Bachelor of Laws

The Bachelor of Laws at the University of the Sunshine Coast is a four-year degree that prepares you for admission to legal practice in Australia. It's an undergraduate law qualification, so you enter straight from Year 12 or after some prior study. The course sits on the AQF as a bachelor degree, but law is one of the exceptions to the standard three-year length: four years is normal because you need to cover the Priestley 11, the eleven core areas of legal knowledge every Australian law graduate must have before they can be admitted. Those areas include contract, torts, criminal law and procedure, property, equity, constitutional law, administrative law, evidence, civil procedure, company law and professional conduct.

Study is organised into semesters, with each unit of study carrying a set credit point value. You'll typically take four units a semester, and the degree is built around a set of compulsory law units plus electives you choose from areas like environmental law, family law, international law, human rights, commercial law or sports law. Because USC is a regional Queensland university with campuses at Sippy Downs, Moreton Bay, Gympie, Fraser Coast and Caboolture, some law units are taught at particular campuses, so check the handbook for where each unit runs. There is usually a capstone-style final-year unit that pulls your legal research and writing together, and many students take a professional placement or clinical legal education elective, working in a community legal centre, a law firm or an in-house legal team, which counts towards your degree and gives you supervised client work before you graduate.

What you actually learn is how to read a case, find the ratio, apply legislation, draft submissions and argue a position. You'll do moot court exercises, negotiation and mediation simulations, and written advocacy tasks. Legal research skills, using AustLII, Jade and the major databases, are taught early because you'll rely on them in every later unit. By fourth year you should be able to take a set of facts, identify the legal issues, research the relevant authorities and write an advice that a supervising solicitor could sign off on.

This degree suits people who like reading closely, arguing logically and working with words. It's also a good fit if you want to combine law with another area, many students pair it with a Bachelor of Business, Arts, Science or Communication through a double degree, which usually adds a year or two. If you're an international student, you'll need to meet the English requirement, which for law is at the higher end: IELTS Academic 7.0–7.5 overall, with TOEFL iBT, PTE Academic, Cambridge C1 Advanced and the university's own English programmes accepted as equivalents. The Department of Home Affairs sets a separate English threshold for the Student visa itself. While studying, a student visa lets you work up to 48 hours per fortnight during term. After you finish, the Temporary Graduate visa (subclass 485) post-study work stream may be available depending on your circumstances. Tuition is published on the CRICOS register, check the official course page and CRICOS for the current figures, entry requirements and unit lists before you apply.

• Solicitor, in private practice, community legal centres or government legal offices, after completing the required practical legal training and admission process in an Australian state or territory.
• Barrister, if you go on to read at a bar and complete the bar practice course; most barristers start as solicitors first.
• In-house counsel or legal officer, working for banks, insurers, construction companies, universities, hospitals or local councils.
• Policy adviser or analyst, in state and federal government departments, where legal training is valued for statutory interpretation and drafting.
• Compliance and risk officer, in financial services, aged care, education and the public sector, where organisations need people who understand regulation.
• Industrial relations or employment relations adviser, with unions, employer bodies, Fair Work Commission-related work or HR teams.
• Legal researcher or paralegal, in law firms, courts, tribunals and legal tech companies.
• Contract administrator or procurement officer, in construction, mining, defence and infrastructure, where contract law knowledge is directly applied.
• Graduate entry into the public service, state and federal graduate programmes regularly recruit law graduates into legal, policy and regulatory streams.