers a wide range of option modules from among the School's key postgraduate specialisms (commercial law, entertainment law, law and technology, and international law), and beyond. All option modules are listed in the programme specification, but here are some examples:
- International Commercial Law
- Business and Human Rights
- International Commercial Arbitration
- Law of Digital Entertainment and Social Media
- Regulating the Night-Time Economy
- Intellectual Property
- Law and Data
- Law and Technoscientific Expertise
- Law and Governance of Technological Risk
- International Humanitarian Law
- International Human Rights Law
- International Energy and Climate Change Law
Program Tuition Fee
Career Opportunities
This course provides a pathway to further advanced legal research, to specialist research positions within legal and nonlegal professional spaces, to positions within policy and the creative industries, and collaborations between legal research and emerging areas of the economy.
Industry links
Westminster Law School and its student law societies provide a series of career and subject-specialist workshops and events throughout the academic year. These are designed to support your academic knowledge by giving insight into the expectations of employers at interviews and in the workplace. Alumni panels provide the opportunity to network with industry professionals while teaching will be supplemented by guest speakers from diverse areas of professional legal research.
Graduate employers
Graduates from this course will be prepared to work at organisations such as:
- Think tanks, policy, and lobbying organisations
- Technology companies
- Consulting firms
- Government ministries
- International organisations
- NGOs
- Lobbying
- Universities
Job roles
This course will prepare you for roles in a variety of areas, including:
- Legal researcher
- Law-informed generalist researcher
- Civil service
- Lobbyist
- Consultant
- Policy researcher/advocate
- PhD candidate