Hello and welcome back to the Australian Law Student Podcast. I'm your host Oliver Hammond
and in today's episode I had the pleasure of speaking with Dane Liu. Dane is an extraordinary
individual who has recently returned from Oxford and is currently a tutor at the University of
Sydney. At Oxford he completed what is often considered the most challenging law degree in
the Western world, the Bachelor of Civil Law or BCL. Dane not only earned a prestigious scholarship
to pursue this but he also distinguished himself by placing second in his graduating cohort at
Oxford. During our conversation Dane offers valuable insights into his academic journey,
shares thoughts on the law and provides practical tips for anyone aspiring to undertake the BCL.
We also delve into the challenges he has faced along the way and explore his motivations that
have driven him to his success. Just to preface as well, we apologise for the slight audio glitch
after the 13th minute. However, this is certainly a discussion you don't want to miss.
So without further ado,
sit down and enjoy the rest of the video.
Relax and enjoy the podcast.
I'll start off with my first question. Dane, the BCL is a highly respected qualification that
attracts top legal minds from around the globe. In 2024 you were awarded for your efforts having
the second best performance in the course. Could you take me through your academic journey and tell
me what motivated you to pursue the BCL I suppose? So I always knew when I was going through high
school I wanted to do something involving politics or involving law and I was very lucky to get the
opportunity after the HSC. I was very lucky to get the opportunity after the HSC and I was very
lucky to get to go to a law degree at the University of Sydney. So I did that combined
with economics and for a number of years I was actually doing quite well in economics. I thought
I really liked economics and I ended up doing honours in economics and that was during the
COVID years. But I think when I was doing economics I realised that that was not entirely for me,
that whilst I enjoyed many aspects of it I still felt that my area of interest was really in the
law. So I continued with my law degree and then did honours in that as well. As I was doing my
law degree in that second half I basically did some work at the New South Wales Crown Solicitor's
Office so I worked as a paralegal there and then I was a summer clerk at Herbert Smith FreehillsHSF
and that was really really fun seeing how the law works in practice and then after that I went and
decided to do honours in law. I was supervised by a fantastic supervisor in Professor Emirata
Antumi and I did it on an area of constitutional law which is one that I really really enjoy.
really taught me the ropes in terms of how to think deeper, how to think richer, how to think
more critically about the law and where it is and where it should be going or where it is going.
And I felt like that kind of gave me a really good step up to go like, I now want to go and
specialize or think deeper or richer in this area. So basically what happened is that towards the end
of my undergraduate LLB, I was looking for master's opportunities. I didn't think I was
going to get into Oxford or Cambridge. I'd heard of like students who'd come from my undergraduate
university, UCEDD, who had done really, really well and had managed to get places up at those
universities. I was also a bit more interested in America at the time because they have a quite
interesting constitutional law jurisprudence. That has massively exploded in a number of years
with some really high profile.
Major constitutional cases out at the Supreme Court of the United States. But I put in a number
of applications in for master's opportunities internationally. And I was very, very lucky to be
given a place at Oxford. And from there, it was a matter of picking between my options. And I
decided that I thought Oxford would be the best place to go. It has a reputation of being, the
BC has a reputation of being the hardest law degree in the common law world. I thought it'd be great
to take on a challenge.
Motivation for choosing that? Or was there sort of other factors? Did you get accepted into other
programs, perhaps even in a
higher court in America? I mean, just thinking about it, yeah, you're right that the American
sort of education has really come to light. I think something that stands out to me is that
Stephen Gagler, the current High Court Judge of Justice of Australia, he was educated at Harvard.
And so, yeah, I mean, what sort of goes into sort of the considerations around choosing
your sort of the program?
