Engineering/Law combined degree (1 Viewer)

[clementinez]

Just wondering if anyone is doing this and how they are coping with the workload. Would it be similar to Engineering/Science in terms of content volume or more difficult?

 

[strawberrye]

Engineering and law is definitely tougher than engineering and science, the reason is whilst the latter may have more hours, the former combination is much more intellectually challenging, it is only in law that you have to do readings every single lecture and actually attend every single lecture/seminar to catch up to what's going on and law requires a kind of analytical skill that science and engineering (both straightforward discipline, often have clear answers to problems) don't give you the skills. Hence in engineering/law you basically need to adopt two different types of thinking mindsets for each subject and that's hard to switch sometimes.

Disclaimer: I study science/law but I know quite a few people who do engineering/law and having many friends who do engineering themselves-their mentality is different than those who don't do engineering, but do law.

 

[clementinez]

Engineering and law is definitely tougher than engineering and science, the reason is whilst the latter may have more hours, the former combination is much more intellectually challenging, it is only in law that you have to do readings every single lecture and actually attend every single lecture/seminar to catch up to what's going on and law requires a kind of analytical skill that science and engineering (both straightforward discipline, often have clear answers to problems) don't give you the skills. Hence in engineering/law you basically need to adopt two different types of thinking mindsets for each subject and that's hard to switch sometimes.

Disclaimer: I study science/law but I know quite a few people who do engineering/law and having many friends who do engineering themselves-their mentality is different than those who don't do engineering, but do law.

Thanks for the response!

When you say their mentality is different, do you mean they are more the engineering type than the typical law/arts/commerce type or are you simply referring to their ability to implement verbal, written, and numerical skills equally?
I've been looking through degrees, trying to find the right one to combine with engineering and I stumbled across law, again (I was previously accepted into combined law but declined). How have you found the course? I know it's nothing like legal studies (which I enjoyed), but just how much time does it take up? Compared to science, do you find yourself studying more for law exams, what does it look like.. is there an overwhelming amount of cases?
I apologise for the obscene amount of questions I'm just trying to get a general idea of it from someone actually in the program. If there's anything further you could add to help I'd be grateful!

 

[strawberrye]

Thanks for the response!

When you say their mentality is different, do you mean they are more the engineering type than the typical law/arts/commerce type or are you simply referring to their ability to implement verbal, written, and numerical skills equally?
I've been looking through degrees, trying to find the right one to combine with engineering and I stumbled across law, again (I was previously accepted into combined law but declined). How have you found the course? I know it's nothing like legal studies (which I enjoyed), but just how much time does it take up? Compared to science, do you find yourself studying more for law exams, what does it look like.. is there an overwhelming amount of cases?
I apologise for the obscene amount of questions I'm just trying to get a general idea of it from someone actually in the program. If there's anything further you could add to help I'd be grateful!

I will extract this thread for you to look at, my response in that thread is basically what studying law is like from my personal experience: http://community.boredofstudies.org/331/law/332334/law-students-what-studying-law-really-like.html

No, by different mentality I mean engineering/science has one straight forward logical answer, whilst in law-you often have to consider ambiguities, uncertainties, and argue for both sides before coming to a conclusion, so the method of thinking process is quite different, not just because engineering has more calculations and report writing, and law has a lot more essay question type assignments. In short, law takes a lot more time than science for me, but I do better in science than law (partially because the latter has a competitive bell curve distribution competing with the best of the best), studying for law exams are quite broad, usually just do case summaries and principles and apply those principles to a given problem scenario under time limit. Overwhelming amount of cases-is subjective measure, depends on how much you revise and you don't need every single case to argue your point, particularly as some law exams are open book-so you just need to have good notes.

On a personal level, I think studying engineering/law is not really worth it because those two disciplines are professional disciplines, and you are highly unlikely to find a role that combines the two expertise together, it is more likely that one either uses their engineering knowledge/don't need law or vice versa, but if those are your interests than go for it, it is usually longer than the averaged combined law degree, around 5.5-6 years depending on the engineering you combine it with.

To give you a rough idea, I usually do 4 hours of reading for each 2 hours of class (this sometimes includes taking notes, sometimes don't-depending on how dense and the amount of material in the particular law subject), I have two 2 hour classes for each law subject I take, so that's roughly 8 hours of reading per law subject minimum, without accounting for revision of notes with class notes later on into exam format and practising questions to do. However, this will vary depending on your reading capability (often judgment is written in archaic like language-not normal everyday language, and difficult to understand-so it takes a long time to develop the case reading skills to know what is important, and what isn't and to know it quickly and accurately which you will eventually learn in law school), I am in my third year so I actually sometimes spend even more time reading/making notes because some law subjects are extremely difficult for me, really depends on the person-but I would say give it a shot if you like-all the best of luck-hope this helped a bit

 

[clementinez]

I will extract this thread for you to look at, my response in that thread is basically what studying law is like from my personal experience: http://community.boredofstudies.org/331/law/332334/law-students-what-studying-law-really-like.html

No, by different mentality I mean engineering/science has one straight forward logical answer, whilst in law-you often have to consider ambiguities, uncertainties, and argue for both sides before coming to a conclusion, so the method of thinking process is quite different, not just because engineering has more calculations and report writing, and law has a lot more essay question type assignments. In short, law takes a lot more time than science for me, but I do better in science than law (partially because the latter has a competitive bell curve distribution competing with the best of the best), studying for law exams are quite broad, usually just do case summaries and principles and apply those principles to a given problem scenario under time limit. Overwhelming amount of cases-is subjective measure, depends on how much you revise and you don't need every single case to argue your point, particularly as some law exams are open book-so you just need to have good notes.

On a personal level, I think studying engineering/law is not really worth it because those two disciplines are professional disciplines, and you are highly unlikely to find a role that combines the two expertise together, it is more likely that one either uses their engineering knowledge/don't need law or vice versa, but if those are your interests than go for it, it is usually longer than the averaged combined law degree, around 5.5-6 years depending on the engineering you combine it with.

To give you a rough idea, I usually do 4 hours of reading for each 2 hours of class (this sometimes includes taking notes, sometimes don't-depending on how dense and the amount of material in the particular law subject), I have two 2 hour classes for each law subject I take, so that's roughly 8 hours of reading per law subject minimum, without accounting for revision of notes with class notes later on into exam format and practising questions to do. However, this will vary depending on your reading capability (often judgment is written in archaic like language-not normal everyday language, and difficult to understand-so it takes a long time to develop the case reading skills to know what is important, and what isn't and to know it quickly and accurately which you will eventually learn in law school), I am in my third year so I actually sometimes spend even more time reading/making notes because some law subjects are extremely difficult for me, really depends on the person-but I would say give it a shot if you like-all the best of luck-hope this helped a bit

Thanks so much for this you've given me quite a bit to think about. I will have a look through that thread!