Bachelor of Arts to Law post-grad

[ryunion]

How do you get into Law from an ARTS degree at UoM?
What is required? (gpa, law subject)?

[simpak]

Well it depends.

First of all, you don't need to take any law subjects to get in to the JD.  I'm assuming you're talking about the JD at Melbourne, so I will continue with this in mind.  You can enter the JD from any undergraduate degree - you don't have to have studied anything to do with law before.  That said, if you're interested in law you might like to take what most people take as their 'law or legal subjects' - a breadth subject called Principles of Business Law and/or a Criminology major.

Okay, so for your GPA this almost depends on whether or not you got over 99 in VCE.  If you have a score over 99 you have guaranteed full fee entry to the JD providing you achieve a H2A average (75% average or above) for the entire Bachelor.  If you have a score over 99.9 you have a guaranteed CSP place to the JD course with the same expectation of a H2A average.

Because nobody really wants to pay full fee, people who get over 99 (inc. me when I was doing Arts) expect to take the LSAT and apply like any other applicant to try their luck at CSP.

If you don't fall under that bracket, ie, you are 99% of the people who want to apply, you don't need a 'set average' but you should be aiming pretty high.  A H2A average would be considered about as low as you can go, in my opinion.  Most of the people I know who really want to get in to the JD don't settle for anything less than a H1 average, which is what I also aimed for when I was doing Arts.  It is not easy to get a H2A or a H1 average, so this kind of helps you figure out how much of your time and effort you're willing to dedicate to any dream of doing the course.

Once you have your average downpat, you need to take the entrance exam for postgraduate Australian law courses which is the LSAT.

And then you also write a personal statement about why you want to do law - why should they give you a place etc.

Then you're done!  There's no 'set score' that you need to get for your GPA or your LSAT, as far as I am aware, and the personal statement would also factor in.  It depends on how many applicants there are and how well each of them did and how deserving the selection committee feels that you are of a place.

Hope this helped