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UCD Sutherland School of Law

Transforming Law

At UCD School of Law we promote authoritative scholarly research and offer our students an outstanding legal education.

We are strongly committed to securing better understanding of, and engagement with, the transformative potential of law in order to:

  • enrich the experience of our students in a dynamic learning environment;
  • establish a major, well-regarded and authoritative presence which enhances the understanding of the role of law in Ireland and internationally;
  • strengthen the discipline of law whilst also pursuing interdisciplinary learning and research;
  • engage effectively with practitioners and policy makers.


We will contribute significantly to national higher education and UCD strategies by:

  • enhancing the quality, scope and scale of research and learning activity at the School of Law;
  • building a School of Law community and environment with world class infrastructure in which staff and students work together and flourish;
  • integrating the School of Law with other Schools, supporting accessibility, flexibility, and problem based learning;
  • deepening links with the legal profession and wider society, providing facilities and developing activities which benefit students, staff, the profession and the community.

We have a number of values which inspire our staff and students:

  • motivation: being inspirational, vibrant and responsive;
  • originality: being curious and innovative, opening minds;
  • cooperation: being flexible, promoting and deploying listening and communication skills, respect for diversity;
  • integrity: displaying respect for truth, openness, fairness, and ethics;
  • ambition: delivering on an aspiration to excellence and rigour in individual and collaborative endeavours.

Vision

UCD School of Law is the leading law school in Ireland and is recognised through education, research, knowledge exchange, student and staff exchanges and international activities as amongst the leading law schools in Europe. The UCD Sutherland School of Law building provides an ideal environment for delivering high quality legal education and research. We will further develop an inclusive School of Law community which engages staff and students and wider national and international communities of alumni, practitioners, policy makers and users of law.

The School’s distinctive mission is to support a stronger understanding of, and capacity to harness, the transformative potential of law for contemporary societies. The vision includes commitments to:

  • enriching the educational environment of its student body;
            
  • creating an academic environment which is both stimulating and challenging;
            
  • producing high quality legal research;
            
  • working in partnership both with practitioners and policy makers, nationally and internationally;
            
  • developing an understanding of the role of law in society, and; 
            

Goals

We have set ourselves six goals which match the vision, values and strategic mission of the UCD Strategic Plan:

  • To attract the best students, support them to achieve their aspirations and potential in learning and deliver excellence in legal education.

    The School has successfully developed a diverse portfolio of popular undergraduate and graduate programmes and has been strengthening capacity both for student recruitment and for review and enhancement of quality of programmes. Challenges in the period from 2012 include maintaining and developing robust demand for programmes; further diversification of graduate offerings so as to secure and develop graduate numbers; enhancing the conceptual, skills and clinical elements of undergraduate education. The School plans a new interdisciplinary undergraduate programme in Law and Social Justice in 2013 and to provide a wider range of entry and exit routes into its graduate offerings for individual modules and diplomas in addition to masters programmes.

  • To generate research of the highest international quality with a strong commitment to support research in Irish, European and international law.

    We have developed strong capacity for research and scholarship, with significant development of both the research infrastructure and research outcomes, measured by the number of publications in peer reviewed international journals and with leading academic presses. The further development of this capacity will be achieved through building stronger groups to mutually support and challenge each other and build the scale and scope of research within the School’s fields of strength, whilst continuing to support research by individual scholars across all fields of interest. This will involve further development of support for applying for and managing research grants, the development of new research centres and groups, and the development of more robust measures of research achievement.

  • To use its research capacity to better inform the actions and thinking of practitioners and policy maker, nationally and internationally.

    The School has a long tradition of providing continuing profession development activities of various kinds through the UCD Commercial Law Centre. In order to fully support the School’s mission for knowledge exchange with policy and practitioner communities the School will broaden this activity to engage research and researchers from across all the School’s main fields and, distinctly, to grow income from such knowledge exchange activities in order to be able to better propagate discovery and research.

  • To further develop programmes of international exchanges and visits for staff and students, and deepen the School’s engagement with international scholarship and learning.

    The School has been extremely successful in building international exchange programmes, initially at undergraduate level, and more recently involving staff and graduate exchanges. These activities have supported the internationalization of experiences both for those going away and within the School itself. The School will develop exchange agreements with outstanding law schools in new locations, seek to recruit excellent students and staff from overseas and build on its participation in international networks to further develop and benefit from participation in the international world of legal learning and research.

  • To build the Sutherland School of Law community.

    We are strongly committed to an ethos of community engagement and learning amongst our staff and students and with our alumni and wider stakeholder communities nationally and internationally. The move to the Sutherland School of Law building in 2013 will facilitate a deepening of our ambitions and capacity for further development of such a community

  • Further develop the excellent professional support for the activities of the School.

    The School has benefited from outstanding professional support for its activities across core administrative functions, human resources, information technology, finance, marketing and development. The School will establish a single School of Law Administration and find ways to further engage the benefits of team approaches which involve academic and administrative staff in the delivery of the School’s core objectives.