The Same Model, Different Approaches: A Comparative Study on Legal Education Reforms in East Asia

<p>In many parts of the world, including Nigeria, legal education systems have been severely criticized both by stakeholders and consumers for being deficient in many respects in preparing “future lawyers, with many failing to provide the core competence necessary to practice law after a university education.” A global review has indicated that legal education systems are generally inadequate and needs to be improved upon. Also, a series of discussions at both international and regional levels have emphasized the need for transition in legal training in order to enhance its effectiveness. Legal education systems around the world have been under surveillance for failing to produce students who possess problem solving abilities, and the skills and values required<br />for the profession. In Nigeria, as it is in other jurisdictions, criticisms against legal education by stakeholders and consumers are severe, focusing on the quality of training, which is regarded as inadequate.</p><p>For these and other reasons, critics have called for reforms in legal education in Nigeria.</p><p>Based on the above, this paper attempts to examine the legal education deficits in Nigeria requiring reforms, and how clinical legal education (hereinafter called “CLE”) introduced in Nigeria in 2003, ten years ago, best meets the required reforms, the challenges confronting the practice and institutionalization of clinical education, towards the objective of having a legal education which inculcates knowledge, skills and values, and is more practice oriented. This paper is divided into five parts, Part II examines the introduction in Nigeria; Part III discusses the capability of CLE to meet the required reforms in legal education in Nigeria; Part IV examines the achievements, and challenges confronting the practice, mainstreaming and institutionalization of CLE in law faculties and the law school, and an evaluation of CLE; while Part V captures the conclusion and recommendations.</p>

The judiciary has a significant and decisive role in protecting as well as enriching legal education, particularly the common law systems. Recognized as the highest arm of government which promotes values of justice and reinforce legal profession, the independence of the judicial system renders legal education and the legal profession to be an attractive and even valuable discipline. The paper has highlighted the multi-faceted effects of the judiciary, which have played the creative role in creating, developing and reformulation of legal concepts in order to be responsive to emerging needs of society. Through this, the judiciary will directly and indirectly influence the standards and principles taught and which are embraced in legal education and redefining legal principles to meet the evolving needs of the society thus directly affecting standards and principles taught in legal education. It is also the linkage between the role of the judiciary in safeguarding the popular interest and the fundamental rights of people that encourage youth to pursue a career in law and supports the extreme importance of law in society. Effective legal education helps to establish an organized and independent profession of lawyers which is a basic foundation of judicial administration of justice. Nevertheless, legal education reform, directly influenced and shaped increasingly by the judiciary, is a key entry point to the wider, fruitful change of the whole legal system. The centralities of the judiciary concerning the protection and development of the governance of legal education are investigated in this research paper. The justice delivery system is based on legal education, and the governance and quality of legal education have implications to the rule of law, access to justice and the democratic values. The judicial interpretative and supervisory functions have helped to provide regulation to the legal education through acting on institutional autonomy, quality standards, regulatory oversight, as well as access to legal education. The paper discusses the key court rulings, evaluates their relevance, and examines how the judiciary has proactively taken the initiative to ensure that legal education is of the high quality, accessible to every learner and work within the spirit and letter of the constitution

A common assumption is that factors associated with globalization, increasing economic exchange and technological improvements bring a convergence toward organizational structures and practices. The local legal profession changes in order to compete better in global markets, which require globally adept lawyers. This chapter looks at factors of convergence, but the structure of the legal profession in any given context is a product of a mix of local and global influences. The chapter points toward practices and reforms that are consistent with gradual convergence, but there is also significant divergence. Among the important factors are the degrees of investment in the law and lawyers during colonial periods, the historical prestige of lawyers, and the relationship to the US during the Cold War. A key theme is the degree to which through global and local processes social capital is embedded in legal capital in the different countries. The chapter covers India, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea, and the Philippines, updating research undertaken for the authors’ book on Asian Legal Revivals, published in 2010.

