Category: Uncategorized

  • WG Hart, session 4

    Avrom’s working us hard…  Fourth session, and Julian Lonbay on What can be learned about legal educational standards from the European dimension.  Given Bologna and Lisbon processes, and the Morgenbesser case (which has increased the fee movement and the concomitant assessment load on Bars and Law Societies), and the newly revised professional qualification Directive (in…

  • WG Hart, session 2

    Nina Fletcher, Law Society of E+W, on Solicitors and the market for legal services: perspectives on change, the future and uncertainty.  Stats on the legal market quite interesting update on LETR.  There’s been substantial growth in net export of legal services; ‘retail’ work (ie work undertaken on behalf of ordinary citizens) contributes to around 30% of…

  • BILETA2014 reflections

    Karen McCullagh was this year’s BILETA organiser at UEA — she was great, and this year’s conference was wonderful.  Our Chair, Gavin Sutter, introduced, segued, announced; sessions ran smoothly, accommodation was good, dinner was hosted at Norwich Football Club,  and I didn’t get the connection between  the place & food until I saw the name…

  • Equal access to the internet: a human rights analysis

    Cathy Easton, Lancaster U. (again) on the above.  80M disabled citizens of the EU and a further 87M EU citizens over 65 who cd benefit from a more accessible internet.  Only 39% of EU public sector websites at both a supra-national and domestic level reach an appropriate level of accessibility.  Tearing through the stats here,…

  • Judge, camera, action

    Couldn’t blog the paper entitled Making Schools Responsible for Cyberbullying — UEA connection went down… This session, the last but one legal education paper, is Michael Bromby (MB) — subtitled, Legal education and the regulation of recording and broadcasting proceedings in court.  Context was the Judicial Office for Scotland Review, 2013, and administration of Justice…

  • A low-tech solution to teaching: the book club as an educational tool

    Andrew Murray, LSE, on NOT using technology — Book Club.  Why?  Community building and the need for that, between students who have little in common — 360 students from over 140 countries on the LLM he teaches.  Shared texts such as Orwell and Kafka are points in common.  Also teaches interpretive skills, esp for students…

  • After the hype: MOOCs and legal education

    Next up, Cathy Easton, Lancaster University, on MOOCs and legal education.  Gave an overview of MOOCs, and the infrastructure behind the online product.  In the UK, in addition to the US models of Coursera, edx  and udacity, there’s Futurelearn.  Free of course, but you can get a certificate at a cost.  So MOOCs are being…

  • Distance learning – a step into the future

    Rosemary McIlwham, from the OU, on online learning.  Defined online learning, described most law schools as at information sharing, top in Shackel’s hierarchy.  Next is active and or interactive learning, then deep learning through analysis and application of principles, and finally total immersion in the e-learning facilitation of higher order decision-making.  Rosemary wasn’t sure about…

  • BILETA 2014 keynote: Sarah Glassmeyer

    0900 start, unusual for the morning after the conference dinner, so yr intrepid correspondent is doing well to be here for Sarah Glassmeyer‘s keynote, digits on more or less the right keys. A law librarian by background, she works with CALI as content director.  Big changes in virtually all jurisdictions, eg access to justice crisis,…

  • BILETA Conference 2014, UEA

    Am liveblogging the BILETA 2014 conference at the University of East Anglia.  I missed last year’s Liverpool conference, so it’s great to be here amongst BILETA colleagues again.  Multiple streams, so can only provide a snapshot of some.  Am in the IP stream, and first up, Chen Wei Zhu, from Edinburgh’s Institute for Advanced Studies in…

  • Parables, climbing & King Lear

    Check out the discussion over at Kris Greave’s PLT Educators Australasia LinkedIn forum on personal opinions in teaching & learning which somehow ended up with theological exegesis, a video of the astonishing Ueli Steck and King Lear in a Kelp Store.  Let no one tell you legal education is dull…

  • The journey to Scotland

    On 18 September Scotland will go to the polls to decide its future.  We will be asked the question, ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’  If there is a majority vote in favour, Scotland will gain independence from UK.  How should we vote?  Here’s my view of the landscape…