University Master's Degree in Legal and Forensic Psychology

The University Master's Degree in Legal and Forensic Psychology aims to train professionals in Psychology equipped with the skills necessary to develop their professional tasks as consultants and appraisers in one of the branches of psychology with a growing need for qualified professionals. The master's degree combines technical and legal knowledge with the fundamentals of psychology when applied to the legal system. Thus, the training provided will allow you to obtain a university degree which also focuses on a real contact with applied legal practices. To do so, the master's degree includes academic training provided by lecturers, as well as relations with the professional world through training provided by legal professionals.

This master's degree forms part of the professional market's needs for specialisation within the field of psychological assessment, not only in private centres, but also in the public sector (at local, regional and/or national levels), where the recent creation of specialised court units has made it much more common for courts to rely on psychological assessment when making decisions. In addition, in the past few years employment opportunities have diversified to include working with victims of gender-violence, mediation, intervention with assailants, prison services, minors, etc. Thus, apart from the public and private demands for this type of professional figure, employability in Legal and Forensic Psychology not only focuses on forensic assessment, but also intervenes in spaces closely related to legal areas. Spaces in which training in this area is essential to guarantee the quality and professionalism of psychology consultants.

The Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona is not new to this type of academic programme, given that this university master's degree has been designed to officialise a UAB-specific degree which had been offered for over 20 years, and which now has become the first official academic programme in this area in Catalonia. That is why the UAB can provide its students with a high level of knowledge acquired only thanks to years of academic and professional experience, with highly specialised and qualified lecturers, as well as with real professional contexts that can lead to many future employment opportunities.

The academic contents included in the Master's Degree in Legal and Forensic Psychology are made up of 60 compulsory credits to be taken in one year (lectures are classroom-based and take place in the afternoons, and are eminently in Spanish, although depending on lecturers and/or material of interest, may also be in Catalan or English). This allows students to acquire not only the legal and procedural foundations, but also the psychological techniques needed to work in the criminal, civil, family, and commercial sectors of the law, all of which are compulsory specialisations within the master's degree. In addition, students will deal with different areas in which these specialisations are applied with the help of theoretical sessions, external work placements, legal simulations and their final dissertation.

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