Course Outline
Making Sure you get into Law School
Yu Qixian B.A., M.A. (Cambridge), Advocate & Solicitor (Singapore), Law Fellow, Cambridge Alliance Centre
Is it really so difficult to get into law school? Here, we explore the ancient debates, including the comparative importance of SATs versus A-level grades, top junior colleges versus the lower-ranked ones, and extra-curricular activities versus part-time employment.
Is law school really
for you? If your goal is to make money, but you don't enjoy studying or reading,
don't waste your time by trying to get into law school. The beauty of a legal
education lies in the intellectual atmosphere. It does not lie in the prestige
of having your law degree framed on the wall.
There will also be a special segment on “Getting into Cambridge Law: Dispelling the Myths”.
Criminal Law
Preview
“A hunter, lost in the woods and starving, stumbles across a locked cabin containing food and a telephone, breaks in, feeds himself, and calls for help.
One way the legal system might permit such an offence is by setting the expected punishment roughly equal to damage done. The value to him of breaking into the cabin must be more than the cost, which he pays in his punishment, or he wouldn't do it. Arguably, that is how we enforce parking laws. Illegal parking imposes costs on others. If it is sufficiently important to me, I demonstrate that by being willing to pay the price of occasional parking tickets.
Or perhaps he should not be criminally liable at all – we ought to modify the law so that the hunter’s acts are no longer criminal. That is how we actually handle the lost hunter problem; he is excused from criminal liability under the doctrine of necessity. Similarly, if the reason you are driving at 100 km/h is that your wife is in the back seat going into labour, the traffic police may escort you to the hospital instead of writing you a ticket. This method only works when the special circumstances are apparent to the courts or the police.”
Lunch (1.5 hour – interaction with practising lawyers)
Tort Law
Preview
“If someone shoots you, you call a cop. If he runs his car into yours, you call a lawyer. Crimes are prosecuted publicly, torts privately. This session is devoted to torts. A tort is a wrong that is privately prosecuted, typically for damages, although some tort suits seek injunctions. Unlike contract law, which enforces obligations voluntarily agreed to, tort law deals with obligations imposed by law.
To do so it must answer four questions:
What makes an act wrongful? When I go into competition with you I make you worse off, yet competition is not a tort. Implicit in tort law is some set of rights defining what acts are or are not wrongful.
What does it mean to say that my act caused your loss? Events in the real world have multiple causes. I would not have run you over had you not been walking down the road to have dinner with a friend or did your friend’s invitation cause the accident?
Under what circumstances is someone liable for a loss he causes? What if I caused an accident, but there was no reasonable precaution by which I could have avoided it? What if both parties were negligent: I was driving too fast, but you were standing in the middle of the road paying no attention to traffic?
If I am liable, how much am I liable for?”
Contract Law
Preview
“I hire you to build a house on property I own. We agree on a price of a hundred thousand dollars. I give you a hundred thousand dollars and, in a world without enforceable contracts, never see you again.
The obvious solution is to make the payment due when the house is finished. You finish building my house and ask to be paid. I suggest that we renegotiate the terms. Until you are paid the house belongs to you, but it is on my land. If you do not want to accept my new and lower price you are free to tear it down again.
A better solution is to pay you continuously as you build the house, but that too has problems. When the house is three quarters built, you suggest renegotiating the price. You have been paid for your work so far, and three quarters of a house is not of much use to me. I could pay someone else to finish it, but without the original contractor's detailed knowledge of just what has been done so far and what remains to be done, that may be a costly proposition.
Another solution, and a very common one, is reputation. You could cheat me but don't, because word will get around and nobody else will hire you to build houses. Reputation may be the most important method for enforcing agreements in our society, although not the one of most interest to lawyers.”
Working As An International Lawyer And Earning up to S$120,000 per annum
Krishna Ramachandra, LL.B (Hons), LL.M (Cambridge), Solicitor (England & Wales), Advocate & Solicitor (Singapore)
What is it really like working in an international law firm and earning up to S$120,000 per annum as a fresh graduate? The four six-month seats that make up your English training contract will have your head spinning, but by the end of your tenure, you'll know whether a career in finance is for you or competition, tax, communications or even intellectual property. Spending time in these areas is really the only way to find out. You'll be working shoulder to shoulder with a senior assistant or partner in each seat, and you'll learn from them at a frightening rate. In fact, one of the first things you'll learn is that they will be delighted for you to take the initiative and run as much of the show as you realistically can. You'll have many opportunities to work overseas and/or be seconded to even big name clients (for examples companies like IBM or Coca-Cola), where – as one of the resident lawyers – you're likely to be given even more responsibility. Come find out the truth.
