• 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…

  • WG Hart, day 2, session 2

    Parallel session: Pat Leighton, The LLB as a liberal degree? A re-assessment from an historical perspective.  There’s been a failure to develop a coherent and robust LLB in law schools.  We need to explore the culture of what we teach, how we teach it.  Pat focuses on the LLB, its history and culture.  She has…

  • WG Hart, day 2, session 1

    And here we are for day 2 of the Workshop, with Rick Abel’s plenary on legal education.  No slides, just words, all of them the right ones, and in the right order too, witty and to the point — ‘You never want a serious crisis to go to waste’: reflections on the reform of legal…

  • 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 3

    First up, Wes Pue, highly engaging session on Professional innovation in three frontier towns: Toronto, 1820, Birmingham, 1860, Winnipeg, 1920.  Wes’ paper counters the view that innovation only derives from metropolitan centres.  From his abstract: ‘the perspective of professional history from the ‘frontier’ dislocates more conventional histories ‘from the centre’, permitting the opening of enquiries…

  • 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…

  • WG Hart Workshop – opening address & law in context session

    Am at the WG Hart Workshop, IALS, liveblogging.  Entered the lecture theatre to Harry Arthurs appearing virtually from Canada.  Vintage Arthurs, but have I come to the wrong conference?  No, Avrom is upfront, and all the usual suspects in the audience.  Harry states a fundamental opposition between academy and profession, emphasising distinguished scholarship over skills…

  • 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…

  • Shared space: regulation, technology and legal education in a global context

    Abstract for my BILETA 2014 legal education session below.  Slides up on the Slides page of this site: The LETR Report on legal services education and training (LSET), published in June 2013, is the most recent of a series of reports dealing with legal education in England and Wales.  Many of these reports do not…