Exclusive: Some students worried this will impact training contract applications
What the University of Bristol has described as a “technical glitch” and a “technical error” meant about a third of final year law students were unable to access all of their individual degree grades on results day.
Individual module results and degree classifications were announced online at the Russell Group law school last Friday. However, students who took second year modules in their final year were not able to access individual marks for these second year modules. Legal Cheek has been told this was rectified on Monday.
After reassuring confused graduands that the technical error was being dealt with, an email from the undergraduate law department (screenshotted below) asked students not to inquire into where their second year results are. “We will not reply to these emails as we are working on the technical error which is handled by another department,” it continued.
This email didn’t soothe all its recipients.
One student, speaking to Legal Cheek, described the email as “passive aggressive”, because the glitch was “entirely” the university’s fault. Bristol then sent another email some hours later, which we have again screenshotted below.
When we got in touch with the top-rated university, head of the law school Professor Joanne Conaghan extended her apologies. She told Legal Cheek:
All law students received their final degree classification as planned on Friday. Unfortunately an IT issue meant around a third of these students were unable to see the result of one unit. The issue was reported to the IT team who worked on it over the weekend with the remaining marks released by Monday lunchtime. Students were sent multiple updates to ensure they were kept informed throughout. We’re very sorry for the short delay, which has had no impact on the overall degree classification which was announced as planned.
Despite this, some students were not so impressed by the results day blip. One commented: “Really not very good considering how greatly anticipated results day is for final year students — you just wouldn’t expect any kind of issue.”
Another questioned how this glitch would impact their training contract hunt. They said:
With the deadlines for TCs looming and the requirement to put each and every module result in your application, I think the response from the law school has been pretty appalling.
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