The law commission and judicial law reform*

This article explores ways in which mooting can provide high school students with insight into life as a law student. In gaining high school students’ insights on their early exposure to a legal research skills environment involving oral argumentation exercises, the authors argue that law schools can incorporate experiential learning pedagogies into student recruitment efforts to ensure that both law school and prospective student are better prepared for each other during the delivery and study of law at university level.     

Data registers in respiratory medicine: a pilot project evaluating compliance with privacy laws and the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Research Involving Humans

This article reports on data from a small pilot survey evaluating the compliance of voluntary databases in respiratory medicine with privacy laws and the National Health and Medical Research Council's National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Research Involving Humans. The increasing complexity of privacy law, including the recent private sector amendments, creates many challenges for database administrators. The impact of privacy laws upon voluntary or non-statutory databases, and upon doctors reporting patient data to such databases, is far from straightforward. The article suggests way in which the law might be adapted in order to better facilitate the role of voluntary data registers in health research and public health surveillance, while still protecting the privacy of patient information. The article also briefly considers how database administrators might "future-proof" their existing data holdings to ensure compliance with legal and ethical standards.     

Protecting wild land from wind farms in a post-EU Scotland

Scotland is one of the places in Europe to have experienced significant wind farm development over recent years. Concern about impacts on wild land has resulted in legal challenges based on European Union (EU) law. This article analyses whether wild land can be protected from wind farms and the differences that the United Kingdom departure from the EU will make. It considers the concept of ‘wild land’ compared with ‘wilderness’, analyses the legal basis (if any) for wild land protection and examines potential impacts from wind farms. It highlights the significance of EU environmental law, particularly nature conservation and environmental assessment law, and analyses recent Scottish jurisprudence that has applied this. The role of the European Commission and Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) is emphasised as a key part of EU environmental law. The article asks whether relevant global and regional environmental agreements can effectively replace the content of the substantive law and context of the Commission and CJEU. Four environmental agreements and two related compliance procedures are briefly evaluated. The conclusion is that while EU law does not directly provide protection for wild land, it is considerably stronger than the international environmental agreements that may replace it.     

USING EXTERNSHIPS TO INTRODUCE FAMILY LAW STUDENTS TO NEW PROFESSIONAL ROLES

Law schools are seeking ways to familiarize family law students with exciting new professional roles arising in connection with family court reform. This article describes the family law externship program at William Mitchell College of Law which includes a classroom component allowing students placed in different practice settings to compare and contrast their experiences. The program assists students in making career choices and enhances their ability to counsel future clients.     

Student-led law reviews: what every UK law school needs?

In the United States (US) student-run law reviews have long offered students the opportunity to develop their skills as editors and members of a publication team and to engage with new legal research. With law ordinarily taught as a three-year postgraduate degree, these reviews are normally staffed by a postgraduate editorial team. Similar efforts in the United Kingdom (UK) have largely been short-lived. Some venerable academic journals, such as the Cambridge Law Journal, started their lives as student-centred projects, but academics soon assumed control of the process because of the variable quality of undergraduate editing. This false start proved difficult to recover from, but a spate of newly founded student law reviews in the last decade suggests that these publications have increasing traction in UK legal education. This article evaluates the challenges and potential benefits of these efforts to translate US practice into UK law schools in light of the experience of creating and maintaining the North East Law Review, a student-led periodical based at Newcastle University which publishes student-generated content based on high-quality coursework submissions. This process potentially enhances the assessment process, with the student editorial team preparing essays for publication and student authors re-engaging with their work in light of feedback. Publishing such essays furthermore allows all students to benchmark their own work against excellent coursework performance.     

EMPOWERMENT,INNOVATION, AND SERVICE: LAW SCHOOL PROGRAMS PROVIDE ACCESS TO JUSTICE AND INSTILL A COMMITMENT TO SERVE

Law schools around the country seek to fill the legal needs of their communities in ways that are both innovative and mutually beneficial to clients and students. This article describes five pro bono and clinical programs, at the University of Richmond School of Law, The Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University, Catholic University Columbus School of Law, the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, and Vermont Law School, where law students, under the supervision of law professors or community professionals, provide assistance or legal representation to underserved and often marginalized populations needing help with family law problems, including parents accused of abuse and neglect, youth aging out of foster care, homeless families, survivors of domestic violence, homeless veterans with addiction problems, and female prisoners. To develop their programs, the five law schools from the outset collaborated with partners in the community, and they continue to do so as their programs expand and evolve. In addition to helping and empowering clients, these law schools are providing experiential learning opportunities that are transformative for their students. The authors hope that these programs will be instructive for law schools, other academic institutions, the legal community, and community organizations in developing creative collaborations to ensure better access to justice.     

