Each thesis support seminar is attended by no more than 10 students. All students are linked to one seminar according to their wishes that they will have expressed with respect to the subjects of their theses or, more generally, regarding the legal discipline/subject with which they would like their theses to be associated. According to the conditions stipulated by the Thesis Regulations, the students express the wish to work on one or several legal subjects, problems or disciplines/matters; they do not choose their sponsors even if they have been informed of the names of the various holders of the support seminars and their legal specialities. The thesis support seminar is run by a member of the teaching staff of the Faculty of Law who is therefore both the holder and sponsor of the theses of the students linked to his/her seminar. The thesis support seminar takes place during the second four month period of the first year of the Master programme at the rate of at least five sessions of two hours. These sessions follow the objectives indicated above and of which the final objective is getting the student to define as precisely as possible both the subject and the methodology of his/her thesis (particularly the necessity to resort to one phase of the thesis). The seminar is also a forum for exchange among students with respect to all recommendations relating to the future completion of their theses both regarding form and content. The holder of the seminar may demonstrate to the students the contemporary difficulties encountered in the branch or branches of law to which the thesis support seminar is linked in order to guide the students in researching the subject of their theses. The holder of the support seminar may invite any external person to intervene in order to enrich exchanges. He may also require the students to carry out one or the other of the following tasks: - studies and comments of documents and texts; - work on the theses already supported; - outlines of the works or articles relating to the joint subjects; - simulation of vivas and invitation to former thesis students; - case analysis and concrete situations linked if possible to practical training carried out elsewhere. No later than the end of the seminar, the subject of the thesis will be decided by common agreement by the sponsor and the student on proposition by the latter via a brief outline of up to five pages. The pages contain a provisional plan, a bibliography and a short presentation of the problem to be discussed. The student is not authorized to sit the June Master 1 examination if no decision has been made on the subject of his/her thesis. The sponsor will inform the faculty secretary if he/she notes that the subject has not been decided on by the end of the seminar. The respective student will in such case be enrolled for individual examinations and not the test examination; he will be informed accordingly. No marks will be awarded for attending the seminar, the assessment of any tasks by the student being included in the mark allocated to Master 2 for the thesis (cf. Infra).
The thesis support seminar will assist the students in completing their theses within the deadlines set and, as far as possible, to achieve them during the June Master 2 session. The sponsors are in charge of one support seminar (two at most). The objective of the thesis supervisory seminar is in particular to develop the student's capacity to: - define the subject of the thesis as accurately as possible; - make adequate methodological choices according to the subject of his/her thesis; - create an analysis and summary of a situation or problem by bringing out the rules applying to it; - exchange with the other students on the subject of the course work; - understand and respond to the observations and criticism put forward by the other students and the sponsor; - elaborate on the state of progress with his research; - master the detailed demands and the form relative to completing his/her thesis; - present the summary of certain joint reading that may be allocated to the students.
The contribution of this Teaching Unit to the development and command of the skills and learning outcomes of the programme(s) can be accessed at the end of this sheet, in the section entitled “Programmes/courses offering this Teaching Unit”.
