Using soft skills courses to inspire law teachers: a new methodology for a more humanistic legal education

ABSTRACT

Law schools have in recent years been engaged in a process of revising their curricula, in large part adapting to rapid changes in technology, but also in a more generalised effort to improve “teaching the law”. Yet thus far, legal pedagogy seems to focus disproportionately on the traditional model of the “thinking lawyer”, when it should equally promote the model of the “feeling lawyer”, helping students to sharpen soft skills such as empathy, integrity and problem-solving. The main claim of this paper is that law professors could begin to pay more attention to the growing importance of soft skills in legal education and preparedness for legal practice. In this direction, we propose a set of pedagogical principles revolving around four axes: compassionate, attentive, reason-based and empathetic teaching (CARE). This methodology could help law professors become more effective pedagogues. Soft skills courses constitute a well-suited vehicle for introducing these principles to law school curricula in different legal systems. By systematically incorporating them, law schools can encourage law teachers to provide a more inclusive learning environment for their students. At the same time, law teachers who implement the particular methodology can hopefully rediscover fulfilment in their teaching. Overall, teaching soft skills can significantly improve students’ and teachers’ experience in legal education.     

Embedding employability skills for the legal professionals of the future

This article provides a case study on embedding employability skills into law courses at one higher education institution. The aim of the project was to further embed employability skills within curriculum delivery as part of a holistic student skills development strategy. The authors used the four-stage process, suggested by the Higher Education Academy’s Framework on Embedding Employability in Higher Education to design the project: defining employability, reviewing and mapping current employability skills, prioritising actions and measuring impact. The authors draw out three ways in which the project has wider potential relevance. From an educational theory perspective, the project represents a way to embed employability skills in a Framework for Higher Education Qualifications level appropriate way, through reference to Biggs’ taxonomy of learning. For higher education institutions, the project is particularly topical in light of the rapidly changing regulatory landscape that is becoming increasingly skills focused in nature. It is suggested that embedding employability in law courses now will assist future institutional engagement with the potentially new route to qualifying as a solicitor through the Solicitors Qualifying Examination. Individual law teachers also reported benefits to embedding employability skills in tutorial sessions from a classroom management perspective.     

Animation and multiple-choice questions as a formative feedback tool for legal education

Two-dimensional animation when combined with multiple-choice questions affords an interesting and innovative formative feedback tool for engaging law students in problem-based learning. This article investigates methods for making animation a more accessible medium for legal academics. The article also describes, evaluates and reflects upon the results of a focus group and a survey of online law student perceptions on the combined use of animation and multiple-choice questions as a formative feedback tool. Ethical issues involving delinquent and guilty clients were used as the context in which to describe an animation workflow and explore student attitudes to animation. A website was created within which animations created by academics were included to provide feedback to scaffold student understanding of legal ethics. Students viewed the animations as a very positive learning experience, in the sense of making the lesson more interesting to learn, assisting them to learn and help visualise the ethical problems. Student comments highlighted design features which, when refined, may improve the quality of both the animations and the student experience in studying law using animation.     

Bridging the gap: online materials to equip graduate entrants to a law degree with essential subject knowledge and skills

Graduate entrants to law degrees can be disadvantaged by being exempted from Level 4 modules. Many lack the law-specific knowledge and skills that they would have gained from their first-year studies, making it more difficult for them to achieve mastery of higher-level modules. This poses risks to their retention and progression. The Open University Law School sought to bridge this gap by providing optional online “catch-up” materials, including 12 sessions of knowledge-based learning. Each session was followed by a brief Moodle poll so that we could ascertain that session’s fitness for purpose, and which students had studied it. The sessions were highly rated by respondents, and most had been studied in the target time of around 15 minutes. Studying the sessions was statistically associated with academic success. This finding does not prove that the sessions contribute towards student's attaining higher grades, but it is encouraging. Only a small percentage of students studied any sessions, and most of those did not study all of them. Since the sessions met their intended purpose for those who studied them, the Law School has now decided on a range of initiatives designed to increase the number of LLB students who study most of them.     

Legal skills and the SQE: confronting the challenge head on

Whether the teaching and assessment of practical legal skills and professional conduct should be focused at the academic or vocational stage of legal education has been considered numerous times, with recommendations made and varying degrees of implementation carried out. With the approval of the Solicitors Qualifying Examination being granted by the Legal Services Board this issue is once again being brought into focus. The end of the Legal Practice Course will result in the required compulsory teaching and assessment of core practical legal skills and professional conduct being removed from legal education. The question therefore is whether legal education should incorporate practical legal skills and professional conduct into teaching and assessment at the academic stage and, if so, how can this be achieved in a way that complements rather than distracts from the study of academic law. This study will consider the recommendations made in relation to practical legal skills and professional conduct over the last five decades and identify possible options for the embedding of practical legal skills and professional conduct in the law curriculum at undergraduate level.     

