French Law Publications

A Unique Eu­ro­pean Di­men­sion to Le­gal Ed­u­ca­tion:
The Eng­lish and French Le­gal Tra­di­tions Com­bined in an In­te­grated De­gree

The LLB in Eng­lish Law and French Law / Mas­ter 1 (Maîtrise en Droit), at the Ex­eter Law School

By Dr Frédéric Olivier Rol­land, Se­nior Lec­turer in Law

In the con­text of the col­lab­o­ra­tive di­men­sion of Uni­ver­sity ed­u­ca­tion in­her­ent in var­i­ous Eu­ro­pean agree­ments and the in­ter­con­nec­tion of nu­mer­ous States’ le­gal or­ders on the Eu­ro­pean and In­ter­na­tional scene, it is in­creas­ingly im­por­tant for lawyers to un­der­stand and ap­ply sys­tems of Law be­long­ing to var­i­ous le­gal tra­di­tions. In that re­spect, the An­glo-French dual qual­i­fi­ca­tion Law de­gree pro­gramme en­ti­tled LLB in Eng­lish Law and French Law / Mas­ter 1 (Maîtrise en Droit) pi­o­neered by the Ex­eter Law School in part­ner­ship with the Law Fac­ulty of the Uni­ver­sity of Rennes 1 is an es­tab­lished fea­ture of British Uni­ver­sity ed­u­ca­tion. This An­glo-French com­bined le­gal pro­gramme of­fers an un­par­al­leled op­por­tu­nity to study the British and French le­gal sys­tems in their re­spec­tive lan­guages and to hold qual­i­fy­ing Law de­grees in the United King­dom and in France, en­abling stu­dents to qual­ify pro­fes­sion­ally in both coun­tries. The aca­d­e­mic ob­jec­tive of this An­glo-French dual qual­i­fi­ca­tion Law de­gree pro­gramme is not – in it­self – com­par­a­tive: its aim is for stu­dents to in­de­pen­dently mas­ter, ar­tic­u­late and ap­ply, in equal terms, le­gal rea­son­ings be­long­ing to two his­tor­i­cally dif­fer­ent le­gal cul­tures and sys­tems. By study­ing for this in­te­grated pro­gramme, stu­dents’ pro­files will be par­tic­u­larly at­trac­tive to ma­jor City Law firms as well as Eu­ro­pean and In­ter­na­tional or­ga­ni­za­tions.

The LLB in Eng­lish Law and French Law / Mas­ter 1 (Maîtrise en Droit) is an es­tab­lished com­po­nent of the Ex­on­ian Eu­ro­pean aca­d­e­mic iden­tity. Not lim­it­ing the Uni­ver­sity co­op­er­a­tion to French lan­guage, the Ex­eter Law School built up a strong tra­di­tion in the teach­ing of for­eign le­gal sys­tems in their orig­i­nal lan­guage un­der the ini­tial lead of Pro­fes­sor Do­minic LA­SOK. This trend blos­somed un­der the aca­d­e­mic part­ner­ship be­tween Ex­eter Law School and the Law Fac­ulty of the Uni­ver­sity of Rennes 1, ul­ti­mately lead­ing to a fully in­te­grated dou­ble award, namely the LLB in Eng­lish Law and French Law / Mas­ter 1 (Maîtrise en Droit) which pre­sents it­self un­der a unique, in­no­v­a­tive and ef­fec­tive for­mat.

This is a four-year de­gree in­tended to lead to the dual qual­i­fi­ca­tion of LLB in Eng­lish Law and French Law at the Uni­ver­sity of Ex­eter and Mas­ter 1 (Maîtrise en Droit) at the Uni­ver­sity of Rennes 1. Stu­dents reg­is­tered for the de­gree of LLB in Eng­lish Law and French Law / Mas­ter 1 (Maîtrise en Droit) spend the first three years in the Ex­eter Law School study­ing Eng­lish Law. At the same time, French Law mod­ules are stud­ied in French. Al­though bilin­gual­ism is by no means re­quired in or­der to suc­ceed in this pro­gramme, a good stan­dard of French both writ­ten and oral is es­sen­tial (A-level in French or equiv­a­lent). The French Law mod­ules com­prise French Con­sti­tu­tional Law in the first year, French Ad­min­is­tra­tive Law in the sec­ond year, and French Civil Law of Con­tract in the third year. Aca­d­e­mics from the Law Fac­ulty of the Uni­ver­sity of Rennes 1 are also in­vited an­nu­ally by the Ex­eter Law School to give a se­ries of sem­i­nars in their field of ex­per­tise. French Law mod­ules at Ex­eter are be­ing taught in small groups as there is only a lim­ited num­ber of 25 places avail­able per aca­d­e­mic year.

The fourth year is spent at the Law Fac­ulty of the Uni­ver­sity of Rennes 1 where stu­dents fol­low one of the Mas­ter 1 (Maîtrise en Droit) pro­grammes. If suc­cess­ful, a stu­dent in ad­di­tion to his/ her Ex­eter LLB in Eng­lish Law and French Law de­gree will also ob­tain the Mas­ter 1 (Maîtrise en Droit) of the Uni­ver­sity of Rennes 1, thus si­mul­ta­ne­ously grad­u­at­ing in France and in Eng­land with the re­spec­tive na­tional le­gal qual­i­fi­ca­tions, which con­sti­tutes in it­self a con­sid­er­able aca­d­e­mic and in­tel­lec­tual le­gal achieve­ment.

The LLB in Eng­lish Law and French Law / Mas­ter 1 (Maîtrise en Droit) de­gree is struc­tured to per­mit com­plete ex­emp­tion from the aca­d­e­mic stage of pro­fes­sional train­ing. The Eng­lish le­gal qual­i­fi­ca­tion will there­fore en­able stu­dents on grad­u­a­tion to pro­ceed to the So­lic­i­tors’ Le­gal Prac­tice course or Bar Vo­ca­tional course in the United King­dom. The Mas­ter 1 (Maîtrise en Droit) will al­low stu­dents to un­der­take the steps nec­es­sary to be­come qual­i­fied in France. In­deed, stu­dents will have the nec­es­sary knowl­edge for pass­ing the ap­ti­tude test which is a pre-req­ui­site to prac­tice as a lawyer in France.