The aim of the Doctorate in Law is to train first-rate researchers and lawyers with a clearly competitive profile in their chosen field of legal expertise. As the final stage of advanced training, this doctorate aims to combine the consolidation of legal knowledge with the development of such competence and skills as may be necessary for moving into the world of teaching or professional practice.
Law being an eminently communicative discipline, the competence profile will be centred largely on maximising the communication skills gained by the student during the different stages of his/her education as a lawyer. In this sense, the priority training objectives are to improve debating capacity, allowing successful defence of a position, to perfect oral and written expression and to hone the student's capacity for critical assessment.
However, the final objective is that these communicative skills should not be acquired without due regard for the human element in the lawyer's activity. For this reason, students will also learn to improve their capacity for empathy, to work in a team and to consolidate a structure of ethical values.
A further aim of this Doctorate is for the doctorand to gain advanced training in research techniques. In this sense the purpose is to consolidate all the necessary analytical, methodological and technical skills so that the students can perform quality research, a valuable asset in debates and in international academic research in the field of law. Attaining this aim will also require stressing the importance of the capacity to understand, analyse and use multidisciplinary materials and bibliography, and in different languages.
This training can be done through the organisation of courses, seminars, research placements and other activities aimed at investigative training, and will include the writing and presentation of the corresponding dissertation or doctoral thesis, which must be a work of original research. The Law Doctorate studies are aimed especially at students who wish to go into research and the field of University teaching. They are also aimed at law professionals and operators who wish to complete their academic or practical education with a knowledge of the legal system that will guarantee their best possible insertion in the professional world and their part-time participation, as associate or practical experience lecturers, in university life and teaching activities.
The Doctorate studies are also aimed at recruiting into the UPF post-graduates from other Catalan, Spanish and foreign universities, who wish to take advantage of the courses offered by UPF. In this sense, for the national and international projection of the UPF Law Department, we have to bear in mind the importance of international students, already fairly numerous, who wish to complete their academic trajectory by doing their doctoral theses at UPF.