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Good morning. My name is Graham Virgo and this is Janet O'Sullivan and we are going
to give you some legal problems. You've heard a little bit already about how we teach in
this faculty: with lectures and with supervisions. And what we really want to try and do in this
session is to give you an idea as to what it's like to be in a supervision. Now, this
is somewhat artificial because supervisions involve small groups of students, typically
three or four students, having done a lot of preparation in advance, having read textbooks
and cases and articles, and then they come to the supervision ready to talk about the
law that they have been reading about. So this is somewhat artificial but we want to
turn this room into a supervision and we want you all to consider some legal problems. Now,
hopefully you all picked up a plastic bag when you came and in that plastic bag there
should be a piece of paper headed "Cambridge Law Open Day 2013 -- Legal Problems". And
there are five problems on the sheet. We may not have time to look at all of those problems
but we certainly want to go through some of them with you.
Now, as I say, in a supervision proper, students will have done some preparation beforehand
and we are assuming one, that you've done no preparation and two, that you know no law
at all. This is not a test at all about legal knowledge, but for this session to work we
are really relying on audience participation. We are going to give you the law on a particular
matter and we want you then to start thinking like lawyers. Now, what do I mean by "thinking
like lawyers"? Well, when you think like lawyers and when you are studying law, what you're
actually doing is first working out what the law actually is, and that's important, but
frankly, that's the most unimaginative and sometimes rather boring part of legal study,
but it's inevitable. But when you know what the law is then the fun starts because then
you have to interpret the law, work out what the judges have said, what the statutes mean.
You then have to apply the law to particular problems, you have to analyse the law. Maybe
there's no rule that deals with a particular issue that you are concerned with. And when
you are studying law you don't just take the law at face value, you step back a bit and
you criticise the law and you try and work out whether the law is satisfactory and it
may be, but you may think it's not and you've got to say why it's not satisfactory and also
what you would do to improve the law.
So that's really what I want you to think about now. What is the law, apply the law,
analyse the law and criticise the law; and we'll give you a chance to do that as we go
through these problems. Now, just a word, a bit of warning but also of encouragement,
as I say, we're expecting audience participation. We are both nice people and we're not going
to pick on anybody unless there is absolute silence, then we might, but we really don't
want to. But sometimes we've done this before and people have got very, very enthusiastic
so please don't be offended if we cut you off just to enable more people to participate.
And don't worry either as to whether what you're saying is right or wrong. It doesn't
really matter whether you come up with the wrong answer, it's your opinion that matters.
Well, that's not quite right, if you disagree with us, then you are by definition wrong,
so what we say must be right, okay? That's the only important point to emphasise.
So let's go on to the very first problem. A problem of the criminal law, let me read
it out first. "David, an employee in Val's shop, takes £50 from the till when the shop
closes on Saturday afternoon, confidently expecting to be able to replace the money
on Monday when it opens. He is robbed on his way home from the pub on Saturday night and
is unable to replace the money. Is David guilty of theft?" Now, just to help you a bit, on
the sheets you've got the definition of theft. This is what English law says theft is: it
is dishonestly appropriating property belonging to another with an intention to permanently
deprive the other of it. Those are the elements of theft: dishonestly appropriating property
belonging to another with an intention to permanently deprive the other of it. And one
element there I have defined in a bit more detail, that is dishonesty, and dishonesty
is defined as conduct which the reasonable person would consider to be dishonest, and
the defendant is aware that the reasonable person would consider it to be dishonest.
So that's the definition of theft. Let me leave this open to you then: do you think
David is guilty of theft? Anybody want to have a go? Yes?
I don't think he had the intention to permanently deprive ... the money or whether he will replace
it.
Okay, because he intended to take the £50, spend it and then go and get another £50
and put it back. So you're saying that -- and I can quite see that and focusing -- very
good -- on intention to permanently deprive -- he can't be guilty of theft. Do you all
agree with that analysis? So therefore, this is really easy. This is perfectly fine, we
don't need to worry about dishonesty, it's just there's no intention to permanently deprive
and it can't be theft. And that means if any of you work in a shop on a Saturday or help
out in a pub or a restaurant, you can put your hand in the till when you're shutting
up, take as much money as you like and as long as you intend to repay that amount you're
not guilty of anything. So maybe there's a policy issue there. We may think, "Ah, maybe
we do want to criminalise this, maybe we don't." Does anybody think there is actually an intention
to permanently deprive? Yes?