From a comparative perspective, one of the most noteworthy aspects of East Asia' over the past five or six decades has been the region’s rapid development, which is true whether one defines ‘development’ in economic terms alone or takes a broader view. Growth rates in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and, more recently, China have been outstanding over sustained periods, as has been these societies’ performance on many broader measures of well-being (World Bank, 1993). For scholars interested in understanding how law and legal institutions interact with social processes of development, East Asia therefore provides a rich arena for research, not only to deepen understanding of fundamental theoretical issues, but also perhaps to provide practical guidance to today’s developing countries as they seek to structure their own legal systems to facilitate development. As this chapter will demonstrate, the East Asian experience challenges many claims and assumptions found in the mainstream law and development field. This was true of the East Asian ‘miracle’ economies of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, but the challenges posed by China’s development path are even more fundamental.

Introduction. The reform of higher legal education in Ukraine is an important direction of state policy, which requires the need to harmonize national educational standards with European requirements and ensure the training of highly qualified lawyers. Summary of the main research results. The article focuses on some of the most pressing problems and prospects for the modernization of higher legal education in Ukraine. The opinion about the need to update the national system of higher legal education in connection with the integration of Ukraine into the European educational space is well-founded. It is noted that the success of the reform of legal education in Ukraine should be assessed through the prism of challenges and development trends, which will allow building a sustainable mechanism for the stable development of national legal education that meets modern standards of state policy. It is proven that the reform of legal education is an integral element of the general legal reform, which aims to increase the level of professional training of lawyers in accordance with the requirements of modern society and international educational standards. It was determined that the future development of legal education in Ukraine should be based on the principles of academic integrity, harmonization with international standards and integration of a practice-oriented approach into the educational process. Conclusions: The transformation of legal education is a complex and long-term process that requires coordinated actions by government agencies, the scientific community, and professional associations to achieve qualitative changes in the training of lawyers.

Before we can ask whether there are too many lawyers we must answer several preliminary questions: whom do we consider lawyers, and what does and should influence their number? The term ‘lawyer’, w...

This thesis explores the issue of supervision in the legal profession, with a focus on supervised practice. Supervised practice is a form of work-based training and acts as an important segue between formal university-based legal education and independent legal practice. Supervision is an important issue relevant to a number of contemporary legal education and legal profession debates including: the legal education framework; changes in the nature of legal practice driven by technology; and mental health and well-being. Despite this, the area remains very underdeveloped in the literature. There is some indirect empirical evidence that identifies supervision as important to the development and well-being of lawyers. However, a conceptual understanding of supervision, and the processes it includes, is absent in the literature. Specifically, there is no evidence that identifies the nature of supervision received during supervised practice, whether that supervision is effective and what the impact of that supervision is. This thesis will address this gap in the literature by asking and answering the following Central Research Question: “What are the implications of the legal profession’s current conception of, and approach to, supervision during supervised practice?” This gap in the literature will be addressed by developing an empirically supported theoretical understanding of supervision in legal practice, which surprisingly is yet to be done. The empirical dimension of this research is derived from comprehensive, supervision-specific survey data that provides a rich source of information on the perceptions and experiences of a broad cross section of practising lawyers in Queensland. This thesis relies on a mixed-methods approach to answer the central research question by developing a conceptual framework used to guide and inform the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data. Developing the conceptual framework includes a review and analysis of aspects of the legal education, legal profession and legal practice management literature. This uncovers that supervision in legal practice is conceived primarily as a tool for risk management and profitability. The legal profession’s approach to supervision is myopic when contrasted with supervision in other professional disciplines. The supervision scholarship in other related endeavours has a stronger theoretical foundation and evidence base. In other professional disciplines, supervision is conceived as a multi-functional, relationship-based endeavour concerned with training and development in the workplace. Effective supervision is underpinned by a strong supervisory relationship supported by a range of mechanisms including regular and frequent meetings. When positioned against the literature in other professional disciplines, the legal profession’s conception of supervision can be described in terms of focussing on normative (management) functions with an emphasis on monitoring. This is a limited form of administrative supervision and deficient in its lack of focus on formative (training) and restorative (supportive) functions. The survey data provides evidence that current supervision practices are likely to be ineffective for several reasons including a failure to foster strong supervisory relationships. Supervisees completing supervised practice are significantly more likely than other supervisees to perceive their supervision as inappropriate given their lack of practice experience. There are number of reasons why this is the case. The main underlying reason is that supervision fails to act as a forum for training, development and support. In addition, the supervisory relationship is weakened by a failure to structure supervision around regular frequent meetings and create an environment where supervisees generally feel able to disagree with their supervisor. These factors together provide evidence that the impact of current supervision practices is that lawyers completing supervised practice are at a high risk of not receiving the training and development needed at this stage of their legal training. From this central finding, this thesis makes a number of recommendations directed at the legal profession (including law societies, admitting authorities and individual firms) about how to respond to this challenge. In addition, this thesis also identifies a series of prospects for further research to build on these base-line findings in an underdeveloped area of scholarship.