Yeah, so yes, well, Chief Justice Gagler went to Harvard and he's, and then Justice Edelman on the
High Court of Australia went to Oxford for the DPhil. I guess a major consideration,
that you don't actually think of immediately is about cost. Because these programs, when you go
overseas, you're actually an international student. And the costs are quite, it was actually quite a
shock to me. So, you know, in Australia, as a domestic student, you don't really think so much
about money, you know, you can just put it on hex, you just press a few buttons, and you don't have
to think about it until you earn over the particular threshold. And then you're like, oh, I'll start
paying stuff back. But how it works in those international universities is that unless you
have some kind of scholarship,
or funding that comes through, you can actually kind of, you're often required to pay up front
what is quite a really, really significant amount of money. Kind of what informed me about where to
go was not just, you know, where would I be able to do the kind of subjects I want to do. I was at
that point, actually thinking I didn't want to just do constitutional law, public law, I wanted
to also do a bit of commercial law as well. And that's also because I, after I graduated, I had a
fantastic experience working with
He was the Chief Judge in Equity at the Supreme Court of New South Wales, who for many years
was the head of the commercial list, and has a very strong commercial law background. And
working with him was just absolutely fabulous. But it also made me realise, you know, maybe
I can actually try different areas of law, I shouldn't pigeonhole myself into an area
of law so quickly. So Oxford having a really strong reputation in commercial law, one of
those big subjects being commercial remedies, which I did end up taking, and as well as
the fact that I had managed to get what was called a law degree.
And I did get what was quite a lucrative scholarship in the Peter Cameron Sydney Oxford
scholarship. That was one that was awarded to UCEDD students who take on the BCL. I just
thought these things all kind of came together and the Oxford BCL kind of became the right
Yeah, yeah. I think there's also a little, it sounds like there's a level of pragmatism
I think in relation to these sorts of programs. I suppose focusing a little bit more on the
details of perhaps people who would like to do the BCL, let's start off with some of the
prerequisites. What's your academic transcript looking like in order to start to do the BCL?
How do you sort of be offered a place at one of these institutions? What's your, I suppose,
are there certain subjects that they look at perhaps more in depth? I mean, you also
mentioned, I suppose, perhaps your relationship with supervisors and tutors and that sort
of thing. Is that also important in terms of academic references? So that's focusing
on the academic prerequisites.
Yeah. So I guess now that I've actually kind of been to Oxford, kind of seen it, of course,
I think Oxford, they take about, in the BCL, I think about a hundred students per year.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And that comes from all common law countries. So it's not just a hundred from Australia,
it's about only about maybe 20 to 25 from Australia. Then they've got to take people
from the UK, people from Ireland, people from India, Pakistan, New Zealand, Canada, Hong
Kong, Singapore, South Africa, everywhere around the world. Basically where the common
law system is, they can apply to the BCL. So it's extremely competitive and you need
a really, really strong transcript.
I feel like when people speak to me or when people ask me about these things,
they kind of make assumptions about what my transcript looks like.
And they're like, dang, is it true that you only have HDs?
And I'm like, no, that's not true.
And that's really not true.
I have my fair share of credits.
I have passes on my transcript as well.
But really what I guess they're looking for is making sure you're ranked high in the cohort.
So, I mean, I don't know.
I guess like every university has like a different way of doing things.
So UCEDD does a WAM system.
Other universities do like a GPA.
Some give like letters like A, B, C, D or A plus or A star or whatever.
So really, I guess what you're kind of doing when you're applying as an international student
is you're really trying to show you're in the upper ranges of your cohort.
So ideally your rank would be something that would be quite high
relative to other students.
Students that you graduate with.
And then the other one that I think is also extremely important,
particularly for Oxford, are your references.
So for the Oxford BCL, you need to submit three references
and they prefer if they are all academic references,
which is often a good hint whenever I speak to students who are still in uni.
It's actually a really important time now to actually think about, you know,
making sure you're building relationships with professors,
getting to know them, speaking up in class a little bit
so that later when you ask,
Hey, can I, can you please be my reference?
They'll have, they'll have something interesting to say about you.
So references are really, really key in, in the BCL and they,
and they make quite a difference.
Really your reference should be saying whether you can manage a heavy workload,
whether you can think critically, whether you can engage with different
viewpoints and things like that.
And I suppose moving on in relation to sort of the application process, I mean,
you, you mentioned, previous.
What are you sort of including in that?
Is the, and the sort of reasons that you want to do the BCL?
I mean, I imagine you probably can't just write something like, you know,
I want to do the BCL because I think Oxford's cool or something like that.
So what's the sort of process behind that?
So Oxford from memory,
I was a 500 word personal statement.
And I think the guidance is that for the BCL,
the personal statement is kind of a bit more secondary.