It's not the same £50.
Okay.
He is permanently depriving the shop of those £50 because he wants to put another £50—
Okay.
—that he does not yet have.
Okay. So you are quite right, there is absolutely no intention, taking the... we're assuming
that what he says is true, no intention to permanently deprive of £50 as the matter
of value of the money he intends to repay the amount but he does intend to permanently
deprive of a £50 note, of the piece of paper and that actually raises quite a nice issue
as to what we mean by property. What is the property in money? Is it just the value or
is it just the piece of paper or could it be both? Could money be two types of property:
the paper and the value? And if it is the paper, if that is at least one part of the
property, he does intend to permanently deprive of property, because he doesn't intend to
put that £50 note back. And I will actually tell you that's what English law says: money
is both the value and the piece of paper. So therefore he could be guilty of stealing
the note, the £50 note. Okay. Does that mean he's guilty of theft? Yes?
No, because it would also have to be dishonest.
Okay. So if we're looking at the definition, I haven't given you the definition of appropriation
but let's just say that means for now taking something. He's taking property, belongs to
somebody else, he intends to permanently deprive the shop of that piece of paper, and then
the question is dishonesty. So going to that definition of dishonesty, do you think that
David is dishonest? Yes?
Well, he didn't ask Val for permission so it could just be classed as dishonesty because
he didn't ask specifically.
Okay. Well, certainly if he did ask Val, "Do you mind if I borrow £50 and I will repay
that amount on Monday", I think we'd probably say that's fine, okay, and he hasn't done
that. Does it necessarily follow that he's dishonest, do you think? Yes?
It suggests that he didn't ask for it, so it suggests that he knew that she might refuse
so he didn't give her the chance.
Okay. So therefore that suggests dishonest, does it? Okay. Any other views? Yes?
I think we'd have to know a bit more before we said that he didn't ask therefore he is
dishonest because, okay, let's say she wasn't in the shop on Saturday afternoon so maybe
it wouldn't have been possible for him to ask—
Okay.
—and he reckoned she would have been fine with that.
And maybe if he certainly thought, "Ah, I can't ask her because she's not here but I'm
sure she wouldn't mind" that may make it honest rather than dishonest. But what about this
definition, the one I've given you on the sheet? Dishonesty is defined as conduct which
the reasonable person would consider to be dishonest and the defendant is aware that
the reasonable person would consider it to be dishonest. If you apply that, what's your
conclusion? Yes?
Did he actually know that he was being dishonest? What is his actual mental thought process?
Does he know...
Okay.
...personally that it's wrong to do that.
Okay. And that we would need in court, we need to have him there and ask questions and
work that out. But the first part of that definition is, is the conduct which the reasonable
person would consider to be dishonest? Now, who is the reasonable person? Do you know?
Do you want to have a guess?
Society?
Society, okay. It's a bit big.
Jury?
Okay, good. So in a criminal trial it's the jury representing society and reasonable people
and for present purposes it's you lot. I'm assuming you are all reasonable people. So
would you consider this conduct dishonest, not knowing anything else?
Yes
GV: You'd say it's dishonest. Do any of you work in a shop or work in a bar or a restaurant
and if you do and you did this, would you be in trouble, do you think? Okay, there's
quite a few people nodding their heads, okay. So we're saying reasonable people would consider
this to be dishonest but the question then is whether he, whether David, considers it
to... not considers it to be dishonest, but thinks reasonable people would consider it
to be dishonest. It's not his own assessment of his conduct, it's what he thinks reasonable
people would think. Now, if you were David and you were just going out on Saturday night
and you didn't have any money and you did this, would you satisfy that definition, do
you think? You can say whatever you like here. Yes?
Doesn't it also depend if he's done this regularly anyway? If he does this every Saturday, he
takes £50 and returns it on the following Monday?
Okay. If he's done it with the knowledge of Val and it was certainly with her permission,
I think that makes it honest. Either with her knowledge and she's never said anything,
that may make it honest, but if he's doing it surreptitiously all the time, I don't think
that will help him necessarily. It's just trying it so many times until one time he's
caught. Let me give you another example just to test this. Do you think Robin Hood was
dishonest in robbing the rich to feed the poor? Now, Robin Hood's not guilty of theft,
is he? Or is he? What would reasonable people say about robbing the rich to feed the poor?
