Master of Health and Medical Law

Melbourne Law School's graduate program in health and medical law is open to lawyers in the medico-legal area and to doctors and other health professionals and administrators (no prior legal qualification is required).

Subjects include medical litigation (taught by leading plaintiffs' litigator Paul Henderson from Slater & Gordon in 2010); the law on the beginning and end of life, guardianship and emerging technologies such as genetic testing and stem cell technology; and medical ethics (taught by Oxford bioethicist Professor Julian Savulescu in 2010).

The graduate programs in health and medical law focus on:

• Relevant aspects of health and medical law
• The theoretical framework surrounding health and medical law, and contemporary ethical and theoretical issues
• The law concerning the relationship between doctor and patient as well as that relating to particular procedures
• The provision of concise legal advice to plaintiffs and defendants in medical litigation
• An ethical evaluation of health and medical law and the development and interpretation of theoretical legal arguments
• Advanced communication in health and medical law, orally and in writing
• Conducting effective legal research in the area of health and medical law.

Students who do not have a law degree from a common law jurisdiction must complete Fundamentals of the Common Law, as well as seven subjects from the prescribed list.

Students with a law degree from a common law jurisdiction must complete at least seven subjects from the prescribed list and may choose an eighth subject from those available in the Melbourne Law Masters (excluding Fundamentals of the Common Law).