Legal Education and People

[Extract] Law Schools The central message of the Pearce Report on Australian Law Schools was that legal education in Australia is being run on the cheap, and this is a Bad Thing. The moral for Vice Chancellors, University Councils and Governments, however, is that legal education in Australia can be run on the cheap, and this is an Absolutely Splendid Thing. In 1960, there were six university law schools in Australia — one in each state capital. By the mid-1970s the number had doubled, with second law schools established in Victoria and Queensland, three new law schools in New South Wales, and another established at the Australian National University in Canberra. One of the law schools in each of Queensland and New South Wales was established in an Institute of Technology, foreshadowing the end of the binary divide in higher education. By the mid-1990s, the number of law schools will double again. New law schools have already been established, or are about to be established, at seven more public universities: Murdoch University, Wollongong University, Newcastle University, the University of the Northern Territory, Flinders University, Griffith University and James Cook University. La Trobe University’s well-known legal studies department is also set to begin offering LLB degrees for the first time, in addition to the BA in Legal Studies. Similarly, the legal studies group within the Business and Commerce Faculty of the University of New England, in Armidale, NSW, is currently taking active steps towards the creation of a separate law school. The University also has a branch in Coffs Harbour and is one of the leaders in distance education, so that there are arguments in favour of this move despite the already crowded field. The conversion of the legal studies department into a law school at the University of Canberra is also strongly rumoured. Further, there is also likely to be pressure soon to establish a law school at the University of Western Sydney, which already houses some legal studies departments at its separate campuses and is located in a heavily populated region which is poorly served by professional faculties (and services).

This paper examines the concept of lifelong learning in the provision of legal education in Australia, in an era where widening participation in legal education has resulted in the replacement of the legal curriculum based on intellectual enrichment to one that is predominantly skills driven and vocational in nature. Following a critical review of the context and scope of current approaches to lifelong learning in legal education in Australia, the paper demonstrates that, while widening participation in legal education continues to provide the key skills necessary for lifelong learning, the emphasis on vocationalism results in the concept of lifelong learning being treated as a subset of generic law graduate attributes. As a consequence of such a categorisation, motivation for continued learning following graduation as a key dimension of lifelong learning is overlooked. The adoption of transformative pedagogies to enhance student motivation for lifelong learning in legal education is advanced. Focusing on critical reflection, dialogue and experiential learning, teaching and learning strategies are suggested to enhance motivation for lifelong learning so that wider participation in Australian law schools is also accompanied by more effective pedagogies to encourage lifelong learning.

A Call for Law Schools to Link the Curricular Trends of Legal Tech and Mindfulness

The Participation of Indigenous Australians in Legal Education, 2001–18

Indigenous Australians face many challenges in accessing and completing a legal education in Australia. Addressing this problem requires a clear empirical picture. However, no comprehensive study exploring the participation of Indigenous Australians in legal education has been conducted for almost two decades. This article rectifies this by presenting the results of a survey on Indigenous Australian students, graduates and staff members within Australian law schools. We find that while Indigenous Australians are increasingly commencing legal studies and graduating from law school, inequities and challenges persist.

Legal education in Australia is constantly evolving to meet the needs of law students and to prepare many of them for roles in the legal profession. Examples include changes to law degree structures, optional elective units, and subjects aimed at preparing law students to be ‘workplace ready’. Law students face challenging academic requirements and law school culture that can result in greater levels of psychological distress compared to the general population. Promoting law student wellbeing and responding to high student levels of psychological distress is a key area of focus for Australian Law Schools. This article explores existing law student wellbeing studies in Australia and reports findings from an empirical exploratory study investigating the levels of depression, anxiety, and stress (DASS) using the DASS21 survey instrument in law students at a regional Australian university, James Cook University. The results from this study support earlier studies at Australian universities that show law students experience higher levels of psychological distress symptoms compared to the general population, and it is an area of concern that requires ongoing attention. Results include an exploration of the impact of factors including type of degree being studied, campus location, year of study, gender, and time spent at law school.

