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…
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…
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…
Four papers. First up, Nick Scharf from East Anglia U, on an intriguing interdisciplinary topic: ‘Give the Drummer Some: Reflecting on the use of the drum kit to enhance student learning of copyright law’. As he describes it in his abstract ‘The approach outlined here breaks from the traditional question/answer/discussion structure of seminars and allows…
First, a word about the two sessions that weren’t recorded, namely the demo interview with Alexis Callen as lawyer and Dana Mohr as SC, and the panel: Alexis, Dana, Joan Rilling. Alexis did exceptionally well as a 1L lawyer, and Dana was first rate at enacting the client, and then switching into feedback mode with…
First up, yours truly giving the second keynote, on legal education. Slides in the usual place at the Slides tab above, and can be downloaded from Slideshare. More of that at a later date. In the paper sessions, it’s legal education time, and Claudy Op den Kamp (Bournemouth) is first up, on ‘”Collagementary” as a…
First of all apologies to all three of my readers who have got in touch to ask if I had departed this world or worse stopped blogging. It’s been an unconscionable time, but I’m still hanging in there. Been mega-busy with projects at Osgoode and my new role at Newcastle University Law School, and elsewhere…
Second day of the conference, and we’re focusing first on technology and innovations in legal education, followed after the break by a session on experiential learning and innovation in professional education. For reference, full conference programme here. We start with the third keynote, this time from Daniel Rodriguez from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, on…
I’m at this conference at the invitation of Wilson Chow and the conference committee. It’s one of a series of events marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of HKU’s Faculty of Law. It’s great to be back in HK and meet colleagues and friends in the Faculty, and talk over projects. More of that…
We’ve finished our Simulated Client (SC) project at Osgoode Hall Law School, which was around three months in the planning. Further and much more detailed analysis later, but this is a quick post for now to summarise what we did.
First up, Jenny Gibbons on ‘Curriculum as constitution’. Fascinating analogy, which I’ve explored elsewhere. She started with Fortnite Island. To play the game you need to: learn the rules of the game know how to find and use yr materials take time to create safe spaces learn to maximise yr advantage in encounters learn from…