Designed for university graduates, the Juris Doctor (JD) and the embedded Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice (GDLP) will not only open doors to employment as a lawyer, but it will also provide you with professional skills and attributes that are in high demand in other industries and professions.

At most other law schools, after you finish your JD you must then undertake practical legal training and arrange supervised legal workplace experience before you can apply for admission to be a lawyer in Australia. As part of our embedded GDLP however, we provide the requisite practical legal training experience and we also guarantee to arrange the required external supervised workplace placement for you. This means you can be ready to practise law after three years of full-time study, with no need for further supervision or training before you start your legal career.

The JD/GDLP is not only accredited in Australia; with some further study it can help qualify you to practise law in a number of other common law countries, including Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

The Juris Doctor (JD) / Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice comprises 280 units (i.e 28 x 10 unit courses), which includes 220 units of core courses including the Legal Practice courses, plus 60 units of directed courses chosen from a list of 40 courses (subject to availability).

Students can choose directed courses that they are interested in from a range of areas including (subject to availability):

• Advanced Criminal Law
• Commercial Law
• Commercial Dispute Resolution
• Competition Law and Policy
• Corporate Power and Corporate Accountability: Pathways to Socially Responsible Business
• Employment Law
• Environmental Law
• Equal Opportunity Law
• Family Law
• Indigenous Peoples, Issues and the Law
• Intellectual Property Law
• International Air and Space Law
• International Human Rights Law
• Internet Law
• Jurisprudence
• Law and Religion
• Law for Startups
• Mediation Skills and Theory
• Mining Law
• Taxation Law

2024 Program Handbook

Refer to the program handbook for details of the complete program structure, course requirements and availability.

View program handbook

"Upon graduation, I started working at Maddocks Lawyers in Sydney in the construction and projects team. Every law program provides students with a knowledge of legal concepts. However, the University of Newcastle’s JD/GDLP also gives you the opportunity to develop your practical skills and get involved in real life cases. Whether that be by cross examining a witness in a real court room or acting for community groups trying to protect their local environment, the program gives you a great opportunity to apply what you have been learning in the classroom and to see how law is done in the 'real world'. It is a great program and has given me the opportunity to work in a leading firm and to contribute to society in a meaningful way. I highly recommend it to all that I meet."

Ben Gunter, Maddocks Lawyers, Sydney

Professional placement

The School of Law and Justice is the only law school in Australia that both runs its own legal centre and directly provides students with the practical legal training and much of the supervised clinical legal experience required to qualify to practise law.

As part of the GDLP, students undertake 285 hours of legal professional workplace experience. A minimum of 105 hours of that practical experience is undertaken at the University of Newcastle Legal Centre (UNLC), under the supervision of the solicitors from the School of Law and Justice – either in the legal centre itself or as part of our ‘Law on the Beach’ program during the summer term. Students have intensive interaction with clients and extensive real client casework including drafting letters, submissions, undertaking research, drafting court documents and appearing in court with a UNLC lawyer. This is very attractive to potential employers and gives Newcastle graduates a significant advantage.

Placement organisations

The School of Law and Justice staff also assist students to arrange external placements to make up the remaining 180 required professional training hours. The School of Law and Justice arranges external practical legal training placements for all students who seek assistance in organising their placement during the final year of the program. Students are offered a variety of legal environments from small private firms to large government organisations. Some examples of placement locations include:

• Australian Taxation Office
• Legal Aid
• Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions
• SWS Lawyers
• Sessions Legal
• Sparke Helmore Lawyers

Entry to the JD/GradDipLegPrac is available to students who have one of the following qualifications with a Grade Point Average (GPA) of 4.0 or above: a Bachelor Degree a Bachelor Honours D

TOEFL paper-based test score of 589; TOEFL internet based score of 94; IELTS (Academic) score of 7.0; PTE GSE score of 65; Cambridge English: Advanced score of 67.