[Extract] Australia is now developing its own tradition of legal education, as well as its own variant of the common law. Legal education in Australia originated in the demand by the practising legal professions in the various colonies for academic credentials which would increase their status, rather than in more scholarly aspirations. For this reason it has long been different from English legal education, though both focussed on a body of knowledge centred around rules, practices and institutions which had clearly English origins and retained them until quite recently Should Australians (and specifically, Australian law teachers) be interested in two books which examine and provide examples of legal scholarship in England? Perhaps the most striking thing about the two books on English Law Schools is that in both I found only three mentions of teaching method, as distinct from matters of curriculum or scholarship. The clearest reference is in Michael Chesterman’s essay “Legal Explorations in Different Lands”. Chesterman was until recently Dean of Law at the University of NSW, the first Australian law school to question traditional curriculum or teaching methods. He compares the challenge posed respectively by Warwick and UNSW to established traditions; that of Warwick lay in the content of its curriculum, that of UNSW in its methods of teaching. Twining, in his Hamlyn Lectures, refers to instruction in skills (in which he has been a pioneer) as part of an argument that the English Law School curriculum might become more comprehensive, and Wilson, in his rather depressing concluding essay, “Enriching the Study of Law”, mentions it in a similar context.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the current context, scope and problems in the provision of work-integrated learning (WIL) in legal education and how the adoption transformative pedagogies in WIL which is offered in legal education can foster personal and social transformation in addition to enhancing lawyering skills. The paper draws on learning from Australia, England and the USA. Design/methodology/approach – The backdrop of this conceptual paper is WIL and transformative education. The text begins with a critique of existing WIL frameworks and practices in legal education in Australia, England and the USA. This exposes a focus on skills enhancement at the expense of social and personal transformation. Drawing on transformative learning, the paper proposes practices which can be used in WIL offered in legal education to enhance personal and social transformation. Findings – There is very little literature on how legal education and WIL in legal education can enhance personal and social transformation. Tensions continue to exist between the predominant aim of instilling the legal skills necessary to ensure that graduates are prepared for legal practice through WIL programmes and between the need to simultaneously enhance critical consciousness and social transformation necessary for active participation in social and professional life. Research limitations/implications – More research is required on the best manner in which the ideals and practices of emancipatory education can be installed within WIL programmes so as to successfully reduce the tensions between the instilling of legal skills required to practice law and the need to train students to be holistic, critical and constructive thinkers. Practical implications – The suggestions made in this paper provide a framework to adopt critical pedagogies in the provision of WIL in legal education. The theoeretical and practice-based suggestions presented in this paper are also relevant to other professional disciplines where personal transformation is desired. Originality/value – The literature on legal education predominantly focuses on enhancing lawyering skills and competencies and there is an absence of the utilisation of transformative pedagogies in legal education generally and WIL offered in legal education. Drawing predominantly on the literature and practices relating to legal education in Australia and incorporating comparative insights from England and the USA, the paper contributes to the broader literature on transformative learning. Most significantly, the paper contributes specifically to the use of transformative pedagogies in WIL offered in legal education through the suggestion of practices relating to critical reflection and dialogue which are not commonly used in legal education.

This paper discusses the principle of Transition as it has been conceptualised by the Curriculum Renewal in Legal Education project. The project sought to develop a principled framework for renewing the final year of tertiary legal education in Australia. Capstone experiences were chosen as the most appropriate mechanism for assisting final year students to manage the transition process. Thoughtfully designed capstones assist students to integrate and synthesise their learning over their entire degree programme, facilitate closure on the undergraduate experience, and assist students to transition from student to emerging professional. We discuss the importance of addressing final year students’ transitional needs and explain how the principle facilitates this process. Although the framework has been developed specifically for legal education in Australia its approach enables transferability across disciplines and institutions. The framework addresses criticisms that universities and law schools are not meeting the needs of final year students by preparing them for the transition to graduate life in a complex and uncertain world.

This article engages with a body of literature concerned with the demise of critique in Australian legal education. In particular it reflects on Thornton’s, Privatising the Public University: The Case of Law, a recent special issue of this Journal, ‘The Past, Present and Future of Critical Legal Education in Australia’ (2013) 23(2), and several articles by James on competing legal education discourses published between 2000 and 2013. This reflection narrates the story of the survival and consolidation of a deeply critical legal core course against the tide of corporatism, vocationalism and doctrinalism that have cemented their dominance in law schools since the 1990s as part of the neo-Liberal turn afflicting tertiary education. It concludes that the future of deep legal critique depends on a commitment to embed it across the LLB curriculum and to the extent students are persuaded to see it as relevant.

The reality of law schools being hotbeds of toxic stress is not new. Most law schools already have instituted student wellness initiatives focused on supporting students through the rigors of law school, and spotting outside stressors which impact students' legal education and providing support. While these initiatives are crucial, lessons about healthy boundaries, combating toxic stress and the role of trauma, need to be further integrated into law school curricula. The field of trauma‐informed practice presents a rich set of tools from which to accomplish these goals. While trauma‐informed practice has implications for all of legal education, the focus of this essay is on the teaching of family law. Law school family law courses create an ideal platform for incorporating a trauma‐informed perspective and introducing law students to trauma‐ informed skills. While some law school clinics introduce and implement principles of trauma‐informed practice to law students, it is less common that trauma‐informed practice is introduced through traditional doctrinal or skills classes. This article will explore how an understanding of trauma and trauma‐informed practice can inform how family law courses are taught in United States law schools.

