Abstract for my BILETA 2014 legal education session below. Slides up on the Slides page of this site:
The LETR Report on legal services education and training (LSET), published in June 2013, is the most recent of a series of reports dealing with legal education in England and Wales. Many of these reports do not deal directly with technology theory and use in legal education, though it is the case that the use of technology has increased substantially in recent decades. This is a pattern that is evident in reports in most other common law jurisdictions. LETR does have a position on technology use and theory, however, and it positions itself in this regard against other reports in England and Wales, and those from other jurisdictions, notably those in the USA.
In this paper I shall set out that position and contrast it with regulatory statements on technology and legal education in England, Australia and the USA. Based on a review not just of recent practical technological implementations but of the theoretical educational and regulatory literatures, I shall argue that the concept of ‘shared space’ outlined in the Report is a valuable tool for the development of technology in education and for the direction of educational theory, but most of all for the development of regulation of technology in legal education at every level.