Faculty of Laws Newsletter : June 2024 : issue 20

Abstract

Last month, precisely on the 16th of May, the Faculty of Laws met with the Periodic Programme Review (PPR) Team. To recap, during this and the next academic year, all of the study programmes offered by the Faculty of Laws are being reviewed by a UM committee purposely set up, who ask us a number of questions about the study programme under scrutiny, collects feedback from stakeholders and then relays the feedback and their views to the Faculty. This is a cyclical review, which all Faculties are subjected to, around once every six years. This process started in November 2023 and by the end of this current academic year, the LLB Hons, M.Adv and M.Not would have been reviewed; last November we filled in the questionnaires, which were anaylsed and on 16th May we met the stakeholders, who consist of past and present students, practitioners, representatives of the Ministries for Justice and Education, and others who are involved in the legal world such as the CEO of the Financial Services Arbiters office. We received verbal feedback, some of which was indeed very interesting, such as students calling out for a Foundation Year (something which the Faculty itself has long been calling for), the problem of lectures being held in English when the warrant exam is in Maltese and court practice is in Maltese, students not knowing Italian joining the Notarial Profession and expected to read conctracts in Italian, and the perennial question of trying to do prattika during Madv to get one’s warrant as soon as one finishes studying, to mention but a few of the points which arose.