Building research capacity in legal education

The legal education community faces a lack of research capacity and hard data relating to the teaching of law. The diffculties of building capacity are exacerbated by an academic culture in which educational research is generally not valued and subject specialists are not encouraged to spend time on learning and teaching projects. And why would they want to? The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and the promotions system in most universities has up to now conspired to ensure that there is little or no professional recognition for subject-based pedagogical research.

To raise the profile of legal education research UKCLE is working to build confidence in both the conduct of legal education research and the value of relating research activity to teaching practice.

Legal education research activities

UKCLE has been involved in a range of projects involving research and innovation in legal education. For example, the Legal Education Research Project (now LERN!). It was supported by a project team made up of UKCLE, the Association of Law Teachers, the Committee of Heads of University Law Schools and the Society of Legal Scholars. During 2003-05, the project undertook a third UK Law Schools Survey, reported in ‘A survey of law schools in the United Kingdom, 2004’ by Phil Harris and Sarah Beinart (The Law Teacher 39(3):229-366).

Linking research activity to teaching practice

How is law teachers’ research currently linked to their teaching? What are the best ways in which this link could be developed for the benefit of student learning? In 2002 UKCLE was awarded funding for a linking teaching and research project as part of an LTSN Generic Centre project to support activities that seek to ‘build the link’ between research and teaching.

Staff development opportunities

The successful completion of legal education research is dependent on a cohort of confident legal education researchers. In July 2001 UKCLE hosted a research methods workshop with the Legal Education Research Project, now LERN), and we ran a session at the 2002 Association of Law Teachers annual conference to showcase the work of our funded projects and invite discussion on the experience of conducting legal education research.
h2. Useful links

• Building capacity in empirical socio legal research – project funded under the ESRC’s Researcher Development Initiative (RDI)
• LERSNet (Legal Empirical Research Network) – aims to stimulate the production of high quality empirical research into law and justice issues, in the UK and elsewhere
• Nuffield Inquiry on Empirical Legal Research- inquiry set up in December in 2003 in response to a perceived dwindling of capacity to undertake empirical research in law, resulting in Law in the real world: improving our understanding of how law works, (November 2006) and Recognising the problem: socio-legal research training in the UK (January 2007), both of which can be downloaded as PDF files
• TLRP Research Capacity Building Network – facilitates the sharing of research skills, knowledge and expertise, website includes a research resources catalogue and training resources catalogue

Last Modified: 4 June 2010