A day in Trinity

Trinity Law Open Day

I spent an enthralling day in Trinity College Dublin attending an open day for all perspective 4^th, 5^th and 6^th years who are interested in studying law in Trinity. I decided to attend this open day as I have an extensive interest in studying law at a university level and I am also doing work experience with a law firm in Dublin for 2 weeks.

The atmosphere in Trinity was buoyant and animated to say the least when I walked through the gates of Trinity. Right away, I knew that I wanted to attend this much acclaimed university when I am older. We were directed to the Arts segment of the somewhat endless places to be in Trinity and organised into groups. The main aim of this day was to experience what a day studying law in Trinity would be like for a student.

We first attended a lecture on Tort Laws, which I found captivating. The lecturer was very amicable and I found the lecture really interesting, not wanting it to end. Tort law is a civil wrongdoing that unfairly causes someone else to suffer loss or harm resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the tortious act. Although crimes may be torts, the cause of legal action is not necessarily a crime, as the harm may be due to negligence. During my first lecture, I got talking to various people and discovered that I was the youngest there! I felt this helped me to learn from the 5^th and 6^th years and they told me about their interests in law.

We then moved on to another room in which I participated in a mock-trial. This mock-trial was on O.J.Simpson, an American footballer, who ‘supposedly’ killed his ex-wife.  I was on the defendant’s side and had to argue that Simpson was not guilty. I found this challenging yet stimulating. I was surprised to have been picked to be the barrister on the defendant’s side as I was the youngest there, but experiencing what it was like to debate as a barrister made the idea of studying law in Trinity even more appealing.

After the mock trial, we were grateful to eat the lovely spread that Trinity had supplied for lunch. During this time, I got to chat with current law students and ask them different questions about studying law and attending Trinity. I got some really positive feedback about the law course and one of the girls told me that being in Trinity was like being in an enormous family.

When lunch had ended, my group went back upstairs to another lecture on constitutional law. The lecture this time was not with a lecturer but rather with a PhD student who had just finished studying pure law and was going on to specialise in Constitutional law. He told us about what constitutional law is and I learnt that constitutional law deals with the fundamental principles by which the government exercises its authority. So literally the case is between a normal person like you or me and the state. We got to debate on previous cases that had been about the constitution and my side won the debate which we were very happy about.

40 minutes of Constitutional law moved very fast and soon we were in a huge lecture hall where all the groups came together for the final lecture which was very informative and right up my alley. This final lecture was on criminal law and we looked at various cases that came under the sector of Criminal law. After looking at a few cases, we were told about studying in Trinity and how you could study just pure law or law with French, business or political science.

Attending Trinity for a day was an eye-opening experience and now I know for sure that I definitely want to attend Trinity when I am older.