Ethics in the undergraduate curriculum: an international wiki community

In their paper at the Learning in Law Annual Conference 2009, Nigel Duncan (City University) and Clark Cunningham (Georgia State University, USA) presented some of the findings of an ongoing research project on the teaching of legal ethics as well as initial proposals for an international interactive resource to support learning in legal ethics.

Update, February 2010: see the Learning in Law Annual Conference 10 paper, International website for teaching ethics and professionalism, for the latest information on the proposed resource.

Nigel has been researching the teaching of legal ethics across law schools in a number of jurisdictions, exploring:

• the extent to which legal ethics is taught
• where it is taught
• at which stages of the legal education process
• with what aims and objectives
• what learning methods are used
• how it relates to the rest of the law school curriculum

The research has been conducted by visits, considerable reading and an electronic survey instrument, with early findings presented at the Learning in Law Annual Conference 2008. This process has disclosed a variety of interesting practices and materials, however it has become apparent that the research has only scratched the surface of far richer resources.

The original plan for dissemination was to prepare a variety of documents with recommendations for how to use pervasive and discrete methods and different learning techniques, and to support these with sample learning materials, all made freely available through the UKCLE website. However, the observation above suggests that simply placing information on a website is inadequate if that information is limited. It is necessary to engage practitioners of legal ethical education in the process of dissemination, and, through that, in a continuing debate. This raises the suggestion that a live interactive process is necessary in order to get below the surface of the wealth of experience within our academic community, perhaps using wiki technology.

About the presenters

Nigel Duncan is a principal lecturer at the City Law School, where he is academic lead for assessment and chairs the good academic practice group. He is editor of The Law Teacher. Nigel is a National Teaching Fellow and an Honorary Fellow of the Society of Advanced Legal Studies. as well as a founder member of the Clinical Legal Education Organisation (CLEO) and the Global Alliance for Justice Education (GAJE). He sits on UKCLE’s Advisory Board and Strategy Committee.

Clark Cunningham is W Lee Burge Professor of Law and Ethics at the Georgia State University College of Law in Atlanta, USA, where he directs the criminal justice clinic and teaches legal ethics and comparative constitutional law. His work has been published widely and he has been a visiting scholar at several institutions. He directed a three year Ford Foundation project to support the development of law school clinics in India and served on the first steering committee of the Global Alliance for Justice Education.

Last Modified: 9 July 2010