Welcome to the Department of Law at NUI Maynooth. As you will see from these pages, NUIM Law is a vibrant community committed to educating the finest legal minds.
The life of the lawyer has undergone significant changes in recent times. Factors including globalization, the Internet, demographic transformations, and the commercialization of new technologies have created new challenges and opportunities for lawyers. The increased potential for international elements to any legal issue – from property law to environmental law, from banking law to criminal law, from family law to constitutional law – has meant that lawyers have to possess skills that transcend one national jurisdiction. In addition, the movement away from dispute resolution to creative problem-solving requires skills that go beyond the courthouse. All of this requires a new kind of lawyer with a new kind of education.
NUI Maynooth aims to produce precisely this kind of lawyer. We will train you for a transnational market, with skills for the application of legal tools in a variety of institutional situations. The law that you will encounter at NUIM integrates insights from a diversity of disciplines ranging from economics to sociology to evolutionary biology to psychology. It will go beyond cases and statutes and will contain a significant experiential component, allowing students to get a hands-on experience of the multifaceted challenges that lawyers have to tackle, whether it is advising a local band on contract negotiations with a music label, or fighting for human rights in Africa . Our approach will be necessarily international, equipping you with the skills and confidence to work in any part of the world.
Our research-driven faculty's commitment to teaching and mentorship combined with small class sizes creates the right climate for cultivating the life of the mind. We thrive on a robust exchange of ideas and curiosity is encouraged in discussions inside and outside the classroom. Periodic visits from legal luminaries and leaders from business and politics create a culture of intense intellectual engagement and collegiality, where students and faculty work in cooperation to find solutions to complex problems.
NUIM Law is an exciting place with a pioneering approach to legal education. We invite you to join us in this journey.
Sincerely,
Dr. Sandeep Gopalan
Professor of Law and Head of Department .