Philanthropic Priorities and Gift Opportunities
From artificial intelligence and climate change to democratic resilience, migration and economic transformation, the defining challenges of our age are legal as much as they are political, scientific or technological. Every major societal change raises fundamental questions about rights, responsibility, accountability and justice. Law provides the framework through which societies respond to these challenges. As the world changes, so too must the law.
To continue to meet the challenges ahead, we must continue to innovate. We are seeking visionary philanthropic partners to help us expand our research, support the next generation of legal thinkers and ensure that Oxford remains at the forefront of global legal thought leadership. A gift to the Faculty is an investment in a future where legal scholarship continues to illuminate the path forward, ensuring that justice remains resilient, inclusive and responsive to the world's most pressing problems. Your support can help us shape a legal system fit for the future.
We are seeking support across three strategic themes to expand the scope and depth of our research and teaching, and the infrastructure that enables us to embrace the changing world head-on:
- Fulfilling Outstanding Potential
- Embracing the Changing World
- A Tradition of Innovation
Learn more below, or contact us at development@law.ox.ac.uk for an exploratory conversation about finding the right opportunity for your donation to have a meaningful impact.
Fulfilling Outstanding Potential
Oxford Law attracts exceptionally talented students with the potential to shape the future of law and address the biggest challenges of our time as our future legal leaders and policymakers. Exceptional legal talent exists in every part of society, but opportunity does not. Highly capable young people can be deterred from our undergraduate programme by social, economic and cultural barriers, misconceptions about the University, limited guidance and educational opportunities, or expectations that do not reflect their true potential.
Over recent years, we have undertaken a detailed review of our admissions processes to better understand which indicators most accurately predict future academic success. This work has enabled us to refine how we identify talent and potential, helping ensure that outstanding candidates are recognised wherever they come from. Our approach recognises that traditional measures of attainment do not always capture underlying potential. We are working to offer holistic support to potential applicants, students and alumni at each stage of the student journey, from school to higher education, while at Oxford, and into employment or further study.
How you can help
Each year, half of all Oxford Law offer-holders have to turn down their place to join us for graduate study, due to lack of finances. A donation to our Dean’s Scholars Fund helps to ensure that finances are not a barrier to study for graduate students reading Law.
Partial or full DPhil scholarships, for home and international students, not only provide much needed support to students facing increasing undergraduate debt, but doctoral research is often where novel, scalable and impactful research is first developed.
DPhil scholarships help students embrace the changing world by undertaking doctoral research to understand a specific problem, and find potential solutions.
Masters scholarships support students to undertake study in one of our taught masters programmes:
- The Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) and Magister Juris (MJur) degrees are world-renowned graduate courses for students from common and civil law backgrounds respectively. While on course, BCL/MJur candidates debate points of law with leading academics. They graduate with a deep understanding of legal principles and are equipped for legal practice or work as a legal academic at the highest level, as well as for a wide range of other intellectually demanding roles that engage with issues of global scale.
- The MSc in Law and Finance, taught jointly by the Law Faculty and Saïd Business School, provides graduates with interdisciplinary expertise in economic and financial concepts as applied to legal topics, uniquely preparing them for careers that blend law and business. Graduates go on to effect change through successful, high impact careers in law, finance, policy, and academia.
- The part-time MSc in International Human Rights Law enables individuals active in human rights work, many of whom are from the global south, to deepen their knowledge and connect with a global network of front-line practitioners. Graduates leave with a deepened understanding of the principles and institutions of international human rights law, including their origins, assumptions, contents, limits and potential to improve human experience.
- The MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice provides graduates with advanced knowledge in the field. Graduates go on to lead in academic and policy roles globally, and contribute to better politics of order, crime and justice.
Through our access and outreach initiatives, we aim to ensure that all talented legal minds have the resources and confidence to make a competitive application to read Law as an undergraduate at Oxford and other Russell Group universities.