The paper examines some of the factors currently shaping graduate coursework in legal education in Australia. There is some suggestion that the undergraduate law degree is likely to become more generalist and that specialization will occur at the graduate level with professional registration to follow. The shift from the somewhat insular and self-regulating culture of Australian law schools to a powerful mix of state and market-controlled environment has occurred in a very short space of time. The impact of graduate studies programmes on the undergraduate degree is yet to be assessed as graduate courses become significant sources of income, differentiation and status for the established schools.

This article examines two substantially irreconcilable approaches to internationalization that are emerging in the United States. The first focuses on globalizing the law school curriculum through internationalization. This approach is congruent with emerging trends in legal education internationalization in Europe. The second approaches internationalization as a market driven competition for influence among dominant domestic legal orders, that is, as nationalist globalization. Internationalization is understood as the extension of the influence of national law outside the national territory and is nicely illustrated by recent efforts to globalize the law school curriculum by internationalizing the conventional U.S. law school curriculum. The principle thesis is this: The global legal education community, led by the Europeans, has been constructing a vision of globalization of legal education that has as its basis the idea of harmonization and convergence of different systems and the development of a new institutional model grounded in harmonized global trends in law. The United States appears to be taking two approaches to this development. After an Introduction, Part II examines the internationalization efforts of U.S. law schools following one of five models: (1) integration; (2) segregation; (3) aggregation; (4) immersion; and (5) multi-disciplinary department models. This project seeks a newer framework for the construction of shared legal structures grounded in joint effort that is not dominated by the approaches off any one state. Part III then examines the ways in which American institutions are also working against this general trend by positing a form of nationalist globalization that has as its foundation the idea that national legal education can go global without globalizing the law taught. Nationalist globalization takes three forms: a focus on the training of lawyers for domestic service whose pedagogical methodologies can be exported, the extraterritorial extension of the U.S. law school system, and the management of post graduate degrees in law for foreign law graduates. In place of harmonization and globalization of law, the American nationalist globalization model grounded in extraterritorial competition for socialization in the laws of the domestic legal order of dominant states. The article ends with an analysis of the consequences of these competing forms of global engagement in legal education. While much of the attention on changes to the American law school environment has focused on internationalization within consensus-based and supplementary programs founded on the internationalization ideal, American law schools have also been developing market-based strategies that are, at their core, fundamentally inconsistent with the internationalization framework.

The literature of higher education widely notes the importance of reflection and reflective practice as a critical aspect of professional practice. This enables learners to act and think professionally by combining theory and practice. As such, many teaching and learning strategies and activities to enhance reflection have been incorporated into professional degrees. Notwithstanding the support for reflective practice, critical reflection remains a contested concept with a lack of consensus as to its definition and best practice. The frameworks chosen by higher institutions may be influenced by course context, ideology and expectations around the course/unit learning outcomes. This paper commences with a discussion of reflection and critical reflection. By examining different notions of reflection, the paper will discuss why the concept of critical reflection is important for practitioners in the 21st Century. It is advanced that critical reflection can encourage learners to better understand professional practice by linking discipline knowledge and theories to professional practice and wider insights. Whilst reflective practice is a desirable capability for law graduates, legal education in Australia largely fails to incorporate and assess critical reflective skills, as it is directed at producing a technically skilled and ideologically compliant legal workforce. The authors advance that adherence to a solely doctrinal approach to legal education is no longer justified in the 21st Century, which is characterised by profound change and uncertainty that impacts on the legal profession and society at large. Law schools have a positive role to play in the education of their students through instilling doctrinal knowledge, professional practice skills and critical thinking skills, which foster an understanding and analysis from multiple perspectives, to ensure that law graduates are able to holistically understand the reasons for changes within their profession and effectively adapt to change through informed choices. The final part of the paper outlines how critical reflection can be implemented in legal education.

Law as a discipline struggles as much as, or perhaps more than, any other discipline in its attempts to reconcile its close historic connections to professional practice with its current location in a university environment. Should law schools focus on producing graduates who are “practice-ready” or make available a broad, contextual education for their students in line with the academic standards of the wider university? The overarching issue in debates about legal education in Australia has been: “what is the nature of a ‘university’ legal education?” The key issue is: should law schools be driven by market requirements or by more idealistic educational values?