Tag: legal education

  • Metacognition & simulation

    I took part in a staff session that was organised at Manchester Law School recently by Dr Kryss Macleod. The topic was metacognition, what it was, how it could be used to improve our students’ legal education. Kryss took the lead, had done a ton of work in preparation including her slides and an online…

  • Nil sine labore

    It’s the motto of the Catholic secondary school I attended, St Mungo Academy (1968-1974), when it was nominally run by Marist Brothers though most of the staff were lay teachers. The previous four years I’d attended a Catholic primary boarding school, St Columba Preparatory College in Largs, where I was also taught by Marist Brothers.…

  • Webinar: Simulation and learning in law & business – the use of SIMple & simulated clients

    This event, hosted by SCiLAB, focused on two significant educational approaches in Law and related disciplines, namely the use of a new simulation platform, SIMple, along with the use of simulated clients (SCs). In more detail… SIMulated Professional Learning Environment (SIMple) SIMple is a digital simulation platform for use by law schools and other client-based disciplines…

  • Happy anniversary, blog

    Since I seem to be thinking about things past more than present or future at the moment, before this year’s end I want to mark the 20th anniversary of my blog.  I started in 2005, around January, I think, on Blogger.  Felt uneasy with the platform though, so quickly moved to Typepad, which was then…

  • Liberty Fellowship, School of Law, University of Leeds

    I’ve been appointed to an honorary Liberty Visiting Fellowship at the School of Law, University of Leeds.  I’m here working with colleagues in CIRLE, the Centre for Innovation and Research in Legal Education in the law school, and giving two seminars, chairing & presenting at a webinar, leading an early career researcher workshop and giving…

  • Simulated Client workshop summary

    The psychoanalyst Erik Erikson once observed that if you wish to understand a culture, study its nurseries. There is a similar principle for the understanding of professions: if you wish to understand why professions develop as they do, study their nurseries, in this case, their forms of professional preparation. When you do, you will generally…

  • Sim client workshop: programme and resources

    One of the initiatives I’ve been working on in the last 20 years is the Simulated Client Initiative. I’ve worked with a range of partners to establish SC projects internationally. I’ve also organised international workshops in London (Gray’s Inn), Canberra (ANU College of Law) and Toronto, which were liveblogged in this blog This month, people…

  • BILETA 2024: Legal education manifesto

    It was billed in the conference programme as the launch of the BILETA online teaching policy. But the document is more subtle and radical than this: a BILETA manifesto; not teaching-focused but learning-centred; not just online but education in the round. Why a manifesto, why now? There was a feeling that post-pandemic, with the drift…

  • BILETA 2024: Legal education session 1

    Four papers. First up, Nick Scharf from East Anglia U, on an intriguing interdisciplinary topic: ‘Give the Drummer Some: Reflecting on the use of the drum kit to enhance student learning of copyright law’. As he describes it in his abstract ‘The approach outlined here breaks from the traditional question/answer/discussion structure of seminars and allows…

  • BILETA 2024

    I’m at the two-day BILETA 2024 annual conference, held this year in Dublin, hosted by Dublin City University’s School of Law and Government. As an Honorary Vice President of BILETA I was invited by the Executive to participate in a roundtable on the newly-minted policy document, ‘A manifesto for the post-pandemic university’. The document describes…

  • BILETA22: Day 2: Plenary and legal education stream

    First up, yours truly giving the second keynote, on legal education.  Slides in the usual place at the Slides tab above, and can be downloaded from Slideshare.  More of that at a later date. In the paper sessions, it’s legal education time, and Claudy Op den Kamp (Bournemouth) is first up, on ‘”Collagementary” as a…

  • BILETA 2021 Conference

    The BILETA 2021 Conference will be kicking off next week – 0915 BST Wed 14 April – 1800 BST Friday 16 April.  I’ve been organising this year’s online conference on behalf of Newcastle University Law School with the assistance of my super virtual assistant Kirsty Melvin.  We have over 80 papers, two plenaries, two paper…