Category: legal education

  • LETR conference: paper session 1

    First up, Steven Vaughan, by video conference, on ‘Same-same but different?  The current and future LLB offerings on law schools in England and Wales’.  He started with conversations with colleagues he had about grades and the relative difficulty of subjects, the Joint Statement (JS) and the normative hold it had on the curriculum.  Law degrees…

  • Conference: LETR – Five Years On

    The Legal Education and Training Review submitted its findings five years ago now – seems more like 15 years to be honest, so much has happened in the interim.  To mark the occasion, Jessica Guth of Leeds Law School at Leeds Beckett University has organised the above conference, taking place tomorrow.  LETR’s co-authors Julian Webb,…

  • Directions conference, parallel session 3

    Final parallel session.  First up, Richard Hedlund (Lincoln University Law School) on ‘Modernising the (property law) curriculum at Lincoln Law School’.  He focused on the direction and restraints he faced in his adaptations, having taught PBL at York U.  Pedagogy wasn’t discussed much at Lincoln, and he tried to change that.  There was spoon-feeding, and…

  • Directions conference, day 2, Plenary session

    First session, and we have Lyria Bennett Moses (UNSW, via skype), on ‘What law students need to know about technology’.  Lyria argued that students need to know how technology is affecting legal practice – forms of new literacy – in addition to legal literacy.  Doesn’t necessarily mean detailed knowledge of machine learning; but lawyers need…

  • Directions in Legal Education 2018, Chinese University of Hong Kong

    I’m speaking at CUHK Faculty of Law’s conference on teaching and learning in law – slides on Slideshare, and at the Slides tab above, titled ‘An exhibition of future law schools: three portraits and a seascape’. Am now attending the parallel session on Future of Legal Education.  First up, Geraint Howells, ‘Every pint bottle should…

  • Multimedia, multimodal: rip, mix, replay

    I gave a paper at Osgoode Professional Development (OPD) yesterday, on ‘Multimedia learning: 2002-18: A case study across a century of digital learning’ – slides beneath the Slides tab above.  Our focus in the workshop was the design of a set of multimedia resources in 2002/4 at the Glasgow Graduate School of Law (GGSL), and…

  • Legal Innovation & Education Workshop, Toronto

    I’m at Osgoode for the next couple of months, and yesterday attended the Legal Innovation & Education Workshop organised by the Winkler Institute for Dispute Resolution, Thomson Reuters (TR) and Osgoode Hall Law School‘s Office for Experiential Education, and held in TR’s downtown offices.  This is a mix of liveblog & later comment on the…

  • Brian Inkster in Toronto

    Am at a legal innovation roundtable sponsored by Thomson Reuters, in TR’s building, Bay St, downtown Toronto, at the invitation of Monica Goyal, an innovator and practitioner in Toronto who works with Osgoode and is the founder of Aluvion.  Brian Inkster is the guest speaker, introduced by Mitch Kowalski, a chapter in whose book The Great…

  • Common entrance exams and the SQE: the wrong story

    The SQE is the Solicitors Qualifying Exam in England and Wales.  It’s an example of a common entrance examination, something a number of legal education regulators are interested in, or already practising.  I was discussing it last night in downtown Toronto, at Osgoode Professional Development, in the context of legal education generally, asking nine questions of…

  • Disintermediation and continuity

    Last year Michele Pistone and Michael Horn published an excellent piece on law schools and disruption that’s full of interesting thinking about law school futures.  It was published in the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, and follows in the mainstream of Christensen’s thinking on disruption.  I agree with almost all of it.  I’m also aware…

  • ‘Curriculum is technology’: Affordances of ePortfolios.

    This is the title of a plenary I gave in ANU on Friday at the launch of the university’s ePortfolio.  Slides at the tab above and on Slideshare.  I was also on the panel discussion, and later videotaped in interview for the website.  Sections of the talk: Research design and reflective journalling: a case study…

  • Simulated Client workshop: Plenary wrap-up

    Final session…  I posed the last question set out in our programme: where to from here?  One participant answered it in an interestingly oblique way.  What about the model of the encounter, he said – is it all about an expert telling the student what he or she did wrong?  Surely there must be a…