Law with Sociology with a Year in Industry

Law with sociology is a combination that examines the rules by which society organises itself and the social forces that shape, contest and are shaped by those rules. Law provides a rigorous grounding in legal doctrine and reasoning, covering the fundamental principles of justice, equity and equality within English and European legal frameworks. Sociology brings a critical social scientific perspective, examining institutions of power, inequality, culture and social change, including the ways in which law functions as a social institution rather than a purely neutral technical system.

Together the disciplines allow you to understand both what the law says and what it does in practice.

At Royal Holloway, University of London this four-year, full-time programme includes a year in industry and a year abroad, giving you professional experience alongside international academic study. You will explore core legal subjects including contract, tort, criminal law and constitutional frameworks, while also engaging with sociological debates about class, gender, race, deviance and social policy. The programme prepares you both for legal professional training and for careers in which critical understanding of social structures and legal frameworks is valued, without being narrowly vocational in its orientation.

Graduates are well positioned to pursue the additional professional training required for careers as solicitors, barristers or legal executives, and the dual grounding in law and social science is valued in criminal justice, policy research, public affairs, human rights organisations, NGOs and the voluntary sector. Many graduates go on to postgraduate study in law, criminology, social policy or related fields, and the analytical skills the programme develops, close reading of complex texts, structured argumentation and critical evaluation of evidence, transfer well across a wide range of professional environments.