Part-Time Program

The part-time program is available to law graduates and to students in the final year of their legal studies who are completing no more than 3 undergraduate subjects in each semester.

The program is offered over two academic sessions in tandem with the full-time PLT course.

The part-time program commences with two weeks of at home preparation followed by a on-campus "Intensive Week". The Intensive Week introduces you to the Course and its teaching and learning methods, and provides some skills development and basic legal practice management tools in preparation for the work in the remainder of the Course.

Over the remainder of the course, you will:

• complete a range of self-directed assignments and tasks. Much of this work requires interaction with instructors and other students, through on-line learning, email, telephone or facsimile; and
• have the opportunity to attend a series of a number of (optional) Saturday workshops during each session;
• attend the relevant parts of compulsory weekend assessments held in each session.

Students in the final year of their legal studies may be able to commence the part-time course even if some Priestley or skills subjects have still to be completed, depending on the pre-requisites for the PLT subjects (eg, you will normally need to have Remedies & Procedure to enrol in LLB 845, and Law of Business Organisations to enrol in LLB 846). You will also need to consider your overall study workload, your expectations for your degree and what you wish to achieve in the PLT course. You can expect the PLT part-time workload to be between 10 -15 hours of sustained assignment work each week throughout the course.

If you wish to undertake the part-time program, you will enrol in LLB 843 Professional Practice and LLB 844 Practice Management in the first session, and undertake much of the course work for these subjects in the academic recess preceding that enrolment. Results in these subjects are then withheld until the whole of the PLT program is completed, as the skills and concepts of those subjects are to be applied in the practice subjects that follow.

You will also enrol in one of the practice subjects - LLB 845 Conducting Litigation and LLB 846 Commercial and Property Practice - in the first session and in the other subject in the second session. You will complete your professional experience component of the course in accordance with the agreed study plan: this will in many instances represent a departure from the integrated coursework/professional experience model of the full-time Course, in that the professional experience component may be organised more flexibly throughout the whole of the course, or deferred until all academic study and PLT Coursework is completed.

However, you should consider the advantages of incorporating actual experience with the theory of legal practice, when planning your professional experience component. A total of 16 weeks or 80 days of professional experience (inclusive of the LLB 311 and LLB 396 placement programs or credit given for prior experience) must be undertaken in order to qualify for the GDLP. All professional experience must be completed within 6 months of completing the coursework.