Department of Law
Bifröst University was the first university in Iceland to start teaching law outside of University of Iceland which had monopoly until 2004 protected by law in Iceland. The first person who received a law degree outside of the Univeristy of Iceland and was appointed a judge, graduated with ML in law from Bifrost University. The BSc-programme in Business Law (190 ECTS) specializes in training law students for industry and business and can be completed in two and a half years or three years. Gifted students, or students who have completed a part of a degree elsewhere, may finish the program in two years. Students can only be admitted to the program if they have finished the Icelandic matriculation examination (stúdentspróf) or have an equivalent educational background.
Students finish a strong selection of courses in business in addition to basic subjects of law focusing on acquiring the expertise necessary for running a modern company in a complicated and entangled legal environment. The law program aims at moving away from rote learning practices, which are still too common in law departments around the world, giving the students the necessary training and stimuli to become independent thinkers and actor.
The Bifröst learning module is very hands-on, where students practice their skills through project-based learning, particularly with the yearly term-projects (in the undergraduate studies), where students collaborate in groups on a real time project (see further information about Bifröst University’s Teaching Policy here).
Bifrost University has been an active partner in Law Without Walls from 2013. The project is a part-virtual collaboratory that aims for students to develop the skills necessary to provide effective legal services in today’s marketplace.
LawWithoutWalls teams up students from several law and business schools around the world with academic, lawyer, and entrepreneur mentors to develop business plans that tackle the main problems facing legal education and practice today. It centres on the intersection of law, business, technology, and innovation. It is designed to embrace and meet the challenges of the economic pressures, technological advances, and globalization that have reshaped the legal market.
BSc in Business Law is a distance-learning programme only taught in Icelandic. The BSc thesis, which each student must complete in order to graduate, can be written in either English or Icelandic. This degree programme is suitable for the modern corporate world – many of the alumni work in in the financial sector, for international institutions or in the legal sector (public and private).
The academic year starts in the end of August. Following academic programmes are offered at the Department of Social Science and Law:
Undergraduate programmes
Postgraduate programmes
- ML in Law
- MBL in Business Law
- Postgraduate Diplomas in Business Law