Category: Uncategorized

  • Plenary: Candour in Disclosing Character and Fitness Issues

    The full title of the first speaker’s session is ‘Trends in Character and Fitness from the perspective of a Seasoned Law School Administrator’ — Ann Lukingbeal, from Cornell — Asst Dean, Admin.  She pointed out that students are sanitizing their applications to law school, ie concealing negative information.  eg at Cornell the ‘Have you ever…

  • Globalization Comes to Main St, USA

    Alan Treleaven started us off in this session, describing the situation in British Columbia, and how the Law Society of BC dealt with the issues involved.  Useful summary of the Canadian system.  Interesting that lawyers can move between provinces (though as I understood him they can’t set up in two provinces) in their representation of…

  • Plenary: Significant Developments Affecting the Regulation of Lawyers

    Important plenary, with Catherine Carpenter, Gerald VandeWalle and Hulett (Bucky) Askew. First up, Catherine Carpenter.  Standards Review Committee’s Comprehensive Review  has been ongoing for over three years now.  She started with learning outcomes — something new to American law schools, she said.  The focus on outputs, not inputs, was essential.  And the Bar Exam as…

  • Breakout session 1: Testing for Law School Admission & Licensing

    I attended ‘Testing for Law School Admission & Licensing’ — Michael Kane & Peter Pashley.  The session concerned how measurement affects the ‘pipeline’ into the profession. Peter introduced the Law School Admissions Council — he’s principal research scientist.  LSAC started in 1947, and the first real LSAT administered in 1948 (though as I point out…

  • Plenary: Introducing the NCBE Content Validity Study

    Next up was the session on the Content Validity Study (CSV).  David Boyd introduced the subject by focusing on validity — assembling evidence that justifies the decisions made on the basis of test scores; and evidence that the test actually measures what it intends to measure.  Bar exams are licensing tests, he pointed out; and…

  • Session 1 & Keynote

    First session The session began with a welcome and some basic stats – eg that there are over 400 participants to the conference.  33 Supreme Court Justices present at the conference – influence of the Courts has been very important to the development of the Bar Exam. We learned about the work and personnel of…

  • NCBE Annual Bar Admissions Conference

    The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) is a not-for-profit body that exists to work with other institutions to develop, maintain, and apply reasonable and uniform standards of education and character for eligibility for admission to the practice of law; and to assist bar admission authorities in various ways. I was invited to speak at a session…

  • BILETA Conference loose ends & reflections

    Loose ends first. Abhilash are aware that the BILETA postgraduate prize wasn’t awarded this year at the conference dinner.  We’re putting together a proposal for the postgrads who submitted papers (the quality of which impressed quite a few folk), and that will be up on the social networking site early next week. There will be…

  • BILETA Conference: thanks

    Too early for reflections, but never too early for thanks…  So thanks to — My co-chair Abhilash Nair: totally committed, wonderful eye for detail, kept calm… The Admin/Tech Team: Maureen Cooke & Anne Conway (powered through the admin, great sense of how to put a conference together, and how to make participants feel welcome), Ian…

  • BILETA Conference, Chris Reed keynote

    Battery was flat, no free p/point in main hall, so had to hand-write these notes, then type & upload later.  Strange experience, writing…  I think it might catch on. Chris began his keynote on why laws fail in cyberspace by giving us examples of laws and lawmaking & lawbreaking, particularly in cyberspace.  In general, he…

  • BILETA Conference, Legal Education, 5

    Sandy Meredith on ‘A critical look at using referencing software – EndNote Refworks & Zotero – with the OSCOLA style OR does technology inhibit or enhance the writing skills of doctoral students? What do we want from referencing software?  organized storage of data, dowload of reference data from dbases, input of reference data to footnotes…

  • BILETA Conference, Legal Education 4

    First up, My First Million presentation by U of Herfordshire team.  Approach used to ‘develop entrepreneurial skills in law students to meet work-based learning objectives of the SRA’.  Quite a lot of words in that title I tend to be sceptical about, but as much as one can gather in 20 mins or so, it…