Towards systematic knowledge building: An anti-crime research and development continuum

This response argues that the National Research Council (NRC) report, while valuable and thorough, would have benefited from conceptualizing evaluation activities along a continuum of knowledge development, with evaluations initially verifying the effectiveness of program concepts, before moving to evaluations of the feasibility and generalizability of anti-crime strategies and, finally, to evaluations of the costs and benefits of implementation of new strategies.

试论法律监督与行政权力的和谐发展

有了权力,就同时产生了对权力的监督问题,世界各国都十分重视法律监督模式和效果的探讨。法律监督必须适应新形势发展的要求,既要对行政权力有所制约,又要保障行政权力的高效运转,依法行政就是要求法律监督和行政权力的和谐统一。而法律监督体制构建的关键,在于确保法律监督的权威和效力。     

Online collaboration as a pedagogical approach to learning and teaching undergraduate legal education

Legal education is in a period of rapid development driven by changing industry demands and developing technologies. This paper will describe an innovative pilot study which utilises new technologies to provide an alternative mode of teaching and learning to meet growing industry demands for graduates who are technologically savvy and have strong communication and collaboration skills. The pilot study redesigns a law unit combining a more traditional approach with an approach in which online collaboration is critical to student learning as a teaching and assessment tool. After completing an online collaborative activity as part of their assessment for the unit, students completed an online survey to identify their perspectives of the online collaborative experience. The online survey data was analysed to identify common themes and the experiences of students are shared in this paper. The paper provides an example of how instructors might take advantage of a learning design process, online tools and infrastructure to develop educational experiences which promote communication and collaboration within the law discipline. It will also include five recommendations to consider when including online collaboration in unit design for law students.     

Assistive technology as support for the exercise of legal capacity

Exercising legal capacity refers to engaging in legal transactions and relationships and is essential for the full inclusion of people with disabilities in society. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has enumerated the right to legal capacity on an equal basis and has created a state obligation to provide access to support for the exercise of legal capacity. This article examines the use of assistive devices as support for decision-making in exercising legal capacity for individuals with physical and cognitive impairments; for example, the use of voice recognition programmes, screen readers, and screen enlargement applications to support people with mobility and sensory impairments to use online portals essential for legal actions such as banking. It also discusses the experimental use of cognitive assistance, including computer or electrical assistive devices, to facilitate communication for people with cognitive impairments including those with no external signs of consciousness. It highlights the diversity of options for ‘support for the exercise of legal capacity’ showing how they can assist people with various disabilities. Finally, the article examines the boundaries of the state obligation to provide such support, including issues of practical implementation and resource allocation.     

Ethical experiments with the D-pad: exploring the potential of video games as a phenomenological tool for experiential legal education

In contemporary society, video games have become a ubiquitous cultural medium, a popular pastime rivalling television and cinema. While many preconceptions exist about the audience of these sources, often perpetuated by stereotypes around “gamer” culture, recent surveys have shown their wide-ranging demographic. Additionally, the masculine gender bias that is perceived to exist within gaming communities has been shown to be rapidly decreasing. This emerging universality has inevitably encouraged educationalists to consider how best to utilise gaming and elements of video game technology in the development of e-learning tools. Alongside their audio-visual features, it is the experiential and phenomenological characteristics of video games that can be employed to allow students to conceptualise abstract principles and actively experiment with their own ethical beliefs in an environment free of real-world consequences. Building upon the work of Maharg and Owen, and Lettieri et al., this paper will explore the potential of video games as a tool for experiential learning, specifically the study of ethics and related jurisprudential themes, and will propose how existing video games can be used as an educational tool for phenomenological experimentation of concepts. Finally, this article will draw upon the author’s previous work to assert how video games can be used as a learning tool for the conceptualisation of abstract themes, specifically justice.     

我国文化创意产业发展的深层困境与对策探讨——以创意产业评价指数为视角

创意产业评价指数的应用,可以横向比较与纵深评估城市的文化产业建设状况,为发展文化创意产业提供一个客观考量的分析工具。本文从创意产业评价指数的视角来分析我国文化创意产业在政策、资本、文化、环境、人才等要素配置方面存在的问题,由此进一步从战略定位、品牌设计、创意产业链、人才机制、文化中介、科技平台等方面探讨其可行性战略,以寻求一条适合我国社会主义市场经济的产业发展路径。     

Vegetation dynamics as a tool for detecting clandestine graves

The burial of a body can affect plant communities through mechanical disturbance and nutrient balance alteration. We performed an experimental trial using five swine carcasses buried in an open site in Italy. Vegetation dynamics was monitored recording monthly every plant individual on a regular sampling grid during 1 year on the graves, on an empty control grave, and on an undisturbed plot. Plant species composition and cover were significantly different between the disturbed and the undisturbed plots. Disturbed plots showed the increase in ruderal species and the reduction in stress-tolerant ones. Graves and the control grave could not be distinguished from each other. Disturbance was the main factor affecting plant cover, while the presence of a buried body did not affect vegetation dynamics. However, disturbance could be easily detected; the functional approach seems promising for the identification of dynamic patterns to be used in different biogeographic and ecological contexts.     

