March and April is a busy time in the Corpus Law calendar – each year we run the Law Residential, award the Peter Cane Legal Reasoning Prize (with a workshop), and hold the Frederick Pollock Law Society Dinner. The pandemic has disrupted these events for the last two years and so it was with great delight we could hold these in person this year.
Law Residential
From 14 to 15 March, a group aspiring lawyers were welcomed to Corpus for our annual Law Residential after two years of holding it online. The Law Residential is a great opportunity for prospective students to gain an insight into studying law. Open to Year 12 students, it comprises a series of participatory workshops from Corpus tutors and fellows that provide students with the experience of what it is like to study law at university. Topics this year included difficult questions in tort law and criminal law, as well as concerning climate change and legislation. There were also sessions on admissions and a tour of the College.
This year we received over 280 applications from across the UK. Over 190 applications were from students with five or more 8s and 9s at GSCE and many were from those who will be ‘first generation’ university students. This made choosing the 30 to attend the residential particularly difficult, so this year we also ran an additional online workshop.
Feedback on the residential was very positive. Not only did students enjoy staying overnight in College, but they even found legislation fun!
Peter Cane Legal Reasoning Prize
The Peter Cane Legal Reasoning Prize was created in 2017. It is an annual essay competition for school students in which they are given a legal question or problem to analyse. A feature of the prize is that students can use resources freely available on the internet in creating their answers. This year the topics was wills and we had nearly 100 entries.
On the afternoon of 15 March, those who were highly commended were invited to a workshop (on modern slavery legislation with Corpus Junior Research Fellow Lisa Hsin) and an announcement of the winners. 1st prize was awarded to Gabriel Stoney, 2nd prize to Shruti Chakraborty and 3rd prize to Caitlin Hui Ling Chiu.
