Lawpaths: helping law librarians to deliver skills

Lawpaths (2002-05), a project funded by JISC under the X4L (Exchange for Learning) programme, aimed to create a resource bank of customisable materials to support the teaching of legal research skills. UKCLE provided consultancy on project management and evaluation.

For further information see the Lawpaths final report.

The teaching of legal research skills is a critical element of learning the law, however the increasingly large and diverse student body makes traditional teaching methods difficult or impossible. The Lawpaths project aimed to meet the needs of law librarians in teaching the skills required to conduct legal research.

Lawpaths arose from the realisation that user guides and materials to support legal skills training were being written and re-written in institutions all over the country. Surely there was scope for sharing expertise, both in terms of content and format, giving law librarians access to high quality customisable skills training material for use in both the classroom and a virtual learning context?

During the course of the project a database was created of skills materials, such as guides, tutorials and workbooks, with the aim of making the best of these available in a customisable form. In addition, the project set up an online forum for sharing experience and best practice, and undertook discussions with publishers with the aim of encouraging them to provide help guides according to the needs of the student user community.

Last Modified: 6 July 2010