Undergraduate · Law
Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws
University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
About this program
The combined Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws lets students build a genuine arts major (history, philosophy, government and international relations, and dozens of others) alongside the professional law sequence, and Sydney's arts faculty is broad enough that students aren't limited to token humanities electives around a law-heavy timetable. The combination runs to five years, and most students take their arts units seriously as a second discipline rather than treating them as filler around the law degree.
Sydney Law School's genuine research strength in international law and human rights shows up in the elective list available to Arts/Law students in their later years, and the faculty's Sydney Institute of Criminology gives students interested in criminal justice a real research centre to engage with rather than just a couple of standalone units. The combined degree's arts component also opens up study-abroad exchange options across the university's very large international partner network, something students often use in third or fourth year.
Because the program mixes two faculties with different assessment cultures (arts subjects tending toward essay-based assessment, law subjects toward problem-based exam questions), students need to manage quite different workloads across a single semester, which the university's academic advising addresses directly during enrolment rather than leaving students to work out alone.
Cost & duration
English test scores
Course structure
5 terms of coursework
Years 1-2: Arts major coursework (chosen from options including History, Government and International Relations, Philosophy, Sociology) alongside foundational law units
- Legal Reasoning, Contracts, Torts, Criminal Law
- Years 3-4: Continued arts major units, Property, Equity, Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Evidence
- Year 5: Advanced law electives (options include International Law, Human Rights Law, Criminology-linked units), Corporations Law, capstone arts unit, Professional Responsibility
- Study abroad exchange available in later years across Sydney's international partner network
- Practical Legal Training required post-graduation for admission as a solicitor
Admissions
Completion of Year 12 (or equivalent) with ATAR of approximately 99.50; strong performance across humanities and English subjects favoured.