This course is intended for those who wish to pursue further legal studies after completing their first degree in law, including those who are considering an academic career or intend to practise law. The advanced nature of the LLM is reflected in the fact that the programme is organised and taught separately from the undergraduate law degree at Cambridge. All of the LLM courses are specifically tailored for the LLM programme. LLM students take four courses of their choice from a list of over 30 options, each most commonly assessed by means of a three-hour written examination at the end of the LLM year although students may elect to write an 18,000 word thesis in lieu of the written examination for one course only subject to prior formal approval of their dissertation topic. Students may opt to specialise in commercial, European, international or intellectual property law by choosing at least three of their courses from those designated as being in one of these areas of specialism. Alternatively they may select from the entire range of LLM courses and obtain a non-specialised LLM degree. At the end of this postgraduate programme students can be expected to have greatly enhanced knowledge of their chosen specialist subjects areas, an increased ability to apply sophisticated and rigorous analytical techniques to primary and secondary legal materials, and a better facility in advancing robust evaluations of doctrinal and policy arguments in the fields of their studies and more generally.