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Teaching
MCL students take the compulsory full-year Deals course and a full-year LLM paper from a selection of corporate papers on offer to MCL students. In addition, from a menu of one-term MCL-specific modules, MCL students take four. They usually take two in the first term of the course and two in the second term.
| One to one supervision | One-on-one supervision is not provided as there is no dissertation option for the MCL course. |
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| Seminars & classes | Given that MCL enrolment is limited to approximately 25 students, class sizes for the modules and the Deals course are small enough to mean that interactive seminar-style teaching occurs in classes formally organised as lectures. |
| Lectures | MCL students receive two lecture hours per week for each of their four termly modules, for the full-year Deals course, and for their full-year LLM course. This means that there is a total of 16 lecture hours for each of the modules and 32 hours for the Deals course and the LLM course a student selects. |
| Practicals | There are no formal 'practicals', but all MCL students are expected to undertake substantial amounts of reading arising from seminars and lectures, to produce written work for some sessions and to give a presentation to the class as part of the Deals course. |
| Small group teaching | MCL students receive small group teaching for their full-year LLM paper alongside the LLM students taking the same paper if numbers are sufficiently large. |
| Posters and Presentations | This style of presentation is reserved for PhD students, but MCL students are welcome to attend. |
Feedback
MCL students receive brief written feedback on their Michaelmas Term module examinations in January and on their Lent Term module examinations in April.
MCL students are entitled to submit practice written work for the full-year LLM paper they take. This work might take the form of reflective essays or timed exam-practice essays. Course convenors and lecturers can advise on topics, but the aim is to produce short pieces of writing which provide a concise, rigorous argument or a cogent analysis of the issues in question. Students then benefit from specific and individual feedback, and can thereby hone their legal writing skills.
Assessment
Thesis / Dissertation
There is not a dissertation option for the MCL.
Essays
All students write an assignment (which has a word limit of 12,000 words) during the academic year as the primary form of formal assessment for the Deals course.
Written examination
Traditionally, all MCL students have sat a two-hour examination for each of their four termly MCL-specific modules and a separate three-hour examination for their one full-year LLM course. The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted University-wide consideration of exam methods and arrangements for 2024-25 have not been finalised.
Practical assessment
All MCL students give a class presentation as part of a group within the Deals course. This forms part of the assessment for the Deals course, alongside students' individual written assignments.