• 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…

  • BILETA Conference, Legal Education 3

    I’m chairing AND presenting at this session on our iPad project, iLEGALL, so reeeally scrappy.  But here goes.  I’ll post my slides later onto this site.  I was introducing mobile learning generally. Jonathan and Rebecca Mitchell were up next, talking about the  pluses and minuses of student use of the iPad.  Slides will be up…

  • BILETA Conference, Richard Susskind keynote

    Richard Susskind now on giving his keynote lecture — ‘What are we training young lawyers to become?’  Overview: the past biletas… three drivers, case studies, lawyer…?  and finally legal education. Richard has given 3 bileta keynotes: expert systems (1980s), shift in paradigm (1990s), online legal service (2000s).  His work reflects predominant concerns of the decades.…

  • BILETA Conference Legal Education 2

    Second session, and I’m chairing so this will be a bit scrappy.  First up, Emily Allbone, law librarian at City U, talking about her excellent Lawbore project.  Originally a gateway project created by Emily, it’s now much much more.  She has topic guides, a hub, the Future Lawyer blog, and Learnmore.  The last is a…

  • BILETA Conference, Legal Education 1

    Live-blogging of our conference has begun!  Dean Kerrigan of NU Law School opened the conference — Gavin Sutter is our new Chair and we’ll be breaking out into small groups.  I’m going to join the legal education session for most of the day. Sefton Bloxham is in the Chair, and announced that HEA is offering…

  • BILETA2012: conference essay

      ‘Too many laws, too few examples’.  Our conference theme is a quotation from the French revolutionary, Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just.  It goes to the heart of a long debate about regulation – how best to regulate human activities, and inspire good conduct.  Saint-Just was in no doubt: he states the case in words…