So you have to submit.
your cv you just submit um a writing sample of 2000 words you've got your three references that
are there and then your personal statement is just kind of something that comes at like
you know it's kind of there and looked at maybe when they're like just doing the final selections
like deciding whether uh but whether you get a full offer or you're on the reserve list whether
you're on the reserve list or uh if you've been unsuccessful because i think when they're like
doing final decisions they might look a bit more on the personal statement but really the focus on
the other statements and documents that you've got to put in um and i think the really key thing
with the personal statement i mean i guess i can kind of just tell you what i did i put on there
that i wanted to do to do the bcl because i felt like there weren't many opportunities to do
electives um at usaid so usaid is i think until i think i think they're currently undergoing some
changes at the moment with respect to the curriculum but one of the things with usaid
is that they had like the least number of electives compared to any other law school
so i think that we we had someone did work this out and they and they and they and they showed it
so i said okay i guess i kind of wanted to to do some electives so i can specialize a little bit
more in certain areas i was also interested in working with the constitutional law and admin law
faculty at oxford and what had happened was that two years before i applied there was a major
constitutional law decision uh called miller which was about a bit of a weird power a prerogative
power called the power to prerogative
the parliament and it was about whether boris johnson uh legally had acted lawfully when he
gave advice to prorogue the parliament for what was an extended period of time for a long period
of time immediately before brexit was about to occur when parliament was still looking carefully
and scrutinizing those constitutional changes and there was quite a proliferation of academic work
that came out of that space that was very interesting to me and i said i really wanted
to go do that and i guess the last thing i said was something to say that i
would find it interesting to look at things from a comparative perspective and that was a great thing
that i realized at oxford because you bring you really are bringing people from many many different
common law countries and on top of that there's the magister urus or emger where they bring people
from a civil law background so you often get students from from mainland europe and they
bring a different perspective as well so particularly some of the courses that i was
able to sit in on or go to you see people bring in completely different perspectives
on all kinds of things particularly on non even on aspects of administrative law and constitutional
law many differences in human rights and equality law which i got to sit in a few classes for so
that all kind of makes the cohort richer it makes the discussions more interesting
and i think it makes a degree um one that is quite attractive
i suppose you also mentioned a little bit about cost before speaking on that there are some numbers
that you can get to the point where you can get to the point where you can get to the point where
in relation to the cost and then also i suppose with the scholarship that you also mentioned
um what's that what's the sort of time that people need to be start start to think about
um scholarships and and what are some notable scholarships that people can go for
yes so so basically um the cost is quite exorbitant it cost i think it costs this year
45 000 pounds for an international student's tuition fees um which when you um put that
in australian dollars at the moment
is about 90 000 australian dollars which is just a really really gigantic sum i was also living in
college um uh and i was i guess enjoying oxford life and i found that that cost um about another
25 000 australian dollars including travel so the whole year was you know it quite quickly got to
somewhere over 110 000 110 000 australian dollars so it's a really really big thing and um i i'm
i didn't come from a particularly wealthy family so um i kind of had to look for scholarships and
funding there are some other australian specific scholarships such as the monash scholarship and
the ramsey scholarships uh which are not oxford tailored but uh but do support international
postgraduate studies and there's um quite often a bcl uh student who goes on there um at my
university it was the peter cameron sydney oxford scholarship which gave 60 000 australian dollars
and was incredibly helpful
and on top of that there are a number of others within the colleges and the law faculty at oxford
so the colleges also have a pool of funding and the law faculty also allocates funding
to students from there well and so um with the college system over there did you find that a
much more different academic experience i think to sydney oh very very different um i um i was
actually quite surprised at how colleges operate so they're actually they operate a bit like
houses within like hogwarts yes so like it basically your college um uh is like every so
every staff member every academic every student must be a member of a college and your college
provides um can provide often provides you with accommodation and there's a dining hall you go
dine with people um they also have what's called common room so there's the jcr or junior common
room for undergraduate students if you're a bcl you're usually part of what's called an mcr a middle
room where you're with other graduate students and um and it's really through your college that
they organize lots of social events lots of parties lots of um all kinds of ways to kind
of connect and have fun so you actually there's actually i guess a bit of a second community yes
and it was great actually with this college community because sometimes you're bouncing
ideas at corridors as you're running as you're you know at night or in the afternoon
um you're also talking to one another and it also encourages you
to speak to people who don't do the same degree as you so um in my um in my college i got to meet
people who were doing medicine who were doing science who were doing archaeology who were doing
all kinds of things um uh that were probably more interesting than laws yes yeah yeah yeah and i can
