Editorial Web JCLI Legal Education Special Issue

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Editorial: Web JCLI Legal Education Special Issue

Chris Ashford,

Helen James,

Introduction

This is the second Legal Education special edition of the Web Journal of Current Legal Issues. The first, edited by Ruth Soetendorp and Maureen Spencer in 2006 celebrated five years of the Society of Legal Scholars Legal Education subject section. This edition is edited by the third and current convenor of the section, Chris Ashford and a current deputy, Helen James.

This special edition draws upon the Legal Education section held at the Society of Legal Scholars Annual Conference in Durham in September 2007. In doing so, we hope to offer an additional forum in which legal education scholarship can be exhibited and a snap-shot offered of current research in this area. The editors would like to thank Tony Bradney and Fiona Cownie for their support in producing this issue together with all those who have contributed. Our thanks also go to everyone who attended and participated in the 2007 Legal Education section.

Researching Legal Education

In 1950, Gower complained that ‘the subject of legal education is one which has aroused singularly little interest in England in recent years and the general professional attitude to it is one of complacent apathy’. He pointed to the available published material and commented that ‘the published material is embarrassing in its profusion’.

Gower would undoubtedly reach a very different conclusion today. There is a plethora of literature available both in the form of collected works (see for example Birks 1992, 1996; Cownie 2004; Hayton 2000) and journals that include a focus upon legal education. However, The Law Teacher, the journal of the Association of Law Teachers, is the only refereed legal education focussed journal for UK academics. The Web Journal of Current Legal Issues has a legal education section but is general journal that focuses upon current legal issues in judicial decisions, law reform, legislation, legal research, policy related socio-legal research, legal information, information technology and practice. In addition, The Reporter (formerly SPTL Reporter) published for the Society of Legal Scholars is a more informal legal education newsletter along with ALT Bulletin published for members of the Association of Law Teachers and Directions in Legal Education published by the UK Centre for Legal Education (the law subject centre of the Higher Education Academy) also exist as outlets for legal education academics.

Legal Studies (formerly the Journal of the Society of Public Teachers of Law) along with the International Journal of the Legal Profession also publish occasional articles on legal education as does the Journal of Law & Society. Whilst there is a growing range of vehicles for such articles, in all but one case legal education continues to be a subject for discussion in general legal journals rather than a discipline with its own range of publications.

Bradney (1997) has noted that the first three decades after the Second World War saw a number of legal education issues discussed most notably in the Journal of the Society of Public Teachers of Law ranging from Brown’s discussion (1947) of the problems raised by students from different backgrounds and ages through to the place of legal education in the university (Stallybrass 1948). These are themes that are familiar to any casual reader of legal education articles today.

Bradney (1997) also noted that the main distinction between this and other modern legal education literature and that written in the previous post war decades is the ‘sustained engagement’ with the work in this field. Legal education scholars no longer write in isolation but participate in an active academic dialogue around a variety of issues. This has no doubt been further supported by the creation in 2000 of a legal education section by the Society for Public Teachers of Law (now the Society of Legal Scholars). In addition the annual conference of the Association of Law Teachers focuses on legal education matters whilst the Learning in Law Annual Conference, run by the UK Centre for Legal Education also supports this dialogue. These fora have engendered a climate in which legal education debate is actively fostered resulting in a scholarly and rigorous discourse recognised for the first time by the RAE 2008

Much of the modern UK literature that has been produced focuses upon debates and ‘crises’ within legal education (see for example Bradney 1995 and 1999; Brownsword 1996; Twining 1996; Wilson and Morris 1994), or upon potential future directions for law schools and legal education policy (see for example Ashford 2006 and Grodecki 1967), rather than the appearance and character of legal education within those law schools. However, there have and continue to be notable exceptions in the form of some empirical research that has sought to map the structure of law schools and their programmes. This is increasingly demonstrated in the papers given at both the UKCLE’s annual Learning in Law Conference and the legal education stream at the annual conference of the SLS. For instance, in 2008 the Learning in Law Conference focussed on curriculum design and development and it is apparent that an increasing awareness of the importance of strong pedagogic underpinning in delivering legal education is slowly changing the face of law schools.

Edition Contents

This special edition features five articles drawn from the 2007 Legal Education subject section. The first paper, by Hilary Sommerlad, is a report of longitudinal study exploring the issue of professional socialisation through a study of a local labour market and law graduates from a new university. It makes fascinating reading. Law schools, especially those based within ‘new’ universities, are increasingly attracting students from non-traditional minority backgrounds. Indeed at some institutions such students are now in a majority. This shift is not however reflected in the professions. If we are to avoid selling these often bright and able students an unrealisable dream then there is a need for professional education that addressed the structural and cultural barriers to entry and progression.

Gary Wilson’s paper explores the use of tutorials in law teaching. Most of us rely on the tutorial often seeing it as the basis for the ‘real learning’; a place where students both expand and consolidate their understanding of specific issues. However, there is often a disparity between lecturer and student expectations, and indeed between lecturers themselves, as to the true purpose of the tutorial. Often the tutorial is seen as a place to rehearse exam style questions rather than as a forum for the exploration of wider issues in keeping with notions of the liberal education. This often seems in keeping with student expectation. Students today, faced with the competing demands of education and the need to be financially self-supporting may well be more strategic in their approach to learning attending only those sessions that will assist them in successfully completing their programme of study.

Tim Vollans’ paper is an account of the relationship between law schools and the professional bodies in so far as whilst the professional bodies explicitly determine the foundation topics that must be covered by institutions offering a qualifying law degree they also implicitly influence the maintenance of standards, particularly in academic judgements and professional administration, in the primary context of their recognition of legal qualifications. This paper asserts that their influence in this far from being merely implicit build on an edifice of mutual trust should be formally recognised.

The final paper is submitted by Louisa Dubery and is the result of her research, funded by the City Solicitors Educational Trust into teaching the law of property. Louisa’s work is inspirational in seeking to overcome the reputation as a dry and difficult subject that has dogged land law for many decades.

This is indeed a fascinating and diverse set of papers giving but a small glimpse of all that is best in legal education writing today. Between them they offer insight into issues that are relevant to the daily working lives of all those involved in the delivery of legal education today and a chance, perhaps, to pause briefly in our frantic lives for a moment or two of thought and reflection.

Bibliography

Birks, P (1992) Pressing Problems of Law Volume 1: Examining the Law Syllabus: The Core (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Birks, P (1996) Pressing Problems of Law Volume 2: What are Law schools For? (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Bradney, A (1999) ‘Liberalising Legal Education’ in Cownie, F (ed.) The Law School: Global Issues, Local Questions, (Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing).

Brown, D (1947) ‘Some Problems of Post-War Teaching’, 1 Journal of the Society of Public Teachers of Law, 19.

Brownsword, R (1996) “Where are all the Law schools Going?” 30 The Law Teacher, 1.

Cownie, F (2004) Legal Academics: Cultures and Identities (Oxford: Hart Publishing).

Grodecki, J (1967) Legal Education: Dilemmas and Opportunities (Leicester: Leicester University Press).

Stallybrass, W.T.S (1948) ‘Law in the Universities’, Journal of the Society of Public Teachers of Law, 157.

Twining, W.L (1996) “Rethinking Law schools”, 21 Law and Social Enquiry, 1007-16.

Wilson, G and Morris, G (1994) ‘The Future of the Academic Law Degree’ ’in Birks, P (ed.) Reviewing Legal Education (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

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