Reflections on clinical legal education

The substance of this paper originates from my own reflective teaching practice. It considers the written responses that were gathered from both staff and students as part of an informal evaluation exercise, following my decision to introduce podcasting into the teaching of the Equity and Trusts at the School of Law, University of Leicester. The responses are considered in light of literature that has emerged in recent years on the use of podcasting in higher education, both in relation to law and to other disciplines. The title of the paper bears a deliberate, if seemingly incongruous, analogy to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The analogy is used as a means to explain the three main barriers to incorporating new technology that have emerged in the course of this project. The paper concludes by advocating communication and the development of relationships between individuals as the key means by which “positive disruption” to the existing learning environment may be achieved.     

Selling intra-curricular clinical legal education

A well-run student law clinic can bring benefits to its local community and to the students who participate in the initiative. The many shapes and sizes of law clinics mean that the model adopted can have an impact on the mix of community benefit and student benefit that any particular project brings. One key potential difference between clinical programmes is whether an intra- or extra-curricular model is employed, with the question of whether one is preferable to the other being a difficult one to contend with when considered in the light of the (often equally valid) competing interests that exist. This article makes a case for the practical and tactical decision of introducing an academic, credit-bearing element to student clinical legal activity, drawing on a literature review of clinical legal education (CLE) sources, lessons from experiences of CLE and survey data from volunteers at the Aberdeen Law Project, the University of Aberdeen’s student founded and, until recently, extra-curricular organisation.     

Socialisation to interdisciplinary legal education: an empirical assessment

This article provides novel empirical survey evidence on socialisation factors leading lecturers to implement interdisciplinary teaching in law. Recent debates on legal scholarship and higher education legal institutions advocate the introduction of interdisciplinary approaches to legal studies. Nevertheless, there is still little evidence of how this lecturing philosophy might be affected by socialisation with other disciplines. To address this, we analyse the case of external lecturers in the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, who constitute the majority of the teaching staff in this institution. To explain the adoption of interdisciplinary teaching, we rely on socialisation factors connected to their former higher education and socialisation in research and multidisciplinary environments.     

NR Madhava Menon: The guiding light for global clinical legal education

The late NR Madhava Menon, known widely as ‘the father of modern legal education in India’, was also a leading voice for global legal education reform by championing ‘socially relevant legal education’ through clinical legal education throughout the world. This article concentrates on his seminal role in the founding of the Global Alliance for Justice Education (GAJE) and the crafting of its mission statement. Drawing on a number of key moments in Dr Menon’s lifelong dedication to the twin causes of legal education and social justice, it highlights how he brought an international perspective to his critical work on legal education reform in India by enlisting international collaborators, how he motivated international colleagues to bring similar reforms to their countries, and how he mentored new generations of legal educators in what has become a true global clinical movement. The article focuses specifically on how the guiding principles of GAJE’s inaugural conference, which Dr Menon co-chaired in 1999, reflect his vision of global clinical legal education that continues to guide GAJE and the global clinical movement today.

     

诊所法律教育在卫生法学教学中的应用研究

发源于美国的诊所法律教育借鉴了医学院学生在医疗诊所临床实习的做法,倡导在实践和经验中学习法律和律师的执业技能。法律诊所教育不仅在美国,在全球其他国家也产生了深远的影响。法律诊所教育发展到今天,它的价值不仅体现于课程本身,更体现为一种教学方法的变革。诊所法律在我国移植和推广的过程中,如何根据我国教学的实际情况,结合具体课程展开富有实效的应用研究,改革课程的教学方法,提高教学效果具有现实价值。     

Social justice jurisprudence of clinical education programme: A paradigm shift from legal education to justice education

The legal profession has remained relevant in bringing about positive transformation in society — with leaders, policymakers, and change makers around the world mostly possessing a background in the law. That said, the trust, and positive image, enjoyed by legal professionals continues on a declining path. Considered more glamorous, the legal profession has gone astray from the path of social justice. In this article, I argue that the negative perception of legal professionals is, in large part, because of the way legal professionals are taught and trained in law schools. I argue that legal teaching pedagogy in South Asia, and generally in developing countries, is a product of colonial structure. Even after the so-called decolonisation movement, law schools and universities, for example in South Asia, institutionalised a legal pedagogy unsuited to the epistemic actualities of their societies. A law student in South Asia was and continues to be taught the Western conception of what the law is and its relationship to justice. In a legal culture carrying the transplanted laws of the colonisers, the students of developing countries are meticulously trained in the technical skills of reasoning and interpretation by applying Eurocentric guidelines of positivist construction. In light of this, I propose a shift in legal education: to transform the existing legal education and pedagogy into ‘justice education’. I focus on the ancient principles — located in the Eastern legal philosophy — of empirical reasoning and the importance of the human nature of sociability in arriving at social justice. To combat the tendency of insulating law students from societal problems, I propose a social justice-driven legal pedagogy. I have also reflected on some practices that ‘are’ and highlighted other practices that ‘ought to be’. My thesis connotes that the legal profession has an innate role in building the capability of individuals who are deprived and excluded. In line with it, I present examples of scalable clinical legal education being practised specially by the Kathmandu School of Law that can create multidimensional legal professionalism.

     

The impact of victim provocation on judgments of legal responsibility: An experimental assessment

This study examines the effects of victim provocation on judgments of the legal responsibility for a homicide. Previous research and various legal rulings suggest that victim provocation is related to judicial decision-making. However, the magnitude of this relationship has not been assessed.Using a quasi-experimental procedure in which subjects read a case account of a homicide, this study indicates that as victim provocation increases, the level of legal responsibility and the years of imprisonment attributed to the offender decreases. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research in actual judicial decision-making, victim precipitation, and applying an attributional framework to these areas.     

Human-centered legal tech: integrating design in legal education

As the legal profession begins in earnest to deploy digital technology in service and information delivery, greater numbers of law schools are including technology instruction in their curricula. The prospect of more lawyers with digital expertise, while a welcome development, amplifies a parallel imperative that new technology tools be designed to be responsive to evolving human needs. This paper argues that coupling technology instruction with training in human-centered design approaches offers legal educators a means of preparing lawyers not only able to generate novel technology solutions, but able to fundamentally improve legal institutions and programs through those results. The use of design pedagogies within legal education also provides educators and students with the opportunity to reimagine the law as a creative pursuit by exploring structured methods like empathy via observation, prototyping, and the embrace of failure, with learning outcomes that hold the potential to transform how lawyers approach their role. This paper concludes by detailing the insights the NuLawLab has gained in the application of design methodologies in the creation of digital legal resources, and the modifications we are adopting to the approach to produce better results for the legal sector.     

The non-prosecution of human trafficking cases: an illustration of the challenges of implementing legal reforms

Research on the implementation of reforms focusing on policies and practices of the criminal court system reveals that members of the courtroom workgroup often resist or circumvent these legal reforms. This is particularly true if the reforms require changes in the way cases are prosecuted, affect the likelihood of successful prosecution, or impede the efficient and effective processing of cases. In this paper, I demonstrate that the findings of the Farrell et al. study of the prosecution of human trafficking cases are consistent with the larger bodies of research on prosecutorial charging decisions and the implementation of legal reforms. Like reforms designed to enhance the likelihood of successful prosecution of sexual assault and domestic violence cases, the new human trafficking statutes may not be capable of achieving the instrumental effects that those who lobbied for the changes envisioned.