Tag: experiential learning

  • 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…

  • Simulated Client workshop: Plenary wrap-up

    Final session…  I posed the last question set out in our programme: where to from here?  One participant answered it in an interestingly oblique way.  What about the model of the encounter, he said – is it all about an expert telling the student what he or she did wrong?  Surely there must be a…

  • Moira Murray: Student evaluation of the use of SCs at ANU College of Law

    Moira described how the 2012 pilot project was designed in the ANU College of Law.  I trained the SCs for ANU CoL back then, the pilot was held, and there was consolidated and refresher training, too, of SCs.  Each student of 104 students in the pilot had a recorded interview with a client, and had…

  • Directions in Legal Education Conference, Chinese U of HK Faculty of Law

    Am attending the above conference (#legaled16) at CUHK Law Faculty, giving one of the plenaries — slides in the usual places, on Slideshare and on the Slides tab above.  I’ll be talking about disintermediation, which I find a fascinating subject, and making broader points about its effects on legal education than I raised in my…

  • The use of university law clinics for legal reform

    Final presentation in this session, Chris Gallavin and Henry Holderness, U of Canterbury Law School, NZ.  They are talking about integrating a structured law reform programme into a university clinical legal studies programme, what they were trying to achieve and the results so far.  He described the effects of the recent earthquake on university study…

  • Developing oral skills in undergraduate students to enhance access to justice (PM)

    Pamela Henderson and Jo Boylan-Kemp on the above.  Why do oral skills matter?  Because of the arenas of client communication, interviewing, negotiation and mediation, mooting and advocacy.  At Notts Law School, the skills are developed in SCALE-UP modules, eg English Legal Method, Crime, etc from first to final year.  Jo described a student-led pedagogy, where skills…

  • Experiential learning in preparing lawyers to encounter corruption (PM)

    Next up, Nigel Duncan and Sally Hughes, City Law School, on corruption, and particularly in the field of corporate work.  Their work goes to the core of legal ethics.  Has corruption gone mainstream?  The 2008 financial crash exposed systemic corruption within major banks and financial services corporations — ‘too big to fail’.  Sally and Nigel…

  • Experiential learning & simulated clients

      Just finished reading a fine report on experiential learning, with simulated clients at the core of the analysis.  The report is published by the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS), as part of its legal education initiative, Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers, and is entitled Ahead of the Curve: Turning Law Students…

  • Educating tomorrow’s legal educators: our lives as sine curves

    First, my grateful thanks to the Planning Committee of the ETL Conference, and especially to Rebecca Kourlis and Alli Gerkman for the invitation.  I enjoyed it.  I’ve been to too many conferences where panels of deans or assorted professors droned on about their institutions, or spouted some mangled reading of the Carnegie Report in support of their…

  • 3rd Annual Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Conference, day 3, am

    Final day, focusing on how assessment was being carried out throughout the ETL Consortium.  Four 15 min presentations: ‘Are experiential modules really better? Qualitative assessment for student learning’, Christine Cerniglia Brown and Monica Hof Wallace (Loyola U New Orleans College of Law). ‘Assessing the “Roadmap for Employment” Experiment, Neil Hamilton, U of St Tomas School…

  • Session 6: Legal education

    Missed the plenary — one of the dangers of having a conference in your workplace. This morning, another three legal education streams to choose from — riches!  I’m in a session with Michael McShane presenting on ‘Should law schools focus on the discipline or the profession of law?’

  • 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…