Australian programs that deliver the Priestley 11 for overseas law graduates: two are built for exactly this, and the rest are whole degrees

There is a right order to this and most people get it backwards. You cannot choose a programme until an admitting authority has assessed your overseas qualification and told you, in writing, which subjects you are required to complete. The assessment costs a few hundred dollars, takes ten to twelve weeks in New South Wales, and every provider on this page will ask to see the letter.

Once you have it, the market splits cleanly. Two Australian awards are built to take exactly the subjects your letter names, and nothing else. Everything else is a full law degree that happens to contain them.

The two built for the job

UTS Graduate Diploma in Australian Law. The clearest statement of purpose we found:

“This course is for overseas qualified lawyers who wish to practise law in NSW. Tailored to your unique needs based on the Legal Profession Admission Board’s assessment, we design a personalised study program that, upon completion, satisfies the academic requirements for admission as a lawyer to the NSW Supreme Court.”

Its entry rule requires both the foreign qualification and the assessment: “Completed Bachelor of Laws or Juris Doctor from outside Australia OR be admitted to practise as a legal practitioner in a common law jurisdiction outside Australia AND evidence from the NSW Legal Profession Admission Board (LPAB) of equivalency of the applicant’s legal qualification… and the list of subjects that the LPAB deems necessary”.

And the structure is genuinely built around your letter: “Once enrolled, you’ll complete a minimum of 48 credit points, however some subjects may be substituted based on your LPAB assessment outcome… This course has one core subject, Australian Constitutional Law. The 48 credit points will be determined by your individual assessment from the LPAB.” One year full-time, 1.5 part-time, Autumn and Spring intakes through 2027. Indicative total tuition for domestic students AUD 45,880; the international figure was not published on the page we read.

Bond University LLM in Australian Law and Practice. Same design, Queensland-facing:

“The Master of Laws in Australian Law and Practice (LLM (ALP)) program is available to students with a law degree from an international jurisdiction. Students who have had their international law degrees assessed by an Australian Legal Practitioners Admissions Board and who have been advised which Priestley 11 areas of knowledge they are required to complete to be eligible to apply for admission as legal practitioners in Australia, may be eligible to apply for this program.”

Its structure is a hybrid: “Your subjects in the Master of Laws in Australian Law and Practice will comprise of those subjects necessary to meet with requirements of the Legal Practitioners Admission Board (up to a maximum of 8 subjects), together with postgraduate elective law subjects, of your choice, to ensure you complete 80 credit points in total.” An 80-credit-point programme over two semesters. If your letter names three subjects, you fill the remaining five with electives — so unlike the UTS diploma, the length does not shrink with a shorter list.

The subject-by-subject routes

NSW Legal Profession Admission Board — Diploma in Law. Not a university award; the LPAB’s own course, taught by the University of Sydney’s Law Extension Committee, and the only route on this page where an admitting authority runs the teaching itself. Its status: “For the purpose of meeting the academic requirements for admission as a lawyer under the Uniform Law the Diploma in Law is equivalent to a Bachelor of Laws or Juris Doctorate from an accredited University Law School.”

Overseas lawyers with exemptions can take just the subjects they were directed to: “You will need to provide a copy of your assessment letter when registering and you should refer to the below table of Priestley 11 subjects to ensure you enrol in the correct subjects.”

Two rules govern whether you also receive the award. “If your assessment or exemption was issued under Schedule 11 of the Legal Profession Uniform Admission Rules 2015 (used in NSW, Victoria and Western Australia), the LPAB will recognise your exemptions. This will allow you to be a candidate for award of the Diploma in Law, as long as you have passed a minimum of 10 subjects of the Board’s course.” But: “If your assessment is from another state or territory, you may still enrol in subjects, but you will not be eligible for the Diploma in Law unless you complete 20 subjects.” The Law Extension Committee states the same threshold from its side: “If you wish to be awarded the Diploma in Law, you must complete at least half (that is, 10 out of 20) of the subjects in the course.”

Two practical points the pages state and which change plans. It can be done from abroad: “the Diploma in Law is not an online course, although it is possible for overseas trained lawyers to participate in the course from overseas for the purpose of completing subjects required for admission as a lawyer in Australia.” And it carries no student visa: “It is important to note that the Diploma in Law course does not confer any visa entitlements for international students.”

The Law Extension Committee is also candid about how variable the requirement is: “The number of subjects you will be required to take will depend on a number of factors, such as the subjects you studied, the length and age of your studies and the jurisdiction in which you studied. You may be required to take only a few subjects, such as Australian Constitutional Law and Legal Ethics, to be eligible to be admitted in NSW or you may be required to complete more than half the course.”

Victoria University — Priestley single units, non-award. The cleanest à-la-carte option we verified, and it names the approval directly:

“VLAB has confirmed that VU Priestly units meet the academic areas of knowledge to qualify for admission to practise in Victoria. Law graduates can enrol in those units as single units (non-award). If you wish to enrol in single units at Victoria University, please forward the letter you received from VLAB together with your enrolment application.”

(The misspelling of “Priestley” is on VU’s page.) It also produces the paperwork the board wants at the other end: “We can generate the following documents required by VLAB as part of your application for admission… completion letter / certificate recognising competency in Priestley 11 subjects / conduct report / academic transcript.” Units are delivered on VU’s block model with multiple intakes.

