Category: Uncategorized

  • 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…

  • Final thoughts: UNSW legal education research conference

    This was a great conference.  I so enjoyed being back in Australia, meeting up with colleagues and friends again, and hearing what they were doing.  I wanted it to go on for days.  The programme is a tribute to the typical creativity and energy that legal educators in Australian law schools are putting into legal…

  • Day 2, Plenary roundtable, UNSW legal research conference

    Sally Kift first, talking on regulatory pressures.  She summarised the pressures.  She mentioned working with the profession to bring them with us, and the importance of ethical judgment as well as strategy, creativity, empathy, reasoning, social intelligence.  Sally argued that we need to be more active on the issue.  She argued as I did for…

  • Day 2, session 3, UNSW legal education research conference

    This session is called ‘Writing for Law’.  First up, Philippa Ryan (UTS), on ‘Teaching law students the role of discourse markers’.  To improve their self assessment skills, their academic legal writing and how technology works.  Use natural language processing (NLP) to create an app to show the features of good academic writing. Why teach students…

  • Day 2, session 2, UNSW legal education research conference

    This session is called ‘Face to face or online?’.  First up, Christina Do and Leigh Smith (Curtin U), on ‘The importance of f2f teaching’.  They started by noting how digital literacy was becoming more important.  Colbran’s research was cited, and points to the increasing development of online courses.   Is this a good thing, they…

  • Plenary, Carrie Menkel-Meadow: ‘Thinking or acting like a lawyer?  What we don’t know about legal education and are afraid to ask’.

    Carrie Menkel-Meadow needs no introduction.  She’s looking at six claims that things change legal education and lawyering.  Her slides are dense with information, so will do what I can to summarise the myths and their details. Myth 1: legal education = think like a lawyer. What about doctrine in CL and civil jurisdictions.  Method is…

  • Session 1, day 2, UNSW legal research conference

    This session is called ‘Technology: disrupting legal education’.  First up, Michael Adams, giving us ‘Law and technology: 20 year reflections’.  Started with a roundup of hardware.  According to him underlying pedagogy has not changed; though technology, he says has changed teaching.  Not sure I agree with that.  Mentioned LMSs, showed market placings of LMSs, mentioned…

  • Parallel session 3, day 1 UNSW legal education research conference

    This session is entitled Technology: disrupting legal education?  First, Lyria Bennett Moses, from UNSW on ‘The need for lawyers’.  I came in late (tea break…), but Lyria is talking about the use in admin law of data for machine learning and expert systems delivery of judicial roles and decisions.  Lyria teaches expert systems: key message…

  • Parallel session 2, UNSW legal education research conference

    The session I attended out of three was ‘The landscape of legal education scholarship’.  First up, Kate Galloway, Melissa Castan and Alex Steel, on ‘Towards a taxonomy of legal education research’.  I’d mentioned the subject in the keynote, and lo, there’s a paper on it, already minted.  Their SoLE Project is an examination of legal…

  • Parallel session 1, UNSW legal research conference

    First up, Tony Bradney, talking on ‘Who controls university legal education in UK’.  In contemporary E+W the value of legal education research has grown in value in a pragmatic sense.  It gives law schools a sense of what they want to do in their courses and schools.  Tony described the situation re the SQE that…

  • Legal research conference, UNSW, day 1

    I’m in Sydney for the conference on legal research at UNSW, and kindly invited by Alex Steel to give a keynote at it.  Title, not short on polysyllables – Prometheus, Sisyphus and Themis: three rival futures for legal education research.  Slides at the usual places, at Slideshare and at the Slides tab above.  I’ll be…

  • The gentle rebuke

    Yesterday I presented to faculty and students at Osgoode on the Simulated Client Initiative (SCI).  Slides at the usual place, at the Slides tab above and on Slideshare.  Lots of fascinating discussion afterwards.  To demonstrate the eight global criteria we developed at Strathclyde, and how they were used with SCs, I took the second criterion…