It depends if you're rich.
No, good point. It depends if you're rich or poor, so it actually depends who's sitting
on the jury, perhaps. And that's a really important point here: if you're stepping back
a bit from this notion of dishonesty, it really depends depend who's the group of people who
are judging you because they are the ones who are the arbiters of standards of behaviour.
And David may come up with all these arguments: "Oh Val's allowed it, she knows, she's got
loads of money, she wouldn't notice £50 disappearing." That may be sufficient to get him off, but
the jury may say, "You need locking up. You shouldn't be doing this." And that is their
thought: theft, for which a criminal conviction will follow and there could -- could -- be
a sentence of imprisonment; it could be treated seriously like that. So you can see there
are all sorts of implications arising from that really simple problem, and I think that's
a really good example of what thinking like a lawyer is: looking at the law, interpreting
it, applying it, analysing it and then stepping back and saying, "Am I happy with that result?
What result do I want to achieve?" So that's a criminal law problem. I'm now going to hand
over for a very different one.
Yes, thank you. So I'm going to talk about question 2 on the handout which is about Mr
and Mrs Smith, who have already got six children and they decide that they don't want to have...
their family to get any bigger. So Mr Smith has a vasectomy but unfortunately the vasectomy
operation is performed incompetently by the surgeon Dr Lanham and doesn't work and sure
as these things have a habit of happening, Mrs Smith becomes pregnant again and gives
birth to a baby girl. Let's say she's a healthy baby girl. Do you think Mrs Smith and/or Mr
Smith should be able to recover damages from Dr Lanham? So we're into the territory of
the civil law here -- not the criminal law that Graham's been talking about -- whether
anybody can sue the doctor for compensation. Now, I haven't put any bits of law on the
handout so I'll say straight away that if we're anywhere we're in the territory of the
law of negligence. And you've probably heard of the law of negligence, it governs the ability
of people to sue for damages in all sorts of walks of life. But the most common example
of a straightforward negligence action is a road accident, where somebody drives negligently,
too fast or crosses a red light, smashes into the claimant and either, I don't know, breaks
the claimant's leg or at the very least, smashes the side of their car.
Now, in the real world you might not notice the law operating there at all. Their two
insurance companies would deal with each other and the real people involved might not really
notice what's happening. But in the world of what's actually happening in the background,
the victim will have a negligence cause of action, a negligence claim against the negligent
driver. Now, that situation, where you end up with a broken leg or a broken BMW or whatever
it might be, is a very long way away from these facts here. So I thought I'd start by
asking if you can identify any respect in which this really is quite different. And
it may sound like an obvious question, but if you analyse the facts here, how is this
going to be problematic if the straightforward case is negligent driver prangs into your
leg or your car? How is this different? Any thoughts? Yes?
In terms of a car crash, there's generally a lot of witnesses so quite sort of easy to
prove the other driver's negligence, whereas kind of having an operation, it's hard to
kind of prove the doctor's incompetence.
Well, that's a really good place to start because it's what students always say intuitively,
don't they, about supervision problems, so it's really good that you've said that. So
we have to assume, in a rather artificial way, that you can prove these facts. Let's
imagine that not only was there a video camera for training purposes running at all times
during the operation, but Dr Smith actually admits that he really wasn't concentrating
that day, that he thought he'd -- what do they do? Snipped the epididymis or some ghastliness,
but in fact he really just hadn't performed the operation properly at all. So he admits
he was... he messed up that day, okay. So assuming you can prove these facts, what are
the theoretical differences between these and the standard care? Yes?
I suppose it's the results, because in a car crash the result is a broken leg and here
the result is the born baby. And so you can't consider a born baby as a broken leg, it's
not... it doesn't have the same value.
So that's a really, really important point, that the law of negligence is the sort of
legal situation that requires not just negligence in the abstract. I couldn't sue someone who
drove at 100 miles an hour, skimmed past me on the pavement and I went like this, and
I was outraged but they didn't cause me any damage. So negligence is one of those legal
situations for which damage is absolutely essential. And damage normally means straightforwardly,
personal injury... death or personal injury, or property damage. What you quite rightly
identify is that what we've got here is the birth of an unwanted but now much loved child,
and it's a very difficult issue for the law to decide whether to treat the birth of a
healthy child as damage. Think of the implications of that in our view of people. Think also
of the implications of that for the funding of a health service. You know, IVF treatment
for people who'd dearly love a baby but can't have one is capped and restricted and so on.
