Imperatives for Legal Education Research

Imperatives for Legal Education Research
Author: Ben Golder
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2019-08-28
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0429759878

In the last few decades university teaching has been recognised as an activity which can be studied and improved through educational scholarship. In some disciplines this is now well established. It remains emergent in legal education. The field is rich with questions to be answered, issues to be raised. This book provides the first overall review of legal education scholarship. The chapters outline the history of legal education research and provide a detailed analysis of the trends in areas of publication. Beyond this, the book suggests a typology for further conceptualising the field and a series of suggested paths for future research. The book originated from the 2017 UNSW conference "Research in Legal Education: State of the Art?" It features internationally respected authors who bring their perspectives on how legal education – as a field of research – should be conceptualised. The collection is arranged into three themes. First, a historical view is taken of the emergence of legal education scholarship and its roots that predate modern educational theory. Secondly, the book provides overviews of the extant field of publications, highlighting areas of interest and neglect, and delineating the trends in current publication. Thirdly, the book provides a set of suggested typologies for describing legal education research and a series of essays for future directions which both critique current approaches and provide inspiration for future directions. The State of Legal Education Research represents an authoritative introduction to the field, a set of conceptual tools with which to describe it, and inspiration for researchers to expand and grow research into legal education.

Critical Legal Education as a Subversive Activity

Critical Legal Education as a Subversive Activity
Author: Helen Gibbon
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2015-10-16
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1000806693

In an age when everyone aspires to teach critical thinking skills in the classroom, what does it mean to be a subversive law teacher? Who or what might a subversive law teacher seek to subvert – the authority of the law, the university, their own authority as teachers, perhaps? Are law students ripe for subversion, agents of, or impediments to, subversion? Do they learn to ask critical questions? Responding to the provocation in the classic book Teaching as a Subversive Activity, by Postman and Weingartner, the idea that teaching could, or even should, be subversive still holds true today, and its premise is particularly relevant in the context of legal education. We therefore draw on this classic book to discuss, in the present volume, the consideration of research into legal education as lifetime learning, as creating meaning, as transformative and as developing world-changing thinking within the legal context. The volume offers research into classroom experiences and theoretical and historical interrogations of what it means to teach law subversively. Primarily aimed at legal educators and doctoral students in law planning careers as academics, its insights speak directly to tensions in higher education more broadly.

What is Legal Education for?

What is Legal Education for?
Author: Rachel Dunn
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2022-09-30
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1000688771

How we interpret and understand the historical contexts of legal education has profoundly affected how we understand contemporary educational cultures and practices. This book, the result of a Modern Law Review seminar, both celebrates and critiques the lasting impact of Peter Birks’ influential edited collection, Pressing Problems in the Law: Volume 2: What is the Law School for? Published in 1996, his book addresses many critical issues that are hauntingly present in the 21st century, amongst them the impact of globalisation; technological disruption; and the tension inherent in law schools as they seek to balance the competing interest of teaching, research and administration. Yet Birks’ collection misses key issues, too. The role of wellbeing, of emotion or affect, the relation of legal education to education, the status of legal education in what, since his volume, have become the devolved jurisdictions of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland – these and others are absent from the research agenda of the book. Today, legal educators face new challenges. We are still recovering from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on our universities. In 1996 Birks was keen to stress the importance of comparative research within Europe. Today, legal researchers are dismayed at the possibility of losing valuable EU research funding when the UK leaves the EU, and at the many other negative effects of Brexit on legal education. The proposed Solicitors Qualifying Examination takes legal education regulation and professional learning into uncharted waters. This book discusses these and related impacts on our legal educations. As law schools approach an existential crossroads post-Covid-19, it seems timely to revisit Birks’ fundamental question: what are law schools for?