The full degrees, and what credit they give

If your letter names most of the eleven, or you have no law degree at all, you are looking at a Juris Doctor.

Provider	Award	Duration	What it states about admission	Credit for a prior law degree
Bond University	Juris Doctor	“can be completed within two years… Students will complete 24 subjects”	“The Juris Doctor program satisfies the academic requirements for admission as a legal practitioner.”	“Bond offers a six-subject credit towards the Juris Doctor degree to students who have completed a law degree from a non-common law country.”
UTS	Juris Doctor	“3 years full time / 5.5 years part time”	“This course meets the academic requirements for admission as a lawyer in NSW”	credit assessed against the LPAB letter; no maximum published. Indicative total for domestic students AUD 137,038.24
UNSW Sydney	Juris Doctor	“3 Year(s)”	“This program is accredited by the Legal Profession Administration Board and satisfies academic requirements for admission to legal practice.”	“You may also be eligible for advanced standing”; no maximum published. 2026 international indicative: AUD 60,500 first year, AUD 193,500 to complete
University of Southern Queensland	Juris Doctor	“3 years (or part-time equivalent)”; a two-year fast-track over six consecutive semesters	“accredited by the Legal Practitioners Admissions Board, Queensland, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland”	recognition of prior learning available; no maximum published
Charles Darwin University	Diploma of Laws (YLAW01)	“1 year/s full-time, 2 year/s part-time”	“also suitable for internationally qualified lawyers who need to complete some Australian subjects to qualify for admission to legal practice in Australia”	up to 80 credit points transferable into the CDU LLB

Bond’s six-subject credit is the only quantified advanced-standing offer we could verify, and note its condition: it is for a law degree “from a non-common law country”, which is the opposite of what most people expect.

Charles Darwin’s Diploma of Laws comes with a caveat you should read before treating it as a shortcut: “This course does not lead to professional accreditation, though students can transfer to the Bachelor of Laws degree, which is accredited with the Legal Practitioners Admissions Board of the Northern Territory.” It is an undergraduate-level award with an undergraduate entry bar, useful as a subject source and a pathway, not as an admission qualification in itself.

Every JD page also carries the second half of the requirement, and UniSQ states it most plainly: “This degree will partially satisfy the requirements to practise as a lawyer in Queensland or elsewhere in Australia. Intending lawyers must also complete an approved practical legal training course in order to become admitted to practise law.”

The rule that decides whether a subject counts

Before you enrol anywhere, check the programme against the LACC’s own condition. From the Uniform Principles, item 2.6, on subjects designed specifically for overseas applicants:

“Academic credit will only be given for completing subjects specially designed to allow potential overseas applicants to undertake studies in, say, Australian Federal and State Constitutional Law or Administrative Law before applying for admission in Australia if: (a) the subject is conducted by a tertiary institution which is approved by an Australian Admitting Authority for the purpose of providing a full course of study in the areas of knowledge prescribed in Schedule 1; and (b) the head of the relevant faculty or department at that tertiary institution has certified that the subject is substantially equivalent to a subject offered as part of the course of study already accredited for admission purposes at that institution.”

Two conditions, and a provider that satisfies only the first is not enough. Two related rules from the same document: a bare pass is not sufficient — “Credit will not be granted for a subject where a result of less than 50% was achieved” — and postgraduate degrees generally do not help, since “A post-graduate Doctorate, Masters or Diploma course, taken in Australia or elsewhere, is generally not a relevant qualification for admission purposes.”

One programme that is not a conversion route, despite appearances

The University of Canberra’s online Graduate Diploma in Law requires “an undergraduate degree (or equivalent) in any non-law discipline”, and describes itself as “both an entry and exit point for the Juris Doctor (JD) master’s level law degree”. It makes no claim to satisfy the academic requirements for admission and no Priestley 11 claim. Its elective list covers Priestley subject names, which is exactly why it gets miscategorised. Do not treat it as a conversion route for an overseas law graduate — its entry rule excludes you.

So what should you actually do

Get the assessment letter first. Then count the subjects it names. A short list points to the à-la-carte routes — Victoria University single units in Victoria, the LPAB Diploma in Law subjects in New South Wales, the UTS Graduate Diploma if you want an award attached. A long list, or no law degree at all, points to a Juris Doctor, and there Bond’s two-year structure and quantified six-subject credit is the only one whose arithmetic you can check before applying. Whichever you pick, verify against LACC item 2.6 that the provider is approved for the purpose and that the faculty head will certify equivalence — and remember that none of this covers practical legal training, which is a separate requirement everywhere.

The assessment itself, the eleven areas and why the requirement is national rather than state-based are in the Priestley 11 for overseas law graduates.

What this page does not do

It is not a complete list of Australian programmes that deliver the Priestley 11, and it is not a recommendation. Several universities that offer relevant programmes could not be verified from source — Monash’s Graduate Diploma of Australian Law, the University of Melbourne’s single subjects for foreign law degree holders, the University of New England’s overseas-lawyer offering, Deakin’s law single units and Western Sydney’s Priestley 11 page all declined our requests or render entirely in script, and the Australian National University’s course site instructs our crawler not to fetch it, so ANU is absent here. We would rather list what we read. Fees, durations and credit rules were read on 3 September 2026 and apply to the intake year each page states. Nothing here is legal advice, and no provider can tell you which subjects you need — only an admitting authority can.