Is it really appropriate for the NHS to be paying damages to someone who has a healthy
baby?
But what if I throw something else into the mix that doesn't usually happen with a car
crash, but it can happen in other situations of negligence that what you end up with is
financial loss and it is perfectly possible, although rarer, it's more unusual, but it
is perfectly possible to recover damages in negligence for pure financial loss. The most
obvious example is where someone gives you negligent advice and you rely on it and you
lose money. Now, that situation is usually covered by a contract as well and I readily
admit that there's no contractual liability on the facts here because the NHS is free,
we don't have a contract with the doctors that treat us in the NHS. But it's covered
by the law of negligence as well sometimes. And anyone in here, and roughly half of you
I would imagine are parents, will know full well that the one thing the birth of a wonderfully
health child is, is expensive. I've got three of them myself, three children myself: costs
a lot of money. So could Mrs Smith at the very least make a claim... it's not so much
the existence of the child but the fact that she's so expensive. Yes?
Well, you might have to consider whether there was the option of course to abort the child
or to put it up for adoption at which point you wouldn't have that financial outlay and
so it depends looking at the morality.
So that's a really interesting point. You're into slightly different territory there but
I'll deal with it now because it's such a lovely point, because that's one of the...
this is based on a real case and the doctor, one of his arguments was that the mother was
in fact the cause of her own loss. Although the negligent defendant, you know, snipped
the wrong bit or didn't tie the tubes together tightly enough or whatever it is he did wrong,
nonetheless... and were it not for that this wouldn't have happened, so it sounds like
his negligence caused the financial loss, the birth of the child, nonetheless her wholly
unreasonable decision not to have an abortion when she found out she was pregnant is the
true cause, the one that the law should attribute responsibility to, the true cause that should
exonerate the negligent doctor.
I hope you can tell from my voice how... well, dismissive I am of that argument, as were
the House of Lords -- in those days, it would now be the Supreme Court -- but as were the
senior judges in this country, to regard someone's decision not to abort a healthy child as so
wholly unreasonable as to exonerate the defendant is completely unacceptable. There's no valid
ground of abortion called "I've got six children already and I don't want a seventh", so for
all sorts of reasons that was dismissed as an argument. But putting the child up for
adoption I think even more so, would be regarded as... you know, can you imagine saying to
a claimant, "It's your fault because you didn't put your baby up for adoption so you can't
really blame the doctor"? So we do have financial loss here, which was truly caused by the negligence
of the defendant. It was also caused of course by the couple, you know, making the baby in
the first place.
The other thing no-one's mentioned is that pregnancy itself is not far off pain and suffering
and personal injury. I mean, it's not permanent personal injury although it does leave wear
and tear, shall we say, on the body of the mother. So she could phrase her claim in two
ways. One is the financial loss flowing from having the child and the other is the unpleasant
painful permanent and otherwise side effects of being pregnant when she didn't want to
be. Interestingly, what the House of Lords said at the time this case was decided was
to split it in two and say, "Not a problem recovering damages albeit not a very high
level, in terms of amount, but for her pain and suffering and the sort of damage to her
body from the pregnancy. But as a matter of policy we will not allow the birth of a healthy
baby to be treated as damage as a matter of public policy in the law. Even though it's
expensive the person on the London Underground or whatever, the... whatever average hypothetical
person we think about, much like we were talking about earlier with the jury, but the average
member of society would be outraged at the thought of the health service having to compensate
someone for the birth of an unwanted but much loved child.
Interestingly, what happened a year or so later was that a case came to court, almost
identical facts except that the baby was born severely disabled. Now, interestingly, the
disability wasn't caused by the botched sterilisation, that would be straightforward, that would
be damage to the foetus in utero, that would be straightforwardly recoverable by the baby
in damages, but it was a coincidence the sterilisation didn't work and she happened to conceive a
disabled child. And there the court said, "Oh well, this may be different. We can treat
this as damage" and that gives rise to all sorts of equal and opposite interesting policy
issues. We can absolutely see what the court meant, can't we? The baby was in fact... grew
up to be very severely autistic, very, very severely autistic and the mother's life was
extremely difficult as a result. But what message does this send to society about society's
perception of disabled people? You're a damage, you're the equivalent of a broken leg, you
deserve... your mother needs compensating for the presence of you; very, very problematic
issues. Isn't it interesting that one simple set of facts about negligent medical treatment
gives rise not just to what you might regard as straightforwardly legal conundrums, but
also ethical policy issues about how society views the members of society?