Public Legal Education

Public Legal Education
Author: Richard Grimes
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2021-05-10
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1000387119

This book makes the case for a more legally literate society and then addresses why and how a law school might contribute to achieving that. Moreover examining what public legal education (PLE) is and the forms it can take, the book looks specifically at the ways in which a law school can get involved, including whether that is as part of an academic, credit-bearing, course or as extra-curricular activity. Divided into five main chapters, the book first examines the nature of PLE and why its provision is so central to the functioning of modern society. Models of PLE are then set out ranging from face-to-face tuition to the use of hard-copy material, including the growing importance of e-based technology. One model of PLE that has proven to be very attractive to law schools – Street Law – is described and analysed in detail. The book then turns to look at the considerations for a law school wishing to incorporate PLE into its offerings be that as part of the formal curriculum or not. The subject of evaluation is then raised – how might we find out if what we do by way of PLE is effective and how it might be improved upon? The final chapter reaches conclusions, some penned by the book’s author and others drawn from key figures in the PLE movement. This book provides a thorough examination of PLE in a law school context and contains a set of templates that can be implemented and/or adapted for use as the situation and jurisdiction dictate. An accessible and compelling read, this book will be of interest to law students, legal academics, practising lawyers, community activists and all those interested in PLE.

Power, Legal Education, and Law School Cultures

Power, Legal Education, and Law School Cultures
Author: Meera Deo
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2019-10-10
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0429533918

There is a myth that lingers around legal education in many democracies. That myth would have us believe that law students are admitted and then succeed based on raw merit, and that law schools are neutral settings in which professors (also selected and promoted based on merit) use their expertise to train those students to become lawyers. Based on original, empirical research, this book investigates this myth from myriad perspectives, diverse settings, and in different nations, revealing that hierarchies of power and cultural norms shape and maintain inequities in legal education. Embedded within law school cultures are assumptions that also stymie efforts at reform. The book examines hidden pedagogical messages, showing how presumptions about theory’s relation to practice are refracted through the obfuscating lens of curricula. The contributors also tackle questions of class and market as they affect law training. Finally, this collection examines how structural barriers replicate injustice even within institutions representing themselves as democratic and open, revealing common dynamics across cultural and institutional forms. The chapters speak to similar issues and to one another about the influence of context, images of law and lawyers, the political economy of legal education, and the agency of students and faculty.

Design in Legal Education

Design in Legal Education
Author: Emily Allbon
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2022-07-07
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0429664613

This visually rich, experience-led collection explores what design can do for legal education. In recent decades design has increasingly come to be understood as a resource to improve other fields of public, private and civil society practice; and legal design—that is, the application of design-based methods to legal practice—is increasingly embedded in lawyering across the world. It brings together experts from multiple disciplines, professions and jurisdictions to reflect upon how designerly mindsets, processes and strategies can enhance teaching and learning across higher education, public legal information and legal practice; and will be of interest and use to those teaching and learning in any and all of those fields.

Thinking About Clinical Legal Education

Thinking About Clinical Legal Education
Author: Omar Madhloom
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2021-11-25
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1000452972

Thinking About Clinical Legal Education provides a range of philosophical and theoretical frameworks that can serve to enrich the teaching and practice of Clinical Legal Education (CLE). CLE has become an increasingly common feature of the curriculum in law schools across the globe. However, there has been relatively little attention paid to the theoretical and philosophical dimensions of this approach. This edited collection seeks to address this gap by bringing together contributions from the clinical community, to analyse their CLE practice using the framework of a clearly articulated philosophical or theoretical approach. Contributions include insights from a range of jurisdictions including: Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Ethiopia, Israel, Spain, UK and the US. This book will be of interest to CLE academics and clinic supervisors, practitioners, and students.