Embedding employability in assessment: searching for the balance between academic learning and skills development in law: a case study

Employability related indicators and measurements are now a fact of life for UK law schools. Despite the omnipresent spectre of the employability agenda, there has been relatively little consideration given to the relationship between assessment and employability. The traditional teaching method used at law schools relies heavily on participatory small group teaching. This lends itself to developing oral communication skills. Surveys of employers show oral communication to be one of the most highly valued employability skills. Research, however, suggests that law students do not feel that oral communication skills are given enough emphasis on law programmes. Using the example of a new approach to assessment of the European Law module at the University of Bolton, which adopts an oral assessment alongside a traditional written exam, consideration is given to the benefits and practicalities of embedding employability in assessment. The extent to which this approach can be reconciled to liberal ideals is considered alongside pedagogical rationales for the assessment. In the final section, the article goes on to analyse student feedback on their perception of different assessment methods and employability. The article concludes by suggesting that, by focusing on pre-existing features of a liberal legal education, employability can be successfully embedded in assessment.     

European human rights law and the United Kingdom—A note

This article asserts that established concerns about access to, and widening participation in higher education, are now reflected in interest around retention. Those law schools with inclusive admissions policies and widening participation practices face a number of challenges around the financial and human costs of poor retention. Most of these law schools fall within the “new university” sector.

This article argues that poor retention among first‐year law students often reflects a lack of engagement. This lack of engagement exists in two key relationships; first that of between students and the teaching and learning structures of their law school and university, and second between first year law students and many of the staff who teach them. It is argued that this lack of engagement reflects a clash of cultures, first between the requirements and structures of the law school and the everyday life experience of our students, and second between ourselves as teachers and our students.

The utilisation of aspects of the Oxbridge tutorial model of higher education together with an appropriate use of new technology is suggested as a response to this cultural clash and as a way of increasing engagement with our students.

In support of these arguments, the article refers extensively to the evidence presented to the House of Commons Education and Employment Committee hearings on retention in higher education, and to the Committee's conclusions.     

Law’s not hard; it’s just hard to get into: a study of alternative entry students to law school

Widening access to higher education is a challenge currently under discussion in Australia and the United Kingdom. The increasing number of alternative entry programs offered by universities has made tertiary study, including law study, more accessible. One concern with widening access to legal education is the ability of students entering law school through means other than very high academic scores to undertake a law degree successfully. Students who enter law school are generally referred to as “high achievers”, having qualified through an admission policy based on competitive rankings. The implementation of equitable access programs in some Australian universities has resulted in a number of places being made available to final year high school students who meet the eligibility criteria. Lowering the entry requirements to some courses provides opportunities for students whose circumstances have affected their ability to attain competitive ranking scores. The Principals’ Recommendation Scheme (PRS) is one of these programs. The University of Technology Sydney in New South Wales, Australia commenced the PRS in 2012. UTS:Law was one of the first Faculties to develop a strategy to support these students. The Faculty is committed to resourcing all students in their study and, as a result, is engaged in the ongoing evaluation of the academic and co-curricular programs provided to students. This paper explains the implementation of the PRS and the relevant support infrastructure available to students. It also considers the research into student retention and academic success and makes a preliminary assessment that, to date, the PRS students are succeeding in the transition from secondary education to law school, and that the existing infrastructure is accommodating the needs of these students. The PRS is an alternative entry scheme that provides a model for consideration by other law schools, committed to widening access to legal education.     

Reasons why law students should have access to learning law through a skills-based approach

The Legal Education and Training Review identified gaps in law students’ key skills development and this paper considers how skills training in three key areas of mooting, negotiation and client interviewing can be maximised so that law students have a sense of themselves as lawyer as well as law student from the beginning of their legal education. The research identifies numerous benefits to learning law through skills-based activities, but also discovers some possible apprehensions about participating from a student perspective. This paper draws on data taken from students who engaged in short-term optional courses in client interviewing, negotiation and/or mooting and considers the responses to a survey conducted prior to participation, a reflective survey post-completion and a focus group exercise. In total 64 students responded to the questionnaire. The research explores the expected and actual benefits of participating in the courses, discusses how these impact on students’ perceptions of their employability and the types of activities considered most valuable. The article considers how, in light of the research, experiential learning can be put to best use within the law curriculum.     