And I'll finish by telling you that the law has moved on even further since this decision
and another case came along where the House of Lords tried to sort this mess out; disabled,
non-disabled children, what are we going to do? And they decided that the thing to do
would be to give every mother... whatever the status of the baby, give every mother
in this situation a token amount of money for the fact that something happened to her
body that she didn't consent to; really very different from the sort of pattern that we
normally see in a negligence action. And so mothers in this situation are awarded a standard
figure of £15,000 to compensate them for the loss of autonomy over their own reproductive
system. You might think that sounds very fair until I tell you that if your beloved child
is killed by a negligent driver, you, the parent... well, let's be brutal about this,
are financially better off. You save money if your beloved child is killed by a negligent
driver. But that's such a horrific conclusion for the law to say to you, "No damages because
you're better off financially" that a statute exists that gives parents of children under
18 who are killed by somebody else's negligence, gives them damages for bereavement which the
figure currently stands at less than £12,000. So you get less for the death of your beloved
child than you do for the arrival of a much loved but originally unwanted child. Whether
that's correct or not, as a matter of legal policy, I will leave for you to decide. But
anyway, I hope that's whetted your appetite. It's not... despite what you read in the national
press, it's not just criminal law problem questions that are exciting and thought provoking.
So I'll hand back to Graham for a bit of, one more.
We have time for one more.
Okay, good.
So we'll look at question 3 which gives you another type of law to look at. "John pays
Norma £10,000 thinking that he owed her the money when in fact he owed it to Sarah. Norma
does not realise the money was paid to her by mistake and thinks John is being very generous.
She uses £9,999 to pay for a holiday. She uses the £1 remaining to buy a National Lottery
ticket and wins £20,000. John asks for the money to be repaid because it had been paid
to Norma by mistake. He also claims the £20,000 prize money. Should Norma be required to repay
the money?" Well, in the problem we've just been looking at, the vasectomy problem, we
were in an area of the law involving negligence but that forms part of the law of tort, the
law of wrongs. And in question 3 there's no wrong going on. Another area of the law is
the law of contract, the law of agreements, but in question 3 there's no contract, there's
no bargain between the parties, so we're actually in a different area of the law called the
law of "unjust enrichment". And that law says if somebody receives an enrichment, such as
money, from somebody else and there is a reason why they're receipt is unjust, then they have
to give that money back, it's called "restitution". And mistake is a well recognised reason why
paying money to somebody by mistake, they have to pay that money back.
Now, let me give you a silly example. Let's say, hypothetically, I look around this room
and I see one of you looking really dishevelled, really unhappy and I feel so sorry for you
and I think giving you some money would make you feel a lot better. So I give you £1,000,
thinking you're going to go out, you're going to buy loads of law textbooks and that will
make you feel so much happier, but in fact, you go and spend that money on something absolutely
appalling. So let's say you go out and buy £1,000 worth of alcohol in the pub and drink
it in one go and I discover that and I am very upset, because if I had known you were
that sort of person I would want to... I wouldn't have paid you that money in the first place,
so I'm mistaken. So can I get my money back? And that's the issue here. Do you think...
let's just take that the basic payment... we'll worry about what happened to this money
in a minute, but do you think that John can recover £10,000 from Norma? Any thoughts
on that? Yes?
I think it depends if... how clear it is that £1 was used to buy the lottery ticket.
Well, let's worry about the lottery ticket in a minute, because that complicates it.
Let's say she's still got the £10,000 first, she hasn't spent anything: can he recover
that money from her?
Yes, because it was a mistake to give it to her.
Yes, it was a mistake. It was money... it was his mistake. She didn't encourage it,
but English law says that doesn't matter. Yes?
It wasn't a gift?
Well, he thought he owed her the money so actually he thought he wasn't giving to her
and -- absolutely, I could give you a whole hour on gifts and the complexities of that
-- but this, he thinks he owes her the money. So this looks as though he can recover the
money. Yes?
Can we go off on the property tenet and turn round and say, she no longer has that £10,000?
Okay.
She has a different £10,000.
