How you'll study law as an undergraduate

Our dedicated programme provides you with opportunities to explore potential career paths, gain valuable practical insight, and strengthen your future job applications.

In the past, students have completed work experience with Thames Valley and City law firms (London), barristers, government agencies, not-for-profit organisations, and in-house legal counsel.

A work experience bursary is available to ensure placements are accessible to everyone.

We host regular events including workshops, employer visits, alumni conversations, and career talks, which feature practitioners from a range of fields discussing their work. 

We also arrange employability and commercial awareness workshops where employers use practical activities with students to illustrate the legal work environment.

The annual Client Interviewing Competition aims to promote and develop the skills of law students through client interviewing in an educational context.

The competition is essentially a 'mock interview' role play involving a client whose legal needs must be identified and assessed.

The winners go on to represent the School of Law at the National Client Interviewing Competition.

The Negotiation Competition sets pairs of law students up against one another to negotiate a fictional scenario on behalf of their clients.

Students are judged on how well they work as a team, their communication skills, and the outcome that they negotiate for their clients.

The winners also go on to represent the School of Law at the National Negotiation Competition.

Boyes Turner, a local law firm, provide the training and sponsor the competition.

The ability to network is a necessary skill for virtually any job but for aspiring lawyers who have to make commercial contacts, gain new clients and impress existing clients it is vital.

Each year, a group of approximately 40 students from all year groups visits the Reading offices of Osborne Clarke to learn, from professional lawyers, key survival tips and tricks for networking.

Students then use their new skills to meet and talk to unknown members of staff at Osborne Clarke.

Litigation, the process of taking legal action, is not the only way to resolve disputes, another technique is mediation.

Students undertake commercial mediation training provided by BDBPitmans, where they take it in turns to mediate a variety of problems and role-play the parts of a variety of difficult and needy clients – just like real life.

A team of three students represents Reading in the national Mediation competition.

We encourage you to engage with the many opportunities offered by the Careers and Professional Development Centre, including:

• The RED Award, the University's work experience award
• Our Thrive mentoring scheme for second-year students
• Gaining paid experience through the Reading Internship Scheme and Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (UROP).

The Careers Centre also organises the annual Law Careers Fair, which is exclusively for our students to attend. 

Co-curricular activities are all the additional exercises that you are encouraged to participate in. They include pro bono work, mooting, negotiation, mediation, and client interviewing competitions. There are no costs involved for those students participating in competitions and co-curricular activities and enables you to:

• develop interpersonal skills and build your confidence
• enhance your CV and employability prospects
• benefit from the training and experience offered by law firms
• make friends and have fun outside of the classroom.