Are we all electives now? Not quite: analysing the core curriculum within undergraduate law degrees

Undergraduate legal education in England and Wales has recently seen a shift away from prescription, by the professional bodies, of the content of an undergraduate law degree. The lack of such regulatory requirements calls into question the shape, scale and scope of the core curriculum within law schools, which sits alongside an increasingly diverse elective curriculum. This paper explores the core curriculum across providers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland through an analysis of module information taken from course specifications and related materials. It identifies that while there is still widespread provision of the traditional foundations of legal knowledge subjects, there are significant disparities in credit weighting and degree structure across providers. It also analyses the wide range of non-foundation of legal knowledge modules found within the core curriculum, developing four themes: the established core, the new core, the core adjacent and the specialist core to consider the role of these subjects and how different drivers of curriculum development are reflected in the similarities and differences seen across the sector.