Dear SMU Community

I am pleased to announce that the new SMU School of Law, our fifth school, is officially launched this morning. The new School of Law, which will add diversity and competition in the provision of legal education, sets itself apart in being the first in Singapore to introduce a new contextualized teaching of law to produce lawyers ready for corporate and commercial practice. SMU will leverage on its existing strengths in business and finance to produce law graduates who have a broad-based understanding of the real world and who have contextualized and practice-relevant legal knowledge and expertise.

The new School of Law will offer a four-year single law degree (LLB) and a five-year double degree programme which allows students to combine law with one of the five existing degrees offered by SMU. The curriculum stands apart in several ways. SMU law undergraduates will take a suite of compulsory core law courses which will provide a strong grounding in the essential principles of law; a selection of law electives which trains them in more specialized areas of law for corporate and commercial practice; as well as a compulsory non-law component that gives a holistic understanding of the business context and environment within which law functions. They are also required to spend a 10-week internship with a law firm or government legal agency. More details can be read in the press release.

The rigorous legal curriculum, which also builds in a useful contextualized and practice-oriented understanding of the workings of the business world, will develop a unique skills-set in SMU law graduates to be able to think across disciplines and borders as well as be confident, articulate and analytically agile.

Helmed by Interim Dean Associate Professor Low Kee Yang, the new School of Law will admit 90 students in its first cohort for the Academic Year starting August 2007, reaching a steady state of 120 from Academic Year 2008 onwards

Professor Howard Hunter
President, Singapore Management University