Course overview
After the Legal Services Act 2007, how do you stand out from the crowd?
A professional doctorate is a research degree designed for those in professional practice to deepen their understanding and engagement with practice. You may be interested in conventional legal doctrinal research, perhaps in a practice-based area such as funding of litigation; or the law in action in areas such as insolvency law or legal education by rigorous socio-legal data collection and analysis.
In the NTU programme, you will also have the additional advantage of working with and sharing discussion with colleagues from other disciplines, principally social practice and education for additional and unusual insight into their own work and working practices. Exposure, in this multi-disciplinary setting, to challenging theoretical frameworks; philosophies and forms of enquiry is intellectually stimulating and personally inspiring.
A suitable research project for the professional doctorate will have a close relationship with your own practice and identity as a lawyer. It may involve investigating or implementing change, at an organisational or wider level. It will involve you in making decisions about what and how to research, and in exploring the implications of that research, not only for your practice, but for yourself. Consistently with the approach used successfully by Nottingham Law School for almost twenty years, you will be encouraged to engage in a process of continuous reflection on yourself, your practice and your research throughout the programme. We expect you to become expert in your chosen field of investigation, developing and demonstrating your autonomy and confidence as a researching professional through discussion, reading and research investigation.
The aims of the programme are to:
- Provide students with an opportunity to explore both the complex relationships between knowledge, theory and practice, and also the intricate nexus of understanding the world and changing it.
- Develop students' ability to design and implement a research project at the boundaries of knowledge of their professional and educational fields.
- Provide students with an opportunity to develop their judgement, foresight and problem analysis by applying theoretical and philosophically tuned forensic skills to the research material derived from their investigations.
- Provide students with an opportunity to develop as both reflective and reflexive practitioners who have the intellectual and personal adaptability to be able to deal with the complexities of organisational change and ambiguity.
- Provide students with an opportunity to develop communication skills which enables participants to communicate effectively with both academics and practitioners from the world of education and the communities in which people live, and to act as mediators between the constituencies involved.
In order to meet these aims the programme of study has been structured around the process of research.
Admission to the programme will be by application and interview. International students are welcome (subject to English language requirements). You do not have to be a qualified lawyer to achieve the D Legal Prac award, but should be involved in some form of legal practice, e.g. in the in-house, academic (including vocational), regulatory or not-for-profit sectors.
Contact details
Research Administrator (ProfDs)
Business, Law and Social Sciences
Graduate School
Nottingham Trent University.
Telephone: +44 (0)115 848 8117
Email
Nottingham Law School website
Please note the following information for applicants
Teaching and Learning
The programme is structured in phases over, typically, a three-year period.
Year one
Document one: students attend a two day intensive workshop which introduces the programme and explores the fundamental scaffolding of a research project: aims, research questions, scope of literature review. Following this, students are allocated to a supervisory team for support and, following advice from that team, write and submit for assessment a 5,000 word research proposal.
Document two: students attend two two-day intensive workshops on epistemology and identity. This supports students towards document two, a comprehensive and critically analysed literature review of 15,000 words.
Year two
Documents three and four: students attend four two-day intensive workshops on designing research. This supports students towards documents three and four, each of 15,000 words, reporting on two small research studies which will lead to and inform the final thesis.
Students who exit at this stage, having successfully completed the first four documents, will normally be eligible for an MPhil award. Students who choose to progress will be required to write a proposal for research in year three (including reflections from years one and two) as a basis for a short viva voce examination.
Year three
Documents four and five: students attend one two-day intensive workshop but are otherwise working autonomously with their supervisors, towards completion of document five, the final 30,000 word thesis and document six, a reflective report. These are assessed by viva voce examination, involving an external and an internal examiner.
Student support is critical to the success of mature, busy part-time lawyers who have demanding lives both inside and outside the office. Whilst we know that lawyers have distinct abilities in attention to detail, clarity of writing and stamina and the programme team is experienced in making the best of those skills and channelling them into the arena of formal academic research. Support and discussion is a critical part of the regular workshop sessions and occasional irregular meetings. In addition, you will be allocated a supervisory team for personal support, suggestions and feedback on draft documents. Students are also encouraged to form cross-disciplinary study circles of their peers for mutual support.
There is currently no careers information available for this course.
Please contact the Professional Doctoral Programme Administrator, Nottingham Trent University Graduate School by email or Telephone +44 (0)115 848 8124. Further information can found at the Graduate School website.
Applicants for the Doctorate in Legal Practice are asked to include, in their application form, a paragraph indicating the area of law or practice they are interested in researching and any ideas they may have had about their project as a whole.
