Faculty of Law

Welcome to the Faculty of Law!

Faculty of Law at the University of Helsinki is the leading Finnish provider of education in law. The instruction offered by the faculty is based on topical research of the highest standards. Graduates are capable of carrying out demanding assignments that require national and international legal expertise. The Faculty of Law interacts closely with the rest of the society in producing versatile educational and expert services.

The Faculty of Law in Helsinki consists of 39 professors, 8 university lecturers and 21 research assistants. Since the faculty has national responsibility for legal education in Swedish, three professorships and a few other positions are reserved for Swedish-speaking personnel. The Institute of International Economic Law supervises ca 20 researchers and the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights ca 25 researchers. The faculty hosts also a Center of Excellence Foundations of European Law Polity Research as well as several Graduate Schools: Law in a Changing World (LCW), Foundations of European Law and Innovation Incentives and the Regulatory Infrastructure (INNOCENT).

There are more about 2,400 law students at the University of Helsinki. As law is one of the most popular fields of academic study, the annual intake is limited to approximately 16-18 per cent of the applicants. Admission is based on the results of the matriculation examinations and an entrance examination. On average, 240 students graduate each year.

Partly due to the growing importance of the international aspects of law, the number of postgraduate students has been increasing rapidly and presently exceeds 400. The faculty is also hosting an ever growing number of international students, mainly owing to the Erasmus exchange programmes.

The faculty consists of 25 disciplines: fiscal law, public international law, administrative law, constitutional law, legal theory, legal history, law and economics, sociology of law, legal informatics, private international law, comparative law, European law, criminal law, procedural law, medical and bio law, feminist jurisprudence, property law, commercial law, family and inheritance law, law of obligations, labour law, as well as land, water and environmental law.