Modernising Legal Education

Discusses the skills required by future lawyers, and explores innovative and technology-driven approaches to modernising legal education.

Catrina Denvir (Edited by)

9781108475754, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 January 2020

280 pages, 16 b/w illus. 4 tables
23.6 x 15.8 x 2.2 cm, 0.56 kg

'Legal education has a Sisyphean task ahead of it: should it cling to the values of liberal education or override them with technocratic vocationalism? This collection provides an eclectic range of answers that will continue to stimulate discussion for years to come. All lawyers within and outwith the academy should read it.' John Flood, Griffith University, Australia

Over the last decade, cost pressures, technology, automation, globalisation, de-regulation, and changing client relationships have transformed the practice of law, but legal education has been slow to respond. Deciding what learning objectives a law degree ought to prioritise, and how to best strike the balance between vocational and academic training, are questions of growing importance for students, regulators, educators, and the legal profession. This collection provides a range of perspectives on the suite of skills required by the future lawyer and the various approaches to supporting their acquisition. Contributions report on a variety of curriculum initiatives, including role-play, gamification, virtual reality, project-based learning, design thinking, data analytics, clinical legal education, apprenticeships, experiential learning and regulatory reform, and in doing so, offer a vision of what modern legal education might look like.

Foreword Julian Webb
Introduction Catrina Denvir
1. Do lawyers need to learn to code? A practitioner perspective on the 'poly-technic' future of legal education Alexander Smith and Nigel Spencer
2. Experiential legal education: stepping back to see the future Jeff Giddings and Jacqueline Weinberg
3. Skills swap? Advising technology entrepreneurs in a student clinical legal education program Ian Walden and Patrick Cahill
4. Scaling the gap: legal education and data literacy Catrina Denvir
5. Bringing ODR to the legal education mainstream: findings from the field Genevieve Grant and Esther Lestrell
6. Design comes to the law school Margaret Hagan
7. Developing 'nextgen' lawyers through project-based learning Anna Carpenter
8. Same as it ever was? Technocracy, democracy and the design of discipline-specific digital environments Paul Maharg
9. Ludic legal education from Cicero to Phoenix Wright Andrew Moshirnia
10. The gamification of written problem questions in law: reflections on the 'serious games at Westminster' project Paresh Kathrani
11. Virtually teaching ethics: experiencing the discrepancy between abstract ethical stands and actual behaviour using immersive virtual reality Sylvie Delacroix and Catrina Denvir
12. Paths to practice: regulating for innovation in legal education and training Julie Brannan and Rob Marrs
13. 'Complicitous and contestatory': a critical genre theory approach to reviewing legal education in the global, digital age Jane Ching and Paul Maharg
Afterword
Index.

Subject Areas: Legal aspects of IT [UBL], Ethical & social aspects of IT [UBJ], Legal ethics & professional conduct [LATC], Legal skills & practice [LAS]