Your support will help us to expand our access and outreach programmes, allowing us to offer new virtual open days and online resources to ensure that we can inspire more school pupils based in more remote parts of the country.
Embracing the Changing World
Our Faculty has always evolved alongside society. Today, that tradition of intellectual leadership has never been more important.
Our academics continue to shape international thinking, with research that informs legal reform and improves lives around the world. Artificial intelligence is transforming society at extraordinary speed, reshaping decisions across healthcare, employment, financial services, justice and government. Its potential to improve lives is immense, but technological innovation is advancing faster than the legal and regulatory frameworks needed to govern it responsibly. Governments, courts, regulators and businesses face urgent questions about accountability, discrimination, privacy and fundamental rights. The decisions made now will determine how AI serves society for generations.
Oxford’s research is already influencing legislation and policy internationally, while the Faculty’s professional development AI programmes are taking our expertise directly to lawyers, judges, policymakers and business leaders. Philanthropic investment will enable the Faculty to build on these foundations through funding new AI academic leadership roles, DPhil scholarships, and scholarships for students on our MSc in Law, Governance and Artificial Intelligence. The MSc will help build a much-needed talent pipeline, giving graduates the skills they need to navigate an increasingly complex regulatory space, alongside nurturing tomorrow’s legal tech entrepreneurs.
How you can help
Give your support to develop a bespoke research programme addressing a specific global challenge, be that exploring the role of climate litigation in the fight against climate change, or advancing human rights.
By funding a lucrative academic post, you can help us attract, nurture and propel global minds to provide legal solutions to tomorrow's problems today.
DPhil scholarships help students embrace the changing world by undertaking doctoral research to understand a specific problem, and find potential solutions.
Partial or full DPhil scholarships, for home and international students, not only provides much needed support to students facing increasing undergraduate debt, but doctoral research is often where novel, scalable and impactful research is first developed.
A Tradition of Innovation
For more than sixty years, the St Cross Building has been the intellectual home of Oxford Law: a place where generations of students, academics and practitioners have come together to learn, debate and test ideas. But legal education is changing, and the building must change with it.
The opportunity created by the departure of the English Faculty will increase Oxford Law’s footprint by approximately 60%, allowing the Faculty to transform the St Cross Building into an integrated, state of-the-art environment for teaching, research, collaboration and public engagement. The new Oxford Law Hub will provide flexible teaching and seminar spaces, a new lecture theatre, an Ideation Hub, moot court facilities and significantly improved digital infrastructure, while preserving the architectural legacy of this Grade II listed building.
This is about more than creating better facilities: it is about creating the conditions in which legal judgement is formed. Law develops through the contestation of ideas – by bringing different arguments, experiences and perspectives into conversation, testing them rigorously and learning to weigh competing interpretations before reaching a judgement. Philanthropy can help realise this vision, with opportunities to support key elements of the transformation through the naming of seminar rooms, teaching and collaborative spaces, and other facilities. Donors can help create not simply a building, but an environment in which legal thought, judgement and leadership will be shaped for generations to come.
How you can help
There is a pressing need to expand support for the Bodleian Law Library, one of the largest open-access law libraries in Europe. We are committed to maintaining the quality and breadth of our legal collections through continual acquisitions of the most up-to-date international legal materials, along with the ever-expanding need for electronic resources, all of which incur significant, ever-increasing costs.
We are seeking philanthropic partners who will help us advance the breadth and depth of the Library’s collections and services, through spend-down lifetime donations, and endowed gifts in Wills.
Endowing key academic posts will help us to attract and retain the very best talent globally, integrating long-term succession planning. Endowments are needed of posts at all levels of the academic career ladder, from early-career Postdoctoral Fellowships to academic Chairs.
Leaving a legacy is one of the most meaningful ways you can safeguard the future of law.
Whether supporting leading research, our state-of-the-art law library and facilities, or the next generation of legal minds through scholarships, gifts in Wills help ensure the faculty can continue our tradition of excellence in legal scholarship for generations to come.