GDL Blog | CPE

However, offering advice on this has proven to be harder than I first envisaged.  I am hardly in the best position to offer objective advice.  Speaking to friends who completed the GDL years ago they still recount with venom the torturous hours spent learning the rules of perpetuity with little time to relax.

I was only able to recall my own personal experience of the GDL to date.  The course in an intense barrage of the legal principles in the seven key areas: Constitutional & Administrative, Contract, Criminal, Equity & Trusts, EU, Land and Tort.  Whilst much of the work and principles are not too difficult to comprehend, the volume of the work is intense. 

There is no time to ‘ease off’ and relax, or if you are feeling particularly drawn to a subject area, to research it in greater depth.  Added to this never-ending stream of work is the need to apply for vacation schemes, mini-pupillages and general work experience.  For these reasons I could only argue for the more relaxed charms of a three year law degree.

But, keen to at least defend my options I did expand on some of the mitigating reasons for my choosing the GDL.  All GDL students, by the courses very nature, will have experience either in a different field of work or in another degree subject.  Therefore, students wishing to practise IP law may be well served by reading a science degree prior to the GDL.  To a lesser extent those GDL students with Arts degrees will have a breadth of knowledge in other areas likely to be denied to straight law students.  This ability to discuss matters of history, literature and politics at length may serve future students well in interview.

However, when I came to offer him my honest advice…unfortunately, I had to advise he study the three year course.  Over the next few blogs I hope to show the joys of the GDL, rather than the failings.  Till next time.