Bachelor of Laws

The Bachelor of Laws (Latin: Legum Baccalaureus; LL.B. or B.L.) is an undergraduate degree in law (or a first professional degree in law, depending on jurisdiction) originating in England and offered in most common law jurisdictions. The "LL." of the abbreviation for the degree is from the genitive plural legum (of lex, law). Creating an abbreviation for a plural, especially from Latin, is often done by doubling the first letter (e.g., "pp" for "pages"), thus "LL.B." stands for Legum Baccalaureus in Latin. It is sometimes erroneously called "Bachelor of Legal Letters" to account for the double "L".

Historically, in Canada, Bachelor of Laws was the name of the first degree in common law, but is also the name of the first degree in Quebec civil law awarded by a number of Quebec universities. Canadian common-law LL.B. programmes were, in practice, second-entry professional degrees, meaning that the vast majority of those admitted to an LL.B. programme were already holders of one or more degrees, or, at a minimum (with very few exceptions), have completed two years of study in a first-entry, undergraduate degree in another discipline. Today in Canada the predominant first degree in common law is the Juris Doctor degree having replaced the LL.B.

Bachelor of Laws is also the name of the first degree in Scots law and South African law (both being pluralistic legal systems that are based partly on common law and partly on civil law) awarded by a number of universities in Scotland and South Africa, respectively.

The first academic degrees were all law degrees in medieval universities, and the first law degrees were doctorates. The foundations of the first universities were the glossators of the 11th century, which were also schools of law. The first university, that of Bologna, was founded as a school of law by four famous legal scholars in the 12th century who were students of the glossator school in that city. The University of Bologna served as the model for other law schools of the medieval age. While it was common for students of law to visit and study at schools in other countries, such was not the case with England because of the English rejection of Roman law (except for certain jurisdictions such as the Admiralty Court), and although the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge did teach canon law until the English Reformation, its importance was always superior to civil law in those institutions.

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