Category: legal education

  • 3rd Annual Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Conference, day 2, pm session 2

    George Brandes now, talking about Making Sense of Assessment Data, and in particular Learning from Online Assessment.  George is Exec Director of Concord Law School of Kaplan University, LA.  Interesting analysis of designing at programme level via designing at more detailed, learning outcome level.  He sees the issue being one of moving up and down…

  • 3rd Annual Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Conference, day 2

    First up today is a role play on the roadblocks to assessment, organised by Professor Mary Lynch..  We identified and discussed common roadblocks to assessment and propose ways to break them down.  Mary pointed out in her introduction that US education is at an interesting moment, after the Task Force; but there are possible roadblocks…

  • 3rd Annual Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Conference

    I’ve been invited to the 3rd Annual Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Conference, subtitled Accelerating Competency: Assessment in Legal Education, and being held in Denver, COL.  I’m live-blogging most of the event.  The conference is hosted by the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS), who run a series of significant projects — one of which…

  • Dangerous research

    I’ve been catching up on and re-reading the recent regulatory literature coming from the ABA, now that I’m here in the USA and discussing experiential learning, assessment and much else with Roberto Corrada and his colleagues at Sturm Law School, University of Denver.  The ABA Task Force report & recommendations that came out earlier this year…

  • ILEC 2014, Session 7

    Third and final day of ILEC.  I’m attending a session on Ethics Culture.  First up, Marnie Prasad and Mary-Rose Russell, from Auckland University of Technology Law School, on the ‘Professional and ethical challenges for criminal lawyers in the changing environment of legal representation: a New Zealand perspective’.  They gave an engaging review of the structure…

  • ILEC 20214, Session 4

    Session 2 I was presenting on a version of The Wrong Story — slides on the Slides page, on the tab above.  Also on the panel were Victoria Rees, regulator, BC Canada, and Adrian Evans.  Had to take time to answer stuff coming in on email, but here we are at 4B, ‘Responding to the…

  • ILEC 2014, session 1

    I’m at the ILEC 2014 at City U., London.  Just arrived, and at the first parallel session, choosing ‘The effect of technology on the regulation of lawyers in the US’.  John O. McGinnis & Russell Pearce on ‘The coming disruption of law: machine intelligence and lawyers – diminishing monopoly rules’.  ABA has made minor changes…

  • Emergent educational designs and distributed autonomous organisations

    Kate Galloway has posted on the digital revolution and the legal curriculum, and her piece warrants discussion.  From her conclusion: I believe it possible to develop an ‘immersion’ law curriculum using digital literacies as an organising context. A scaffolded approach to knowledge, skills and attitudes is an essential part of the contemporary law curriculum. This…

  • WG Hart 2014, summary

    Fascinating two days.  Avrom asked me to join him in summarising some Workshop themes at the final wrap-up because he noted me blogging the event.  Here are the general themes I noted: Many papers were interdisciplinary and it was so refreshing and stimulating to listen to papers that took this seriously, both in method and in…

  • WG Hart, day 2, session 5

    Last session, and I was talking in the graveyard shift alongside Andrew Sanders and John Flood, so can’t comment much on that session, except to say that Andrew Sanders’ presentation  was sincere, well-argued and punchy, but I disagreed with almost all of it, including its general argument that ‘[i]f the LETR report is followed, narrow doctrinairism…

  • WG Hart, day 2, session 4

    Kicking off with Richard Collier — ‘Love law, love life’: Wellbeing in the legal profession — some critical reflections on recent developments.  Recurring theme: well-being, stress, is a problem in the legal profession, the literature and the research is saying.  Richard sped over a whole range of issues that were intersecting on this issue: catastrophising,…

  • WG Hart, day 2, session 3

    Andrew Francis, on Legal education, social mobility and employability: possible selves, curriculum intervention and the role of legal work experience.  What is legal employability?  He drew on his empirical research into the habitus of graduate employment and employability, and how this influences social mobility.  He observed that students viewed informal work experience positively, but learnt little that…