浅谈我国产学研合作教育的发展对策

本文在分析国内外产学研合作教育发展过程的基础上，针对我国产学研合作教育中存在的主要问题，重点研究了我国产学研合作教育的发展对策，希望对推进我国当今高等教育的改革与发展，有一定的借鉴意义。     

The New Zealand DNA databank: its development and significance as a crime solving tool.

The New Zealand DNA Databank was established following the introduction of legislation in August 1996. Using the Second Generation Multiplex (SGM), DNA profiles from over 13,000 convicted offenders and volunteer donors have been completed to the National DNA Database. Since June 1998, DNA profiles from over 1,400 unsolved crimes have been entered onto the Crime Sample Database. Of all unsolved crimes analysed, 33% are linked to individuals and 21% are linked to other unsolved crimes. Several high profile types of case including homicides, sexual offenses and burglaries are amongst those regularly solved.     

Enhancing judicial skills in domestic violence cases: the development,implementation, and preliminary evaluation of a model US programme

ABSTRACT

The overwhelming number and complexity of domestic violence cases in criminal and family courts has resulted in the development of education programmes to assist judges. There is limited research on judicial education in this area. This paper reviews one such initiative entitled ‘Enhancing Judicial Skills in Domestic Violence Cases’ (EJS) that has been developed and implemented over the last 20 years by the National Judicial Institute on Domestic Violence, a partnership of the US Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women, National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges and Futures Without Violence. We present findings of a preliminary evaluation of the programme based on the self-reports of 480 judges who had taken the four-day workshop between 2006 and 2010. Overall, judges reported the programme to be engaging and effective. At a six-month follow‐up, most of the judges identified specific benefits and behavior changes in the areas of access to justice, judicial leadership, victim safety, and abuser accountability as a result of participating in the programme. Critical issues in judicial education are highlighted based on the authors’ experiences in the development and implementation of this programme.     

The potential of collaborative learning as a tool for forensic students: Application to signature examination

Transferring theoretical knowledge to practical skills remains a big challenge in forensic science, especially in questioned documents. The examination of handwriting and signatures requires years of practice to develop the necessary skills. While students (and to some extent the general population) often have the impression that it is easy to differentiate handwriting from different persons, in practice, particularly when dealing with simulated signatures, there is a high risk of reaching a wrong conclusion when questioned document experts do not use a systematic approach and/or are not sufficiently experienced (see for example the famous French Dreyfus case). Thus, a novel teaching approach, based on collaborative learning, has been introduced in a theoretical handwriting class to improve the students’ theoretical knowledge, and additionally make them aware of the limitations of their practical skills and give them tools to improve them in their future practice. Through five activities, the students took the roles of victims, forgers, teachers and experts and created their own learning materials (i.e. signatures and mock casework). During those interactive activities, they learned to describe their signature’s characteristics, intra-variability and complexity, and thus evaluate their own signature’s vulnerability (as potential victims). They learned techniques to simulate signatures and detect the resulting forgeries’ characteristics (in the role of forgers). In the role of teachers, they prepared mock casework scenarios and gave feedback to their colleague’s examination of the produced material. As experts, they carried out signature examination as they would in a proficiency test and were exposed to the difficulties an actual expert may encounter in practice. The evaluation of this novel teaching scenario was very positive, as students learned more extensively the possibilities and limitations of signature comparison. They were more active and motivated in their learning experiences. The teaching team also had an improved experience. Some students complained of an increased workload and imprecise instructions. Improvements were tested and are discussed in this paper.     

中美警务技能战术教学训练之比较

加强中美警察在警务技能战术教学训练的研究,对中美警察警务技能与战术的课程设置、教学内容及训练方法、教官队伍建设等多方面加以比较,提出学习美国警察在警务技能战术教学训练方面先进的经验和做法,以促进我国警察在技能战术教学训练方面的发展     

Atomic force microscopy as a biophysical tool for nanoscale forensic investigations

The atomic force microscope (AFM) has found its way to the arsenal of tools available to the forensic practitioner for the analysis of samples at the nano and microscales. As a non-destructive probing tool that requires minimal sample preparation, the AFM is very attractive, particularly in the case of minimal or precious sample. To date, the use of the AFM has primarily been in the arena of imaging where it has been complementary to other microscopic examination tools. Forensic applications in the visual examination of evidence such as blood stains, questioned documents, and hair samples have been reported. While a number of reviews have focused on the use of AFM as an imaging tool for forensic analyses, here we not only discuss these works, but also point to a versatile enhancement in the capabilities of this nanoscale tool – namely its use for force spectroscopy. In this mode, the AFM can determine elastic moduli, adhesion forces, energy dissipation, and the interaction forces between cognate ligands, that can be spatially mapped to provide a unique spatial visualization of properties. Our goals in this review are to provide a context for this capability of the AFM, explain its workings, cover some exemplary works pertaining to forensic sciences, and present a critical analysis on the advantages and disadvantages of this modality. Equipped with this high-resolution tool, imaging and biophysical analysis by the AFM can provide a unique complement to other tools available to the researcher for the analysis and characterization of forensic evidence.