Legal education in East Asia, particularly in China, Japan, and Korea, is undergoing fundamental changes, both institutionally and pedagogically. A common feature of those changes is the introduction of elements of the American system of legal education. Although traditional legal education in these countries has been provided at an undergraduate level and has not been considered professional legal education, recent and current reforms in those countries are either adding postgraduate professional law schools to existing undergraduate legal education or replacing undergraduate legal education with postgraduate professional law schools. The main parts of this review describe key features of those reforms in the three countries. The conclusion draws some theoretical implications from similarities and differences among the three countries, particularly in terms of the role of the top elite as agents of reform and of the constraints of different local conditions.

This thesis investigates the question of how East Asian universities have engaged in urban processes as spatially grounded variegated social processes from the colonial era to recent decades by adopting a comparative urbanism approach. Historically, universities in the US and Europe have been influential urbanisation actors in their hosting cities, having occupied a substantial amount of land. The relationship between a university and its hosting city was often defined as ‘Town and Gown’; that implies an adversarial link, but this traditional relationship has changed. Universities in East Asia have also participated in urbanisation processes in diverse ways since their birth, but the dynamics behind this multi-faceted process has rarely been addressed. Using research data collected mainly from fieldwork in Singapore and South Korea, including 42 interviews and archival records, this thesis highlights the relationship between universities and cities in East Asia, focusing on three distinctive periods: the colonial, developmental, and postdevelopmental eras. In all these enquiries, land ownership by universities acts as a thread that weaves the diverse facets of the role of universities into different periods. The findings of this thesis can be summarised as follows: Firstly, colonialism has been influential in the university-urbanisation relationship. During the colonial era, the East Asian university emerged as a symbolic and political institution in the city. Various colonial and local actors surrounded the colonial universities to promote or fight against the ideology of imperialism, which demonstrates the diverse aspects of colonialism in cities of East Asia. Such legacies of colonialism are still found today. Secondly, the East Asian developmental state is a variegated concept. The university plays an important role in society, but the way in which the university engages with the developmental state has varied across geographies. The developmental state attempted to utilise universities to support rapid economic and urban development, but such efforts were not always successful. This finding challenges the conventional understanding that assumes a homogeneous conceptualisation of the East Asian developmental state. Lastly, the entrepreneurial character of East Asian universities has become increasingly evident while the presence of the state is still visible. Thus the role of East Asian universities in urban processes has also become more diverse and dynamic in the postdevelopmental state since the 1990s. While the entrepreneurial university has a long history in East Asia, the globalised and financialised interests are penetrating the university more actively through various urban development projects. This thesis concludes that there is an emerging need to recognise East Asian universities as land-based institutions playing an influential role in diverse and uneven urban processes. Investigating universities also provides an opportunity to identify linkages between their colonial legacies and contemporary urban processes in East Asia.