only imagine i suppose the the studious nature of of somewhere like oxford like again one of
those institutions that's so i suppose established and has that academic culture is that something
that you felt as well over there definitely i think there's a there is definitely a difference
between how we operate um in australia with teaching law and how oxford operates with
teaching law so just give you some examples um two that come to mind straight away um at when
i was at the university of sydney almost all of my assessments for at least all my priestly 11 and
most of my subjects were assessed by problem questions so you know you had the whole kind of
assessed in two or three problem questions with issues from all over the course scattered in a
problem question that was not the case at oxford in oxford often you would do say 15 topics for the
bcl and then in the exam there would be eight questions and then you kind of have to choose
three and they were assessed in essays so what that kind of encouraged you to do was it really
encouraged you to specialize in certain things so you could strategically not do everything and
choose the ones you're actually interested in um and to revise for exams that was just something
that wasn't yeah you just had to be across all the content really know all the issues or potential
issues that could come up in a problem question um and another way i think it teaches very
differently between the bcl and my time um during the llb in sydney was that in the bcl there are no
lectures and you're done really very much by seminars uh where you're kind of given a reading
and you're expected to really prepare and read ahead in class you go there and you have a debate
and some of my favorite classes where we would go in and um and the academic leading the session
would say all right we've got you know case x yeah and now who agrees with it who disagrees
with it and then you have a bit of a discussion and a debate and the academics join in and there
is a really robust discussion and then on top of that tutorials are significantly smaller so
my tutorials where they were only me and one other person with an academic for an hour
and uh these were really small tutorials for you to prepare an essay in advance and you go there
you speak about your essay you defend your essay and then you get to ask the academic you're with
some questions so it was really really interesting a very very different experience very different to
what i had in my undergrad i can only imagine we're approaching the end of the podcast and so
what that means is that we ask our standard questions that we ask all our guests for our
listeners to get to know you a bit better on a personal level um so i'll start off with the
question in law school whether it be at sydney or during the bcl and why um i actually would say my
favorite subject um in law school which some people won't say the subject was really doing
research so my honors thesis for my undergrad and my dissertation for the bcl um i i really
love this idea where i got to choose my own question and then and then really just work
through it and realizing that i chose a really hard question i've chosen an easier question
um but really getting having that time working one-on-one with an academic um uh and thinking
really deep into the law with the different angles and things it's just it's the idea of
having the time to do it and then putting together a really um what was a 12 000 um word uh piece of
work um one that i was really really proud of at the end that's great that's great uh secondly do
you have a book or a movie that's significant to you and one you'd recommend to students
oh i i um i do uh i i it would one of the movies that i thought was most um moving to watch was
lincoln um uh which was about uh president abraham lincoln and his actions during the civil war
and the passage of the 13th amendment to abolish slavery in america that was a really moving um
movie the first time i watched it and then subsequent times i've watched it i've actually
been looking and identifying a lot of political tactics thinking a lot about what abraham lincoln
did to bring um people together remembering that to change the constitution in america you need a
two-thirds majority in both houses of congress and you and that was certainly not something that
is easy to do by any stretch of the tongue by any stretch uh either today or back then
well uh yeah i imagine that that that that life i suppose is is something that i think a lot of
people perhaps don't get to reflect as much i think in australia so
that's a great that's a great suggestion uh moving on to the last question um what's one
habit you believe has been pivotal to your success in the legal field um it i i think it has uh it
has probably been um my diary so i i guess you might say i'm a bit traditional i have a hard
copy diary yeah and i i've i've experimented with like my calendar app and everything it never works
but i am very very particular with my
um diary when i do get busy i use that diary to really plan out my day yeah um and there's
something about writing it out uh you know when you're changing it putting a line through it
substituting things in and you're actually able to see like quite an evil yes yeah and then uh
taking notes at the end of the day um about what i thought what i did what was good what was bad and
it was interesting because when i was again doing my uh research for my thesis and my dissertation
i would often sometimes go look back and
oh i had that idea from like two months ago i forgot about that so so yeah that that's been a
good habit it's good to write something is that is that a skill that you developed over time or
was that something that you could instantly do during high school or when you developed it
my year six teacher made us all do it um and i remember like me like me going like this is so
but i did it in year six and then
um my school my high school gave us free diaries from year seven or year 12 and i actually really
used it particularly in years 10 11 12 and then i just got into a habit now i have to use it yes
yeah yeah uh so yeah i would be here all the time if i didn't well no that's great that's great thank
you so much well dane that's about all the time we have for today so thank you so much for joining
me today and i wish you all the best for the rest of the year thank you so much thank you