The Structures of Monetary Nominalism in the Pre-Modern Common Law

This article considers the legal structures of the pre-modern common law which ensured that money generally passed at nominal rates in payment transactions. The English sovereign changed the monetary standard many times during the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries so that the purchasing power of the English currency changed markedly at identifiable stages. These changes seem to have left very little trace in the contemporaneous law reports. The article considers why changes in the monetary standard rarely presented a legal issue for common law judges. It argues that English law had a well-defined set of legal structures which ensured that money passed at nominal rates despite a change in the monetary standard. Given the way that payment clauses in common forms of transaction were formulated and actions in debt were pleaded, it would be difficult for a party to raise the change in the monetary standard as an issue for argument in a common law court.     

Socrates in Aotearoa: teaching restorative justice in New Zealand

Much introductory material on restorative justice presents the subject from an idealistic point of view, in which assertions of its ethical superiority and advantages over retributive justice systems frequently go unchallenged. In New Zealand, this problem is particularly pronounced, as there is often a naïve acceptance that restorative justice is more culturally appropriate for offenders and victims with indigenous backgrounds. This article argues for a more nuanced approach to the teaching of restorative justice, using critical investigation of claims concerning its efficacy and examination of its problems in order to explore its promises and realities. One possibility for such an approach is the use of the Socratic Method, a teaching method with a demonstrated ability to engage students and foster critical thinking, but one that has also received criticism for its ability to intimidate and demean students. This method is widely used in law schools, but much less so in the social sciences. This article explores the use of this method in a New Zealand university class on restorative justice, examining both student perceptions of the use of the Socratic Method, as well as the efficacy of this approach in terms of knowledge retention and critical engagement.     

Using self- and peer assessment at honours level: bridging the gap between law school and the workplace

Growing awareness and interest in pedagogical issues permit greater experimentation with the design and delivery of law teaching. While employability skills are now commonplace within the law curriculum, the development of graduate attributes can also be enhanced through assessment methods requiring students to apply clearly understood criteria to their own performance. Where students are allocated work-related tasks, moderated self- and peer assessment can also help replicate the sense of “real” situations and act as an even more powerful stimulus to learning. The article considers staff and student perceptions of group-based learning in which assessment is considered both a means to “deep learning” and an end in itself insofar as students are allocated the task of formally recommending grades for coursework. Recognising that student-led learning and student-driven assessment are still relatively unorthodox in law teaching, the article concludes that this form of assessment method can clearly assist learning and the enhancement of graduate attributes and moreover can be justified objectively by reference to standard assumptions of validity, reliability, convenience and integrity.     

The “age of empire”: again?

Law and ways of thinking about law have historically been integral to processes of colonialisation and extension of empire. Contemporary forms of colonialism in a globalising legal environment may be less obvious, more nuances or even subconscious. However, the emergence of higher education as a trade commodity, the shift to fee-paying students as consumers and the market competition for international students among universities raise questions about the export and import of various forms of legal education, especially in the context of plural and mixed legal systems, debates about legal transplants, and concerns about legal imperialism. This article examines these issues and considers the place of comparative legal education in the contemporary environment facing university law schools.     

Secured Financing of Intellectual Property Assets and the Reform of English Personal Property Security Law

The past three decades have seen a decline in traditional industriesin the United Kingdom and there has been a relative declinein the value of physical assets to the UK economy. At the sametime, the value of intangible assets seen in intellectual propertyrights have increased considerably. As such, IP rights representimportant assets for companies and often comprise the foundationfor market dominance and continued profitability. There is astructural uncertainty in the law relating to the use of IPas collateral for the purpose of raising debt finance and thismay impact upon the survival of firms with high ratios of intangibleto tangible assets. This article considers the proper goalsfor an effective credit and security regime in IP. It examinesthe significance of the availability of collateral to the lendingdecision and also considers whether the reluctance to maximisethe use of IP as security reflects inherent difficulties whicharise out of the nature of IP as economic assets. This has implicationsfor the reform of English personal property security law andthe development of bright line priority rules associated withArticle 9 of the US Uniform Commercial Code which is often citedas a model for reform of English law.     

