Juris Doctor - Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice

Overview

Why study with us?

• Study at Australia’s premier clinical law school – You will not just learn how the law works in theory; you will get extensive supervised experience helping real people with real legal issues.
• University of Newcastle Legal Centre – You will complete the first 105 hours of your required supervised legal workplace experience in our own legal centre, under the supervision of the law school’s solicitors.
• Supervised workplace experience guarantee – For your remaining 180 hours of required supervised workplace experience, our dedicated placement officer will actively source an external placement for you – none of our students miss out.
• Study at NUspace – Our contemporary learning space is located in Newcastle’s CBD. This means it is not only close to Newcastle’s spectacular beaches and fashionable cafés, bars and restaurants, it is also close to Newcastle’s court precinct, making it easy to network with local practitioners and attend court.

• Highly competitive tuition fees – Students at many other Australian law schools commonly pay tens of thousands of dollars more to complete a JD and a GDLP than you will pay at UON. Accommodation in Newcastle is also significantly more affordable than in nearby Sydney.

Professional placement

Newcastle Law School is the only law school in Australia that both runs its own legal centre and directly provides students with the practical legal training and much of the supervised clinical legal experience required to qualify to practise law.

As part of the Juris Doctor - Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice program from University of Newcastle, students undertake 285 hours of legal professional workplace experience. A minimum of 105 hours of that practical experience is undertaken at the University of Newcastle Legal Centre (UNLC), under the supervision of the Law School’s solicitors – either in the legal centre itself or as part of our ‘Law on the Beach’ program during the summer term. Students have intensive interaction with clients and extensive real client casework including drafting letters, submissions, undertaking research, drafting court documents and appearing in court with a UNLC lawyer. This is very attractive to potential employers and gives Newcastle graduates a significant advantage.