On January 26, 1950 the Constitution of India came into effect. Nearly two and one-half years after winning independence from Britain, India enacted one of the most detailed, rights-based constitutions ever seen in the history of the world. The passage of such a democratic constitution was inspirational - not just for a country that endured centuries' of both informal and formal colonial rule, but also for those in the West. Many American observers, in particular, looked upon with awe as this economically poor, yet fiercely independent nation sought to embrace political and legal principles that had long been valued within the United States. The Ford Foundation - one of the world's leading philanthropic institutions based in the U.S. - soon also became infatuated with the promise and overall idea of India. For Ford, India exhibited great potential: its political and military leaders opted for democracy rather than dictatorship; its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a dynamic, Western-educated figure committed to economic development and modernization; and it retained English as a main national language, thereby giving Americans, who so desired, a better opportunity to work more easily within the country. For these and as we shall see other reasons, the Ford Foundation began to take a serious interest in India. One area that Ford especially focused on involved the development of legal education. Policymakers at Ford Headquarters in New York as well as at Ford's New Delhi office believed that for Indian democracy to succeed, the country needed to have well-established, rule-based institutions administered by those educated in the legal principles of equity, due process, and individual rights. These officials consulted with a number of Indian legal elites, several of whom had studied in the United States, and together these Americans and Indians concluded that law schools in India would be the ideal place to promote such legal principles. After all, having Indians educated in Western legal doctrine was critical for maintaining Weberian, democratic institutions; and the hope was that this in turn would lead to greater public respect for the rule of law. Beginning in the 1950s, Ford thus began spending millions of dollars and decades of energy working with Indians to create strong schools of law. One of the first steps Ford took in its initiative was to hire a number of respected American law professors as consultants. These academics were charged with traveling to India, assessing the legal educational environment, and providing recommendations to both Ford and the government of India for how to improve the country's legal education system. Given that many of India's elite had routinely praised the American law school model, Ford worked under the reasonable assumption that U.S. academics would be in the best position to advise their Indian counterparts. As I will discuss, however, this assumption proved at best to be questionable. To date, no work has presented the views of the academic consultants hired by Ford. For decades these reports were confidential and the consultants were equally reluctant to talk about their opinions. But perhaps because enough time has passed and Ford's involvement in this area has waned, I was granted access to all of Ford's documents on legal education in India. I also was able to interview key American scholars who served as advisors to Ford. In this study I trace the role American academics played in shaping Indian legal education. As I show, the belief held by both Ford and its Indian partners that the American law school model could successfully be exported to India soon came to be rejected by many of these U.S. professor-consultants. A consensus developed among these American academics that India's distinctive history, traditions, and legal profession - not to mention its economic struggles and political climate - would make it difficult for the American law school model to thrive in this environment. And to their surprise, these consultants found that Indian legal scholars, who were not affiliated with Ford, had their own innovative ideas on how to improve the country's legal education system.