Teaching professional ethics through popular culture

The LETR urged UK law schools to consider how they might do more to encourage the development of professional ethics. This article engages with that call and reflects on the experience of teaching professional ethics through popular culture. It begins by outlining some of the theoretical work that has been undertaken in establishing law and popular culture as a discipline more generally, before focusing on professional ethics in particular. The course itself is designed to encourage students to understand the changes to professional ethics over the past 100 years and how these changes have pushed law away from a model of professionalism towards one of commercialism. These changes are mirrored by a subsequent downturn in cultural representations of the lawyer. The module encourages students to see professional ethics as a possible reason for these negative portrayals. The paper then considers student evaluations of the first two years that the course has run, highlighting its positives and also looking at how it may be improved for the future.     

Legal education in Scotland: update from the Higher Education Academy

Law students’ future clients and employers, and the broader community, all deserve graduates to be equipped with not only substantive legal knowledge, but also a range of skills and practical knowledge. However, most law schools face resource pressures that mean that traditional skills development methodologies (which are often resource intensive) can only be used judiciously. In this resource-poor environment, skills development methodologies which incorporate new technologies can be one way to assist law students to develop the professional skills they require. Online learning tools have the potential to be resource friendly, and law schools may therefore be able to utilise them to ensure that maximum learning potential is achieved from the limited resources available. Considering an online or blended skills development framework is also supported by evidence that new technology learning tools can usefully contribute to skills development. In this article the potential for online learning to replicate aspects of an apprenticeship model of learning is explored, as a means of explaining this contribution. This analysis is intended to facilitate consideration of a broad panoply of learning tools for skills development, and inform educators considering adding a new technology component to student skills development.     

Problem-based learning and international commercial dispute resolution in the Indian Ocean

One of the primary challenges for a law lecturer is to take students beyond their own assumptions about the parameters of a subject and provide them with new opportunities for exploration and a broader vision to enhance learning. A significant feature of law as a discipline of study in higher education that has the potential to impact on the curriculum and the way in which it is taught is the academic/vocational divide. Problem-based learning (PBL) activities make classroom settings unpredictable and surprising, and learning to deal with such uncertainty prepares students for one of the most crucial aspects of professional life: the ability to make judgements in a context of uncertainty. This article analyses the integration of PBL within an LLM module on International Commercial Dispute Resolution. The logic of using PBL in this module is to ensure that the more abstract and less engaging aspects of the course are learned in relation to a close involvement with problems that are highly relevant to students’ more concrete ideas of what the course is about and what competence would mean within it. The experience of the students with the PBL activities, captured in reflective narratives and anonymous questionnaires, is also discussed.     

Do Rankings Matter? The Effects of U.S. News & World Report Rankings on the Admissions Process of Law Schools

In recent years, there has been a tremendous proliferation of quantitative evaluative social measures in the field of law as well as society generally. One of these measures, the U.S. News & World Report rankings of law schools, has become an almost obsessive concern of the law school community, generating a great deal of speculation about the effects of these rankings on legal education. However, there has been no attempt to systematically ascertain what, if any, effects these rankings have on the decisionmaking of students and schools in the admission process. This article documents some of these effects by conceptualizing rankings as a signal of law school quality, investigating (1) whether students and schools use this signal to make decisions about where to apply and whom to admit, and (2) whether the creation of this signal distorts the phenomenon—law school quality—that it purports to measure. Using data for U.S. law schools from 1996 to 2003, we find that schools' rankings have significant effects on both the decisions of prospective students and the decisions schools make in the admissions process. In addition, we present evidence that the rankings can become a self-fulfilling prophecy for some schools, as the effects of rank described above alter the profile of their student bodies, affecting their future rank. Cumulatively, these findings suggest that the rankings help create rather than simply reflect differences among law schools through the magnification of the small, and statistically random, distinctions produced by the measurement apparatus.     

Changes to the training of English and Welsh lawyers: implications for the future of university law schools

The focus of this article is upon the plans by the Bar Standards Board and, in particular, the Solicitors Regulation Authority to remodel the education and training processes for barristers and solicitors. Introducing the most radical changes to legal education in recent decades, the proposals present Anglo-Welsh law schools with dilemmas in terms of their future educational models, student recruitment and issues of equal opportunities and accessibility. However, opportunities are also present, should some law schools wish to utilise the momentum for change to move away from constraints necessitated by following an, in part, professionally determined syllabus. Research Excellence Framework, professorial expertise and doctoral degree data are used to demonstrate that some law schools have moved away from focusing on areas most relevant to professional practice, but have retained a dependence on qualifying law degree status to recruit students in comparatively large numbers.