If studying law is on your mind, the state has a plate filled with diverse courses.

Two renowned institutions — Chanakya National Law University (CNLU) and Central University of Bihar (CUB) — are offering diverse courses within the realms of a law degree.

The CNLU has launched dual programmes — BA-LLB and BBA-LLB. On the other hand, from this academic session, the CUB would launch two law courses — a five-year integrated BA-LLB and BSc-LLB apart from two other undergraduate courses.

The CUB’s two law programmes include four undergraduate courses announced by the university this year from its Gaya campus. The other two undergraduate courses include a four-year integrated BA-BEd and a four-year integrated BSc-BEd. The four courses with 30 seats each are dual-degree programmes. The classes of the four undergraduate courses at CUB-Gaya are likely to start from the first week of August.

Based on the written test scores of Central Universities Common Entrance Test (Cucet) 2013, the central university will conduct the counselling and interview of successful students on July 17 and 18 for the four undergraduate courses.

With the launch of BSc-LLB, the CUB would become the first university in the state and also the first central university in the country to offer such a course. Many universities in India have the BA-LLB course, including the CNLU, but the BSc-LLB wing has good career prospects. Legal experts, though, believe that the course is yet to become popular in the country.

“National Law University, Jodhpur, and a couple of private law universities in the country offer the BSc-LLB course. However, CUB is the first central university to introduce such a course in its curriculum,” CUB registrar Mohammed Nehal said.

Apart from having core law papers in the syllabus, students opting for BA-LLB and BSc-LLB will be taught liberal subjects too. In the BA-LLB course, the liberal subjects would include history, sociology, psychology, political science and language papers. For the BSc-LLB course, students would have to study physics, chemistry and life sciences apart from the core law papers. Nehal added that in the past few years, cyber and electronic crimes have risen drastically.

“In such scenario, students with BSc-LLB degree can make a career in environmental law, intellectual property law, or a career within the scientific community. This could include fields of biotechnology, information technology and forensic science,” he said.

Students of BSc-LLB will have to learn the laws dealing with telemarketing fraud, electronic fund transfer crime, electronic money laundering, piracy, hacking, cyber terrorism, online pornography and others.

“In the past few years, cases related to hacking, online pornography and electronic money laundering have gone up. The city police not only face difficulties in investigation, but also in court they have to face problems because prosecution lawyers lack the knowledge and proficiency of the various provisions of cyber crime while pleading the case,” a senior police officer said.

Saurav Singh, a BA-LLB passout from CNLU, said: “Looking from the placement point of view, BBA-LLB has good career options. While offering jobs, corporate houses give preferences to BBA-LLB students than other courses.”

Singh, however, added that students having BSc-LLB degree could deal with cyber crimes methodically.