• BILETA 2017 final thoughts: the redress of legal education

    It was a fine conference, well organised by Anabela Susana Sousa Goncalves and her team at the Universidade do Minho.  I love Portugal.  I was brought up a Catholic, so it seemed perfectly natural to me to put a statue of St Francis holding the infant Jesus above the gantry in the hotel bar – a…

  • BILETA day 2, parallel session 3

    No summary because I was presenting two papers in this three-paper session.  The first was co-authored with Abhilash Nair, my co-editor of the European Journal of Law and Technology, and Catherine Easton, editor of the European Journal of Current Legal Issues, entitled ‘Legal scholarship and OA publishing: developing radical pathways to free, open models’.  Slides at the slides…

  • BILETA 2017, Parallel session 2

    This session is titled ‘Technological challenges in educational contexts 1’.  A UK speaker didn’t turn up, so first up, Maria Joao Carapeto, doctoral student, with the intriguing title ‘Memory, peace, development, technology, innovation, interdisciplinary, education, Portuguese-speaking countries’.  She started with the idea of building peace in the Portuguese-speaking (lusophony) countries, eg Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Sao Tome,…

  • BILETA 2017, Parallel session 1

    I’m attending a parallel session on ‘Online speech’, with the first two addressing the problems of fake news.  First up, Felipe Romero Moreno.  He analysed the definition, purpose, impact, liability, govt response and possible solutions.  On definition, he noted the difficulty — perhaps best described as ‘news without any basis in fact’.  He noted Jonathan Zittrain…

  • BILETA 2017, Keynote 1

    Am at the BILETA conference, liveblogging the sessions I’m attending.  It’s being held this year at the Universidade do Minho, Escola de Direito, and the conference title is ‘International perspectives on emerging challenges in law, technology and education’.  After the welcomes, Burkhard Schafer, from SCRIPT in Edinburgh U, on ‘Creativity in AI and Law’.  Some…

  • CLEA day 2, session 2

    First up, Alex Steel, UNSW, on the Smart Casual project: ‘Using online modules to build teacher confidence and skills’.  Nine modules for adjunct staff development, including Indigenous Peoples and the Law, student engagement, legal problem solving, feedback, reading law, critical thinking, comms and collaboration, legal ethics and wellness in law.  Key aspects include appropriate tone (peer…

  • CLEA, day 2 session 1

    Well, this is the longest live blogging session ever — conference is well finished, but I thought that I’d get these impressions together to complete my views of papers at the conference. First up, Anne Wesemann, The Open University, on ‘The significance of EU law for the future commonwealth lawyer’.  Anne started with an exploration…

  • CLEA day 1, session 2

    I had to miss a few papers for meetings.  I caught most of Jenny Chan’s paper (Jenny is a PhD student at Chinese U of HK – I know her from working with staff and students there) on ‘Collaborative and co-operative learning in legal education – the case of Hong Kong’.  Collab. vs Coop models —…

  • Commonwealth Legal Education Association (CLEA) conference, Melbourne 2017, session 1

    I’m attending the CLEA conference, and giving a paper with Julian Webb (slides up on the Slides tab above). Welcome and Acknowledgment of Country by David Barker, who also presented a paper giving a general summary of the history of Australian law schools from 1960 onwards. In their paper Claire Carroll and Brad Jessup examined…

  • Learning/technology in legal education – slideset links

    Links to the complete slideset here: Paul Maharg, Introduction Craig Collins, ‘Story interface and strategic design for new law curricula‘ Kristoffer Greaves, ‘Computer-aided qualitative data analysis of social media for teachers and students in legal education‘ Scott Chamberlain, ‘Affordable software simulations for teaching legal practice‘. Paul Maharg, ‘Disintermediation‘.

  • Learning/Technology Workshop, PEARL, ANU College of Law

    Today we’ve got a session at ANU College of Law PEARL centre, entitled Learning/Technology in Legal Education.  The session is another version of the Society of Legal Scholars session held last year in St Catherine’s College, Oxford; but with two new speakers — Kristoffer Greaves, who wrote one of the articles in the original special…

  • Afterthoughts on Legal Education in Crisis

    So a massively busy two days.  I was planning to sneak off at some point to see U of Chicago’s Laboratory Schools, and pay a quiet visit to the Dewey’s legacies there (he’s been much in my mind, being here, and I reread the late Laurel N. Tanner’s fine account before I came over), but…