우리 법학교육은 전통적으로 일본과 독일의 영향을 많이 받았다. 1990년대 법학교육 개혁이 사회적 관심사가 되면서 법학교육에서 미국의 영향력이 급속히 커졌다. 2009년 3월 미국로스쿨을 모방한 법학전문대학원 제도를 도입할 즈음 미국 법학교육이 우리나라에 미친 영향력은 최고에 달하였다. 이 글은 미국의 법학교육이 우리 법학교육에 미친 영향을 법학전문대 학원 도입 이전, 도입 즈음, 그리고 도입 10년 후인 현재로 구분하여 검토한 후 마지막으로 향후 전망을 논하고 있다. 미국식 로스쿨을 지향하는 법학전문대학원의 근간은 앞으로도 상당기간 유지될 것으로 전망된다. 그동안 법학전문대학원을 운영하면서 적지 않은 문제가 드러났지만, 그렇다고 폐기해야 할 정도로 현행 제도에 결함이 있는 것은 아니다. 과거 제도에 대한 향수를 가지고 있는 사람도 많지만, 법학전문대학원의 틀이 고착되어 과거로 회귀하기에는 너무 멀리 왔다. 법학전문대학원 제도의 개선 논의는 앞으로도 계속 될 것이다. 주시해야 할 것은 예비시험제와 변호사자격 취득 후 실무연수 강화방안이다. 두 가지 모두 법학전문대학원 제도의 근간을 흔드는 것이어서 실현될 가능성은 크지 않다. 법학교육이 변호사시험에 예속된 상황에서 미국 법학교육이 한국에 미치는 영향은 아주 제한적이다. 새로운 법적 분쟁에 관한 미국 판례 및 학계 반응을 비교법적으로 검토하는 정도에 그칠 가능성이 크다. 교육방법 역시 당분간 지금의 틀을 그대로 유지할 것으로 전망된다. 변호사시험의 방법이 바뀌지 않는 한 교육방법은 바뀌기 어렵다. 미국 로스쿨의 법학교육방법중 소크라테스 방식이 우리나라에서 인기를 끌 가능성은 거의 없다. 리걸클리닉 교육에 대한 관심은 여전히 있겠지만, 변호사시험에 대한 부담감이 사라지지 않는 한 크게 활성화될 가능성은 없다.South Korean legal education was traditionally affected by those of Japan and Germany. As legal education reform became a social issue from the 1990s, the influence of U.S. legal education model has increased rapidly. The influence of the U.S. model reached its peak when the U.S.-influenced law school was instituted in March 2009. In this article, the influence of U.S. legal education model to Korean legal education system will be reviewed in three stages―before the adoption of U.S. legal education model, around the adoption, 10 years after the adoption―and the forecast of Korean legal education will be discussed. The foundation of the law school aiming for the American law school seems to be maintained for a long time. Not a few problems have come out during the operation of the law school, but it is not a big defect to shut down the current system. There are many people who have nostalgia for the past, but the law school framework has been stuck and it has been too far to return to the past. The discussion on improving the law school system will be continued. What should be considered important is a preliminary exam and a plan to strengthen the practical training after attaining a lawyer’s qualification. It is not likely to be realized because both of them will shake the basis of the law school system. The claim that the legal education of the law school should be liberated from the bar exam is strong, but it is not likely to happen. Because the traditional thinking of examining capability through the exam is dominating the Korean legal profession, the bar exam is likely to take the form of assessing legal knowledge in the future. In conclusion, the impact of U.S. legal education on Korea is very limited in the situation where legal education is subject to the bar exam. It is likely that the U.S. case and academic response to the new legal dispute will only be comparatively scrutinized. The education method is also expected to maintain the current framework for the time being. Unless the way of the bar exam changes, the education method is difficult to change. It is very unlikely that the Socratic method of American law school will become popular in Korea. Although there is still interest in legal clinic education, there is no possibility that it will be greatly activated unless the burden of the bar exam is gone.

The civil war of China ended in 1949 with the People's Republic of China (PRC) founded in Beijing and the Republic of China (ROC) retreated to Taiwan. The confrontation of these two regimes resulted in a divided China. While the PRC claimed herself as the legitimate government succeeding the ROC and enjoyed effective control of the Mainland, the ROC still regarded herself as the legal government after the downfall of Qing Dynasty and her legitimacy did not end with the retreat to Taiwan. Hence, both regimes were fiercely engaged in diplomatic struggles for the ”sole legitimate” status. The fight for representation in the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1952 was the first cross-Strait diplomatic warfare. With the withdrawal of the PRC from the IOC around 1960, the international legal status of the ROC was more or less secured. However, with no effective control over the field of sports, the IOC considered neither regime representative of each other. Hence, the IOC adopted the principle of ”de facto controlled athletic area” in its Charter to regulate the membership of the PRC and ROC in the IOC. IOC asserted that ”since Taiwanese did not administer sport in China, the Republic of China was to taken off the IOC membership list. However, if it chose to reapply for admission under another name the application would be considered.” This provoked severe protest from Taiwan. Although the ROC was forced to reapply for membership under ”Republic of China Olympic Committee”, Taiwan still claimed to be the sole legitimate representative of China. This triggered the name ROC rectification campaign in the IOC. As demanded by IOC, Taipei had to give up her original membership title of ”Chinese Olympic Committee”, and to recognize her control over the field of sports only in Taiwan. Faced with such change in status, the ROC on the one hand reapply for admission to the IOC as ”Republic of China Olympic Committee, ROCOC”, and on the other hand, campaigned for effective control over the field of sports in the PRC. While the application for membership succeeded, the title was refused by the IOC. The bone contention remained the inclusion of 'China' in the title. The IOC was suspicious of Taiwan's intention to extend the ”de facto controlled athletic area” to Mainland China. To continue the fight, The ROC government through the Central Committee of KMT formed the Name Rectification Committee with the Sports Federation of the Republic of China as the convener and with members including the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Lobbying thus began through the support of overseas consulates and targeted at not only the IOC president and committee members, but also the participants of annual IOC executive committee meetings held in Baden-Baden, Innsbruck and Tokyo. Two achievements were eventually made. First, it was resolved at the Baden-Baden meeting that that ”ROC” could be embroidered on athletes' sportswear; and second, it was agreed at the Tokyo meeting that ”Republic of China” in Chinese characters could be added under the word ”TAIWAN” in English on the nameplate of the ROC delegation. Hence, the humble wish of the ROC was granted. Nevertheless, besides athletes from countries in East Asia using Chinese characters, most of the foreign athletes from western countries would hardly see the difference, nor understand its meaning or significance. 1960 to 1964 saw persistent efforts of the ROC in name rectification in the IOC but with little success. The same plight was suffered in her other battles in the international arena. The culture and value of status and rank provided the impetus to ROC's name-rectification campaign.

