What needs to change to meet the challenges facing legal education over the next 10 years?

Share your views

Below are responses to the second question posed in the Visions of legal education session at the Learning in Law Annual Conference 2010 – see the Challenges page for details of the challenges themselves.

Do you agree with the Learning in Law Annual Conference 2010 delegates? Email UKCLE on ukcle@warwick.ac.uk with ‘visions of legal education’ in the subject line and we will add your comments.

Below are responses to the second question posed in the Visions of legal education session at the Learning in Law Annual Conference 2010.

Scott A Taylor:

1. Continuing a focus on learning, not on teaching
2. Integrate more work-based learning
3. Develop and promote pipeline programs

Martha-Marie Kleinhans:

1. Greater engagement of employers outwith the ‘legal’ arena and increase awareness amongst students and staff of the value of a legal education more broadly
2. Change teaching and learning methods – address assessment ‘exam mania’ through different resource / workload models

Avrom Sherr:

1. Flexibility on systems of teaching and learning
2. More aggressive certainty in negotiations
3. Being ahead with the computer generation

Susan Blake:

1. Doing much more to spread good practice in IT use
2. Change and develop lecturer attitudes so academic/professional prejudices are not tolerated
3. Ensure university staff are properly trained with regard to the changing profession

Becky Huxley-Binns

1. Strong and cohesive university leadership to defend the teleos of the HE academy
2. Effective course management with flexibility to adjust tradition if necessary to meet student demands within the teleos of the HE academy
3. Imagination, communication and flexibility

Imelda Maher:

1. As Professor Cownie said, confidence, vigilance and not complacency among the academic profession
2. Effective leadership in the academy
3. Rigorous research in law teaching
4. Resources deployed to encourage and support staff

Anon:

1. No cuts in public spending!
2. Reflection in profession on who/how they recruit
3. More support for academics

Kirsty Horsey:

1. Drive to research led teaching funding
2. Move towards interesting students in law rather than just teaching it to them

Fiona Cownie:

1. Devote more resources to teaching – kit and training law teachers
2. Keep developing an understanding of liberal education and what that involves
3. Need to accept the realities and limitations of what we can achieve with reduced resources

Edward Stone:

1. Lecturers and academics need to talk to and listen to solicitors, legal department heads etc with vision for the future
2. Work harder on clear and succinct legal writing in materials for students
3. E-learning requires increasing creativity, not just technical skills

John Stanford:

1. Attempts by all stakeholders to reduce costs – large, grand campaign to get the public to understand the value to all of university education and facilitate government funding proportionate to that value
2. Seek to disengage the professions from involvement in university education – work with them on regular refinement of professional courses

Anon:

1. Less prescription by PSRB
2. Greater engagement with the strategic direction of legal education by the academic community

Anon:

1. If the professions want to assert ‘ownership’ of legal education they need to recognise the responsibility for funding it and that should go beyond sponsoring the chosen golden applicants and making wider participation real

John O’Dowd:

1. The range and variety of teaching and learning media
2. The synthesis of theoretical and practical
3. The opportunity for students to apply what they learn in realistic situations

Anon:

1. Alternative funding sources
2. Staff and student development
3. Spread of good practice and rise in status of teaching

Karen Counsell:

1. Better communication between universities and professional body
2. Lobby government
3. Better communication with students

Richard Heald.

1. Continued/renewed commitment to the value in itself of education – and so of legal education – by academics (especially legal academics)
2. HE leadership accordingly (eg VCs etc)
3. ‘Tesco Law’ to break the professions’ stranglehold?

Dawn Watkins:

1. Strategic thinking at all levels
2. Strong lobbying for education policies that acknowledge education for its own sake
3. Influencing policy at all levels

John Hodgson:

1. A more rational allocation of finance – to education, from research for the sake of it (90% of current output)
2. Time and space to develop more creative forms of education – blended/student centred

Marcus Soanes:

1. Institutions putting their money where their mouths are
2. Academics adjusting appropriately whilst preserving what is effective and valuable
3. Looking outside of the usual funding bodies eg promoting ‘giving’ by donors and tie-ins

Amanda Fancourt:

1. Much stronger dialogue between the professions and the academy – this does not mean that the profession should dictate further what is in the law degree, but the mutual understanding would be improved
2. Students need to be better informed at an early stage of their degree of the options open to them and the reality of the state of the profession

Caroline Coles:

1. Better skills – teach and learn
2. More research funding
3. Better provision for student loans

Caroline Hunter:

1. No cuts in public spending
2. Reflection in the profession on who/how they recruit
3. More support for academics

Helen James:

1. We need to work together as a community – we are all together a greater force for change than the sum of our parts
2. More events like LILAC – what a great forum for discussion, but does this lead to action?

Richard Owen:

1. We do not yet know the full scale of the problem with regard to resources. It will look as if the sector will emerge from the recession in slightly different shape from the way it went into it. I think institutions will have to concentrate on what they are best at, so it may involve a re-focusing on core activities but also being creative in terms of meeting legitimate student demands, exploiting new technologies, etc. I suspect estates will become a little shabby over the next few years so we will have to show it’s not the buildings but what goes on in them that truly counts.
2. In Wales we need some sort of Welsh Statute Book so that the ordinary citizen can locate the law as it applies in Wales more easily. As the body of specifically Welsh law continues to grow but England & Wales remain one jurisdiction, there needs to be greater awareness that the Government of Wales Act 2006 has some implications for delivery of legal education in England. Whilst this does not involve great change to curricula, it might be difficult to explain to people that this is something of any relevance to them. More secondary materials such as textbooks will need to be developed to deal with areas of Welsh law and solve the problem that it may not be viable for commercial publishers to produce such works.
3. In my case – the need to develop greater awareness of environmental issues in general and the insight to see how they impact on my particular areas.

Last Modified: 4 June 2010