Subversive Legal History

Subversive Legal History
Author: Russell Sandberg
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2021-07-29
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0429575491

Provocative, audacious and challenging, this book rejuvenates not only the historical study of law but also the role of Law Schools by asking which stories we tell and which stories we forget. It argues that a historical approach to law should be at the beating heart of the Law School curriculum. Far from being archaic, elitist and dull, historical perspectives on law are and should be subversive. Comparison with the past underscores: how the law and legal institutions are not fixed but are constructed; that every line drawn in the law and everything the law holds as sacred is actually arbitrary; and how the environment into which law students are socialised is a historical construct. A subversive approach is needed to highlight, question, de-construct and re-construct the authored nature of the law, revealing that legal change on a larger scale is possible. Far from being archaic, this recasts legal history as being anarchic. Subversive Legal History is not a type of Legal History but is its defining characteristic if it is to be a central part of Law School life. It describes a legal method that should not be the preserve only of specialist legal historians but rather should be part of the toolkit of all law students, teachers and researchers. This book will be essential reading for all who work and study in Law Schools, proposing a radical new approach not only to the historical study of law but also to the content, purpose and ambition of legal education. A subversive approach can revolutionise Law Schools providing a more ambitious legal education which is grounded in the socio-legal reality, helping to ensure that today’s law students are better equipped to be the professionals and citizens of tomorrow.

Better Law for a Better World

Better Law for a Better World
Author: Liz Curran
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2021-04-19
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0429602332

How as a society can we find ways of ensuring the people who are the most vulnerable or have little voice can avail themselves of the protection in law to improve their social, cultural, health and economic outcomes as befits civilised society? Better Law for a Better World answers this question by looking at innovative practices and developments emerging within law practice and education and shares the skills and techniques that could lead to confidence in the law and its ability to respond. Using recent research from Australia, practice initiatives and information, the book breaks down ways for law students, legal educators and law practitioners (including judicial officers, law administrators, legislators and policy makers) to enhance access to justice and improve outcomes through new approaches to lawyering. These can include: Multi-Disciplinary Practice (including health justice partnerships); integrated justice practice; restorative practice; empowerment modes (community & professional development and policy skills); client-centred approaches and collaborative interdisciplinary practice informed by practical experience. The book contains critical information on what such practice might look like and the elements that will be required in the development of the essential skills and criteria for such practice. It seeks to open up a dialogue about how we can make the law better. This includes making the community more central to the operation of the law and improving client-centred practice so that the Rule of Law can deliver on its claims to serve, protect and ensure equality before the law. It explores practical ways that emerging lawyers can be trained differently to ensure improved communication, collaboration, problem solving, partnership and interpersonal skills. The book explores the challenges of such work. It also gives suggestions on how to reduce professional barriers and variations in practice to effectively, humanely and efficiently make a difference in people’s lives. The book builds essential skills and new approaches to lawyering for law students, legal educators, new lawyers and seasoned lawyers, judicial members and law administrators to equip them to better respond to community need. It looks at the law in context by also exploring the role of the law in improving the social determinants of health and socially just outcomes.

The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Translation Studies

The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Translation Studies
Author: Defeng Li
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 661
Release: 2024-10-28
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1040116701

This Handbook offers a comprehensive grounding in key issues of corpus-informed translation studies, while showcasing the diverse range of topics, applications, and developments of corpus linguistics. In recent decades there has been a proliferation of scholarly activity that applies corpus linguistics in diverse ways to translation studies (TS). The relative ease of availability of corpora and text analysis programs has made corpora an increasingly accessible and useful tool for practising translators and for scholars and students of translation studies. This Handbook first provides an overview of the discipline and presents detailed chapters on specific areas, such as the design and analysis of multilingual corpora; corpus analysis of the language of translated texts; the use of corpora to analyse literary translation; corpora and critical translation studies; and the application of corpora in specific fields, such as bilingual lexicography, machine translation, and cognitive translation studies. Addressing a range of core thematic areas in translation studies, the volume also covers the role corpora play in translator education and in aspects of the study of minority and endangered languages. The authors set the stage for the exploration of the intersection between corpus linguistics and translation studies, anticipating continued growth and refinement in the field. This volume provides an essential orientation for translators and TS scholars, teachers, and students who are interested in learning the applications of corpus linguistics to the practice and study of translation.