UCL in the News: Time to give your brain a good workout

Sandy Shandro, who takes over as Dean of UCL Laws in the summer, says that many young lawyers are not being given the intellectual breadth and stimulation that they need to get satisfaction from the work they undertake.

Bright minds and lively brains need richer fare than a daily diet of hard grind. They need both intellectual stimulation and a grasp of the wider context in which they work.

"Nonlaw graduates in particular face difficult problems," he says. "The Legal Practice Course is very functional but it has something missing. Without a deeper understanding of what they are doing, trainees and associates can find themselves at 30 wondering whether there may be more to life than this."

As a result, Shandro plans that UCL should start to promote more actively to law firms the benefits of its part-time masters courses. "There are a number of young lawyers who would relish the challenge of some academic thinking about what they are doing. I'm confident that there's going too be an enormous appetite for this kind of enrichment exercise." …

Edward Fennell, 'The Times'