Paradigm shift: motivations for qualified legal professionals to undertake academic study

This paper considers the factors that motivate qualified legal professionals to undertake a further legal academic programme of study. The paper analyses the findings of a recent study concerning a post-graduate research degree collaboration between Northumbria University (NU) and the Law Society of Ireland (LSI) whereby NU’s longstanding LLM Advanced Legal Practice (LLM ALP) has been offered in Ireland through the LSI (LLM ALP (Ire)). The initial offering of the LLM ALP (Ire) has attracted a significant amount of interest from the profession, prompting the authors to consider (i) the factors that motivate ‘time-poor’ professionals to pursue the academic study of law at the post-professional level and (ii) the potential that such a course of study might have to inform and enrich the students’ practice of law. The LLM ALP (Ire) has attracted a significant amount of more established practitioners, whereas those who generally enrol on the LLM ALP in England are at the early stages of their careers, either enrolled on the Legal Practice Course (LPC) or having only recently qualified. Hence this research is focused on a particular student profile of post-professionals with established careers in legal practice.