What do UK law students want from course content?
Published May 10, 2024 · Updated Oct 12, 2025
type and breadth of course contentlawUK law students want a broad, current curriculum that combines core foundations with contemporary issues, integrates practical experience, and provides unambiguous assessment and predictable delivery. In the National Student Survey (NSS) open‑text category for type and breadth of course content, 70.6% of comments are positive (index +39.8). For law, sentiment is more mixed at 51.1% positive and 44.9% negative, and feedback‑related concerns account for 8.9% of law comments. These sector patterns shape the curriculum choices explored below.
How do law students expect the core curriculum to evolve?
Students enter law programmes expecting rigorous coverage of contracts, torts, and property law, while also asking for content that reflects current practice. They want contemporary areas—digital privacy, environmental legislation, international rights—embedded rather than treated as peripheral. Sector evidence shows students value breadth when they can see how options build across years and where personalisation occurs. Publishing a succinct breadth map and refreshing cases, readings and examples on a regular cadence helps keep content current without diluting the intellectual spine of the LLB.
Which elective topics do students prioritise?
Electives in cyber law, intellectual property, and international humanitarian law attract sustained interest because they signal currency and application. Students respond well when providers protect genuine choice through timetabling that avoids clashes and maintains viable option pathways for each cohort. In law faculties with part‑time learners and commuters, equivalent asynchronous materials and clear signposting ensure all students can access the same breadth. Academic teams that co‑design with clinics, pro bono partners and employers keep applied electives aligned to learning outcomes and workplace realities.
How should programmes balance practical skills with theory?
Students repeatedly ask for integration: simulation and clinic activity should sit alongside doctrinal analysis, not after it. Programmes that schedule moots, case‑based seminars, live client projects and research‑led teaching within each term demonstrate how theory travels into practice. Structuring sessions to make the links to learning outcomes explicit, and sequencing practical tasks across modules, reduces fragmentation and helps students build confidence for early career legal work.
What pressures do complexity and workload create?
Heavy reading loads and dense subjects such as EU law can overwhelm when duplication and gaps go unchecked. Law schools mitigate this by auditing content to remove repetition, aligning reading and seminar expectations, and providing targeted study support. Early and mid‑term pulse checks help identify missing or repeated topics so staff can adjust in‑term. When students see that staff act on these signals, perceived workload becomes more manageable.
What is the role of digital learning platforms?
Digital platforms now underpin access to lectures, cases and commentary, and students use them to revisit complex material and prepare for seminars. In law, remote learning sentiment trends mixed, so teams should ensure online provision complements, rather than replaces, interactive teaching. Students respond positively when resources and library access are reliable, navigable and consistently structured across modules. A single source of truth for schedule changes and assessment information reduces unnecessary friction and supports engagement.
How do assessment approaches affect performance?
In student comments, assessment clarity is the first concern. Law students ask for transparent criteria, exemplars that show standard, and reliable turnaround. Programmes that publish annotated exemplars, adopt checklist‑style rubrics and calibrate markers reduce variance and anxiety. Agreeing a realistic feedback service level and sticking to it improves perceptions of fairness and supports learning. Small, dependable changes here lift sentiment across feedback, marking criteria and assessment methods.
What should universities change next?
- Show the breadth plan: map how core and options build over the programme and where students can personalise depth.
- Keep content current: run a regular refresh of readings, cases and tools in fast‑moving topics.
- Protect choice: timetable to avoid option clashes and maintain viable pathways; provide equivalent asynchronous materials for flexible learners.
- Tighten assessment practice: publish exemplars and rubrics, calibrate markers, and set a feedback turnaround students can rely on.
- Strengthen operations: name owners for timetabling and course communications and adopt a “no surprises” change window so delivery feels predictable.
How Student Voice Analytics helps you
- Track movement in breadth, assessment and delivery topics for law across years, cohorts and sites, with exportable summaries for programme and module teams.
- Drill from institution to school/department and subject group to compare like‑for‑like peer clusters by discipline and demographics.
- Generate concise, anonymised briefs that show what changed, for whom, and where to act next—ready for Boards of Study, APRs and student‑staff committees.
- Evidence impact with consistent measures linked to NSS open‑text categories and discipline‑level trends.
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