Legal studies not just for lawyers
It’s no secret that being a lawyer in Belize these days is a busy job. But having a knowledge and understanding of our legal system is not just the province of attorneys… as News Five’s Jacqueline Woods found out at the U.W.I.
Luz Longsworth, Resident Tutor, U.W.I. Belize
?You know we are becoming so alert to legal issues in our society that the general public can learn quite a bit from a course like this.?
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
At the end of July, the University of the West Indies School of Continuing Studies offered the first course in its Summer Law Institute. Approximately sixty people are enrolled in the intensive sessions that form the foundation for additional courses such as commercial law, corporate law, and criminal law.
Luz Longsworth
?We have had a really good mixture of students, some fairly young people, as well as people who are professionals, who are in the police force, who are working in legal offices within the court system as well, so it has been a very good response to the course.?
The certificate course in legal methods and writing gives the students the basic ability to read and understand the law and the skill to participate in debates relating to many legal issues.
Dr. Leighton Jackson, Sr. Lecturer, Faculty of Law, U.W.I.
?Legal methods and writing really tells how lawyers reason, how lawyers, judges take a problem and argue to the solution, how they apply the law to the combination of facts that have occurred and get a solution which meets a sense of justice.?
?Right now in terms of our civil governance in the Caribbean, most people stay out of the fray. Once you say law they believe it is some abstract concept that has no relationship to them and what this course does is to teach that the law is as everyday as the facts that occur which invites the intervention of law.?
Upon completion, the students, who are now on their last leg of studies, will have earned themselves marketable skills that they can either take back to their workplace or use as a strong academic base to further their education.
Darrell Bradley, Course Tutor
?It?s very intense, actually some of the students were somewhat complaining that some of the assessments were very challenging. It?s a four week course and we offered it at the level is offered at the Cave Hill Campus in the Faculty of Law, so it is very intensive so and this was the objective because we wanted to give students and participants a real feel of what the law is really about.?
Course tutor Darrell Bradley, who recently attained his Bachelors Degree in law, says overall the U.W.I. programme gives the participants a very good foundation.
Darrell Bradley
?We have a lot of concerns with legal issues. Law deals with life because it deals with basic human interaction, so anytime you can provide knowledge to help people better understand that relationship that governs people?s basic lives, I think that is a good thing.?
The certificate course will become the prerequisite for a five month module that leads to an advanced certificate in legal studies in U.W.I.?s Summer Law Institute. Jacqueline Woods for News Five.
