Welcome from the Executive Dean

This is an exciting time for legal education and research at The Open University (OU).

Shaped by the OU’s social mission, our programmes help students understand and navigate the legal implications of the changes that are impacting both the legal profession and wider society. As the leading distance learning provider of legal education, we were quick to embrace the potential of online learning and, since 1998, we have grown to be Europe’s largest law school, helping more than 60,000 students across the four UK nations achieve their study ambitions.

Changes to professional qualification pathways have provided new opportunities for us to support our students achieve their professional goals. We have remodelled our undergraduate curriculum to provide study pathways for our students to support their professional ambitions, including launching bespoke Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) preparation modules and renewing our postgraduate Master of Laws (LLM) offer.

Our Open Justice Centre takes an innovative approach to utilising technology to help our students put their legal skills and knowledge to good use in their communities, via a range of pro bono partnerships with national and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and charities.

The transformative educational opportunities we offer are informed by cutting-edge research on a wide range of contemporary social and legal issues, including combatting violence against women and girls, the legal rights of rescuers at sea, technology and legal education, sports law and modern slavery among many others.

Our mission to be ‘open to people, places, methods and ideas’ has led our academics to many successful partnerships with the BBC. These produce TV programmes which educate, inform and inspire such as The Detectives, Parole and The Women Who Changed Modern Scotland. We also create accessible and engaging content that can be accessed for free on our OpenLearn platform.

Thank you for your interest in The Open University Law School and I hope you feel inspired to learn more. Please keep in touch with our news and follow us on X (formerly Twitter).

Professor Mark Durkin
Executive Dean, Faculty of Business and Law (FBL), since 1 December 2023