• ALTA Conference, plenary 1

    I’m live blogging the ALTA conference, held this year at ANU College of Law.  The theme of the conference invites us to explore the idea of law teachers as gatekeepers.  First plenary is Carrie Menkel-Meadow, who started by talking about gatecrashing or rather gate-opening as characterising her career.  Question:  are we teaching sovereignty or humanity?  What is…

  • Papay Convivium

    Well, the convivium was held on Papay the first week of July, and what a remarkable experience it turned out to be.  I’ve been to many conferences, in many different formats.  This one was unique.  First, it was intense and focused.  Michael McGhee and I took turns to chair the sessions, and with more time…

  • LETR now public

    As of midday today, the Legal Education & Training Review has gone public.  More comment later.  See the Executive Summary for headline findings and recommendations; and the website contains the full Report in HTML and PDF formats (mobi & epub formats to follow), briefing papers, discussion papers, open submissions data, the literature review and a…

  • Teaching Legal Ethics & Developing Professional Judgment

    This is a session at ANU College of Law that I’m attending & liveblogging — see here for full details.  It was organised by Tony Foley & colleagues, and the keynote speaker is Judith Wegner from North Carolina, who in legal educational circles needs no introduction,  talking on ‘Developing Professional Judgment in Future Lawyers —…

  • Nottingham Law School, Centre for Legal Education

    I’ve accepted a position as a part-time professor in Nottingham Law School, starting this month, and concurrent with my position at ANU.  I’ll be working on research and publication projects with staff in the Centre for Legal Education (CLE) where there’s synergy with the projects that I’ll be setting up  in the Centre at ANU,…

  • European Journal of Law & Technology: BILETA special edition

    The latest issue of EJLT is out, and it’s a special edition, edited by Sefton Bloxham and me, consisting of papers from the 2012 BILETA (British & Irish Law Education Technology Association) legal education stream.  The conference was liveblogged on this blog.  Surprisingly, and against the run of recent conferences, there was a surge of…

  • Papay Convivium

    Eager readers of this blog, both of them, will have noticed that there’s a new tab top right for something called the Papay Convivium, which was trailed here.  What it’s all about is on the tab, so I won’t spoil your anticipation, except to say, modestly, that it’s an attempt to re-define and transform the nature…

  • Australian National University

    Apologies to readers of this blog for my recent silence — LETR has been soaking up all available waking hours.  Other matters too: last week I resigned from Northumbria Law School.  I have accepted a full-time professorial post at the Australian National University’s College of Law, and will be starting there in March 2013.

  • Modestly big data for legal education

    The Human Face of Big Data has been splashed across screens & newsprint the last few days — see The Guardian’s excellent Datablog article, and Scientific American for summaries of what it’s about.  According to Rick Smolens, one of the two founders, it will last for two months, asks respondents 60 questions via a mobile…

  • Parallel play

    I first came across the idea of parallel play way back in 1980/81 when I was doing a postgrad Dip in Education at Glasgow U. It was one of those many fascinating ideas that seemed to say so much to me about the possibilities of play in education. As far as I remember the idea…

  • Question Time session

    Chaired by Joshua Rozenberg – Diane Burleigh, Ashley Chambers, Peter Crisp CE BPP, Tony King, Taryn Lee QC, Julian Webb, Wes Pue on panel.  Vigorous questioning by Joshua in true Question Time fashion.  First question on employers and students: a variety of answers.  Wes gave the situation in Canada, and what he wanted to see…

  • Parallel session 2

    I attended Prof Stuart Bell (York U) and Dr Rachel Field, (Queensland U of Technology) on regulation and innovation at the academic stage. Stuart began by making the point that there was little on research on effectiveness of professional regulation in the undergraduate degree, one way or the other.  HE regulation has more of an…