Bachelor in Law

The Bachelor of Law program at UNamur offers you a comprehensive basic legal education, aimed at making you excellent general lawyers.

Your training in law during the bachelor's course covers the rules organizing the State and its action ("public law"): constitutional law, sources and principles of law, European Union law, administrative law, criminal law, public liberties, judicial law, social law... as well as the norms governing relations between individuals ("private law"): law of obligations, property law, family law, economic law, intellectual rights, history of private law... These lessons are complemented by a legal methodology course that introduces you to documentary sources in print and online (legislation, case law, doctrine), research and personal writing assignments.

Parallel to the legal courses, other courses develop your open-mindedness and general culture (economics, sociology, history of Belgian institutions, psychology...). They enable you to better understand the genesis and scope of rules, as well as to think critically about the law.

Some sources of law are only available in English or Dutch. Knowledge of these languages is therefore essential for any Belgian lawyer, and teaching them is a compulsory part of your training. However, you will benefit from specific pedagogical support (diagnostic test at the beginning of the year and, if necessary, guidance towards a refresher module).

Following the legal language courses, you will be introduced to the legal vocabulary of these two languages (courses in "Dutch legal terminology" and "comparative law and English legal terminology"). These courses enable you to read and understand a contract, a judgment or a legal study in these languages...

Finally, you complete your program with courses of your choice in legal and/or non-legal subjects depending on your personal project. You can group these courses around an option (criminology, vulnerabilities and societies, public law and political science, economics and management, law and digital, philosophy, modern languages, sustainable development) which also includes an interdisciplinary course and the end-of-cycle assignment. Some of these options facilitate subsequent access to certain masters degrees other than law.

At the end of the cycle, you have the option of taking a four-quarter course at Hasselt University as part of the Erasmus Belgica program. You can also follow the trilingual program.

From the second annual block onwards, the Faculty of Law offers you the opportunity to acquire specific training in a legal field or law-related discipline:

• Criminology: if you are interested in the study of crime, the criminal and punishment (juvenile delinquency, sexual offences, reactions to insecurity, figures of the individual and contemporary individualism...). This option will facilitate your transition to the master's degree in criminology.
• Public Law and Political Science: if you are attracted to the study of society, political ideas, the organization of powers, the State, its institutions and how they function. By adding one or two courses of your choice to your program and meeting certain conditions, you can, under the benefit of an attestation of complementary training, gain direct access to UCLouvain's Masters in Political Science or Public Administration.
• Economics and Management: if you choose this option and additional courses of the order of 15 credits, you will be able to access, under the benefit of an attestation of complementary training in economics or complementary training in management, to the master in economics or to the master in management sciences of UNamur, organized in daytime classes and at staggered timetable.
• Law and Digital: if you wish to enrich your training with a complementary and multidisciplinary approach around digital and its issues in terms of fundamental rights (privacy, image, freedom of expression...), criminal law (cyberharassment, cybercrime...)..., private law (contracts, evidence, property, user protection...) and regulation (artificial intelligence, shared economy...).
• Vulnerabilities and societies: if you're interested in issues of a more social or societal nature, or if you'd like to think more about how society, particularly through the legal tool, supports (or not) individuals facing a situation of vulnerability or experiencing multiple vulnerabilities.
• Modern languages: to strengthen your language skills, you can select advanced law-related courses in Dutch and English. An introduction to Belgian German legal terminology is also offered (course taught in French).
• Philosophy: if you wonder about the ultimate why of things and wish to dialogue with other areas of culture to understand reality (to which the rule of law applies).
• Sustainable development and transition: if you're interested in exploring the legal aspects of the transition to sustainable development (in its environmental, social and economic dimensions) and want to better understand how the transition to sustainable development is guiding and transforming the law of today and tomorrow.

• you enjoy expressing yourself in writing or orally, reading and understanding text;
• you are curious about the world in which you live;
• you have an analytical and critical mind;
• you are inventive and able to imagine new solutions and argue in favor of them.

Law bachelor training will help you further develop these qualities.

The courses offer a comprehensive approach. They combine theoretical knowledge with a practical perspective on the law, using participatory methods and involving legal practitioners. In fact, many teachers are lawyers, judges, researchers...... and enrich their teaching with their experience.

In addition, you have the opportunity to develop your practical skills through exercises, assignments, mock trials, an eloquence tournament, an internship and the "Namur Legal Lab".

Organized in groups of around twenty students and supervised by an assistant, the exercise sessions enable you to delve deeper into part of the subject matter and put into practice the notions seen in class (documents to read and exercises to prepare in advance). During these sessions, you solve practical cases adapted to your level of study and similar to those faced by lawyers, judges, in-house counsel, notaries... You also develop the art of discussion and expression, in public, of rigorous thought.

By writing papers on a legal topic, you learn to find the sources of the law (in codes, library books, properly targeted internet sources...), understand and exploit them by developing a well-founded, argued and convincing legal reasoning. In the second annual block, you will complete a project designed to put into practice what you have learned in the legal methodology course. Individual and small-group support (between 8 and 15 students) is provided by an assistant who supervises and corrects each stage of this work.

Assisted by an assistant, you then complete an end-of-cycle assignment that confronts you with both a substantive question and a practical case (including meeting a practitioner). In this assignment, you will apply all the theoretical and practical skills you have acquired. On the occasion of the end-of-cycle work, some supervised students provide, within the framework of the "Namur Legal Lab", initial legal advice to other students who encounter problems concerning the rental of their accommodation.

You take part in mock trials in constitutional law or international humanitarian law. In addition, a tournament of eloquence is organized each year within the Faculty. Numerous visits to institutions, linked to your path as future jurists, are offered in Namur (Walloon Parliament, Palais de Justice, prison establishment) and elsewhere (Parliament, Court of Justice of the European Union, Constitutional Court, Council of State).

At the end of the cycle, the Faculty organizes a legal practice internship. This internship, which is treated as an elective course in its own right, enables you to discover legal practice through activities essentially involving observation and participation in certain parts of the professional activities carried out by your internship supervisor (lawyers, magistrates, notaries, bailiffs, company lawyers, lawyers in the associative sector...), under his or her guidance and with his or her advice.

For all these activities, attentive, tailor-made supervision is organized.

Succeeding in a year of study at university involves many challenges.

To help you meet them, UNamur supports you in developing your disciplinary, methodological and human skills... with the support of numerous professionals.

Preparatory courses, individualized help...

The bachelor's degree in law gives automatic access to the master's degree in law (two years) in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation and the Flemish Community.

UNamur and UHasselt have drawn up the trilingual program which guarantees automatic access to the UHasselt master's degree. Specific agreements have also been signed with KULeuven and UAntwerpen to facilitate access to their masters programs.Continuing your law studies at another university offers the advantage of getting to know two different sites, two different cultures and two different academic ways of thinking during your studies, which is an undeniable asset.

The bachelor's degree in law also gives access to the master's degree in criminology with program adaptation.

Furthermore, the Faculty organizes two complementary courses whose attestations give you access to master's degrees in management sciences at daytime and to shifted time (at UNamur), in economics at daylight saving time and at staggered schedule (at UNamur and UCLouvain), in political science or public administration (at UCLouvain).

A double bachelor's degree in law and philosophy to be completed over four years will give you access to the two corresponding master's degrees.