Author: Paul Maharg

  • Teaching ≈ Learning ≈ Regulation

    At the behest of Dr Paulina Wilson of QUB I recently wrote a short piece for the Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly series called Reflections on Teaching. Around 5,000 words. Usually it takes me 5K to draw breath, so it was quite a challenge to reflect on 44 years in education, 34 of them in legal…

  • Webinar: Simulation and learning in law & business – the use of SIMple & simulated clients

    This event, hosted by SCiLAB, focused on two significant educational approaches in Law and related disciplines, namely the use of a new simulation platform, SIMple, along with the use of simulated clients (SCs). In more detail… SIMulated Professional Learning Environment (SIMple) SIMple is a digital simulation platform for use by law schools and other client-based disciplines…

  • New look…

    I was re-organising the back office of my blog and then I thought, why not tidy up the front office too. So here it is – a work in progress as all blogs are. I’ve included the blog on Sim Clients, which used to be over on Typepad since about 2011 – it’s now at…

  • Mergers & collaborations

    Mergers & collaborations are in the air, again.  A while back City St George’s president Anthony Finkelstein, aka prof serious, recommended consolidating providers to improve the HE sector’s finances.  The merger of the universities of Kent and Greenwich into the London & South East Group has been approved by the Dept for Education.  They’re one…

  • Panel session: The Role of AI and Legal Education, Westminster U Law School

    A couple of weeks ago I spoke on a panel session at a one-day conference organised by Westminster U Law School – The Role of AI and legal education: Preparing the Next Generation of Lawyers.  I was on annual leave at the time, in Florence, so attended only the panel not the whole conference, but…

  • Happy anniversary, blog

    Since I seem to be thinking about things past more than present or future at the moment, before this year’s end I want to mark the 20th anniversary of my blog.  I started in 2005, around January, I think, on Blogger.  Felt uneasy with the platform though, so quickly moved to Typepad, which was then…

  • My first experience of digital education

    After I finished my Arts doctoral thesis and Education qualifications, and before I turned to Law, I worked as a part-time tutor in the Eng Lit dept at Glasgow University.  I kept in touch with my medieval tutor, Des O’Brien, who was an extraordinary polymath.  In 1987 he obtained a grant from the Computers in…

  • To leaf is to learn

    Campus architecture aesthetics really do matter, to both staff and students inhabiting a place.  Wherever I am in the world, I love exploring them – they say so much about the values and character of the institution.  During my two weeks here on the University of Leeds campus every day I walked a different route…

  • Liberty Fellowship, School of Law, University of Leeds

    I’ve been appointed to an honorary Liberty Visiting Fellowship at the School of Law, University of Leeds.  I’m here working with colleagues in CIRLE, the Centre for Innovation and Research in Legal Education in the law school, and giving two seminars, chairing & presenting at a webinar, leading an early career researcher workshop and giving…

  • One-time perpetual purchases – the very idea

    There is no end to the ways that publishers monetize digital access to knowledge for the good of, well, publishers.  Latest in a long line is Clarivate Plc, who recently unveiled a ‘transformative subscription-based access strategy for academia’.  They claim that the approach ‘enables broad, simple and affordable access to trusted scholarly content for learning…

  • Simulated Client workshop summary

    The psychoanalyst Erik Erikson once observed that if you wish to understand a culture, study its nurseries. There is a similar principle for the understanding of professions: if you wish to understand why professions develop as they do, study their nurseries, in this case, their forms of professional preparation. When you do, you will generally…

  • Sim client workshop: programme and resources

    One of the initiatives I’ve been working on in the last 20 years is the Simulated Client Initiative. I’ve worked with a range of partners to establish SC projects internationally. I’ve also organised international workshops in London (Gray’s Inn), Canberra (ANU College of Law) and Toronto, which were liveblogged in this blog This month, people…