The Centre

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The Cambridge Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences (LML), led by Professor Kathleen Liddell (Director) and Professor Jeffrey Skopek (Deputy Director), advances research and teaching on legal and ethical challenges at the forefront of medicine and the life sciences. 

Rapid and prolific scientific advances and changing attitudes towards health, medical care, and family structures raise difficult research questions. These questions include the adequacy of patents to incentivize medical innovation, the nature of informed consent, the allocation of liability for medical wrongs, the scope of privacy rights, the rationing of medical care, the regulation of emerging technologies, and the implications of personalized medicine.

To tackle these challenges, LML looks beyond traditional medical law. Our members specialise not only in medical law and bioethics, but also in competition law, family law, human rights, public law, information law, international law and intellectual property. Many have training in fields beyond law, such as medicine, economics, history and philosophy. They also bring relevant experience from legal practice, consultancy and civil service.   

The centre’s location in Europe’s leading biotechnological offers unique opportunities for interdisciplinary collaborations, policy workshops, and conferences for academia, industry, and government.  One key goal of the Centre is to connect science and law. We aim to support the world-class biomedical research at the School of Clinical Medicine, Cambridge Biomedical Campus, Cambridge Science Park, and Cambridge University Health Partners, ensuring that medical and life sciences advance in responsible and effective ways.

LML works closely with other centres at the Law Faculty, CANVAS (a network of Cambridge academics interested in biomedicine), the Centre for Medical Ethics and Law at Hong Kong University, and the PHG Foundation.

Alongside research, LML organizes undergraduate and graduate courses that allow Cambridge students to study and conduct their own research in medical and life sciences law.

LML welcomes enquiries from prospective visiting scholars and postgraduate students. We are also able to undertake consultancies.  

Please contact us at: lml@law.cam.ac.uk