Well, he has given her... transferred to her the £10,000 so if she still had it in her
hands, if he knew a minute later that she's still got it and he made a mistake, he can
get it back from her, she has to repay it. What do you think is the relevance first of
her spending £9,999 to go on holiday? And I'm assuming she would not have spent that
amount of money on a holiday unless she had received this windfall. Is it fair to expect
her to stump up £9,999 of her own money and give it to him when she has spent the money
he gave to her? What do you think about that? Yes?
It's not fair. It's not fair because she took that in good faith, that it had been a gift
and not the she spent it dishonestly.
Okay.
—along those lines. She didn't spend it through dishonesty.
Well, we don't know whether she's dishonest because it sounds as though she was a bit
surprised by his generosity but she thinks it's a gift, he's a very generous person.
So do you all agree that if somebody pays you money by mistake and you spend it then
you shouldn't have to pay that amount back? Yes?
She still as much as like if she didn't... it wasn't her money, she still did spend it
so...
And she's benefited but she's had a lovely holiday, hasn't she?
Yes. And so whereas like John at the moment is left £10,000 out of pocket—
Yes.
—she will just be left a holiday... like a holiday that she went on out of pocket.
What English law actually says is if you pay money to somebody by mistake and they spend
that money in good faith, they don't have to pay that money or the amount back. Now,
when you came on this open day you probably didn't think you were going to learn something
that may be real practical use to you, but some of you may already or at some point in
the future have received an overpayment of salary in your job. It happened to me once,
in this university. And what should you do if you receive an overpayment? Spend it, immediately,
because then you don't have to repay. Now, with one... I'm a lawyer so I'm covering my
back -- in good faith. So if you know that that money has been overpaid and then you
spend it that's not going to be a defence.
Like turning a blind eye.
Turning a blind eye, you can argue about, but that's probably similar to knowledge,
okay. But if you say, "Ooh, I've got a bit more in my bank account than I expected" the
best advice is spend, okay; for all sorts of reasons but legal reasons as well. Finally,
and we are going to have to stop then, what about this £1 that was then used to buy a
National Lottery ticket which has won £20,000? Whose £20,000 is it, do you think? Yes?
It surely has to be Norma's because there's no saying that that £1, if it was in John's
possession, would have bought a winning lottery ticket.
Very, very good point, I take that completely. The argument against that though is that he
paid her that £1 by mistake and she uses his £1 to buy the National Lottery ticket,
which is the winner. Now, we know she has to repay £1 to him. She's used that £1 and
it's won. Does that £20,000 belong to him, do you think?
But it's her actions that have resulted in that £20,000 being won so therefore would
we argue that it's because of what she has done, because of what she decided to do—
Okay.
—that it would... that result is hers.
Would you all agree with that? That because it was her actions it therefore follows it's
her money? And you're actually right, that's what English would say there. Because he's
made a mistake that mistake doesn't mean the money still belongs to him, it belongs to
her. She has to pay the amount of £1 back but she can hold onto the winnings. So both
of you, the reasons you gave, were right there. Okay. We are going to have to stop at this
point, so I know there are two problems left and those of you who are staying around for
lunch—
I can't.
Unfortunately you can't be at lunch but I will be later on so if you want to look at
those and we can talk about those later, that is fine.
Two final things to say. The first is sometimes when you come on an open day like this, some
of you may have thought, "I know I want to study law at university" and hopefully what
we've just gone through hasn't put you off. But some of you might be thinking, "I'm still
not sure whether law is the right subject for me to study at university." If you have
enjoyed what we've just been talking about, those sort of problems and you go, "Ah, there's
so many interesting issues here and I like thinking of problems in this way and I enjoy
discussing issues like this", then I think that's one of the best tests to work out whether
the study of law at university is right for you.
Secondly, as Janet has just reminded me, there's another way of just checking whether studying
law at university is right for you. There are various books on the market that you can
purchase and read to give you a bit more information. I am going to recommend one particular book,
which was aimed at people in your position; it is called, "What about law? Studying Law
at University". I will immediately add that Janet O'Sullivan and myself are co-editors
of this book but despite that, or because of that, we would still recommend it. It really
was written for people in your position, parents as well, just to see what law is actually
like. And if you read that book... and there are other books on the market but if you read
that book that will hopefully give you a good idea of what it's like to study law at university.
So thank you all very much. I will be around later. And we're going to hand over to Kirsty
Hughes, who is going to say a little bit about admissions. Thank you.