With a few exceptions, American legal writing pedagogy has not been adopted in any meaningful way in foreign countries. At most, it has garnered some attention in Legal English courses, but has otherwise received scant reception in foreign universities and little academic interest by continental and other civil law academics. This article explores the stark differences found in legal education between various countries as it relates to the teaching of legal writing.The reason transplantation, or borrowing, of American legal writing pedagogy has not occurred is due to the deep structural differences between the American legal education system and the education system found in most other countries, especially civil law countries. For example, many law schools in Western Europe require up to three years of apprentice experience before admitting a person into the practice of law. This apprentice requirement is in stark contrast to the general absence of any apprentice or internship requirements in the United States prior to being admitted to the practice of law as an attorney. This absence of an apprentice period in the United States’ legal education system gives a greater urgency to the teaching of legal skills – particularly legal writing – in American law schools. In addition, the market-based system of legal education found in the United States has shifted the cost of teaching legal writing from law firms and other legal employers to law schools, in contrast to most continental legal systems where employers (or government subsidies) provide such training. The fact that legal education in most civil law countries combines undergraduate and professional education and urges students to specialize in their legal education for particular careers (be it in the judiciary, academia, prosecutors’ offices, or general practice) also makes the American-style legal writing program less compelling to these countries. Generally speaking, continental legal education begins earlier for most students (usually age nineteen or earlier), runs longer (usually five years), and provides foundational courses such as history and philosophy in the initial years of study. In contrast, American law students come to law school with a variety of backgrounds and training, and the American legal writing classes found in its law schools provide a remedial and leveling function for American law students whose undergraduate training did not provide for skills needed for law studies. This article does not argue that it is impossible, impractical, or unimportant to try to transplant legal educational methods from one system to the other. Quite the contrary, American and civilian law schools share the same basic pedagogical goal which is to train skilled lawyers and legal professionals. As a consequence, the teaching of skills such as legal writing should be a high priority in both education systems. The structural differences, however, cause each system to have varying strengths and weaknesses in the teaching of skills, particularly in the field of legal writing. An examination of these differences provides a useful point for learning and profiting from the other’s experiences.

This submission for PhD brings together five publications that illustrate how my work has had an impact on legal education at Liverpool John Moores University, and further impact on the external higher education landscape. It demonstrates how extrinsic evidence and action research methods were used to develop aspects of the curriculum and overall academic experience of law students. The impact of these innovations was analysed with qualitative and quantitative education research methods, which are rarely used in legal education. The development of this research is traced from 2001 and details how it grew from a desire to improve the law student experience, into a body of education research that has had impact both in law and other higher education disciplines. The articles in this submission are published in high quality higher education journals, an achievement which is still relatively unusual in legal education. Four of the five are published in journals ranked in the top twenty for higher education research by Googlescholar and academics (Tight, 2017). They form a coherent body of education research with demonstrable results for legal education and beyond. The first indication of impact is that, together, these publications have been cited 180 times. The original findings in these publications are discussed such as the discovery that self-awareness literature and diary-keeping can help students in their transition to university. Other discoveries include findings that: reflective practice has intrinsic value in higher education regardless of whether students become ‘good’ reflectors; the importance of a long transition process rather than a traditional induction process and; the benefits of student voice and participatory action research for legal and other higher education disciplines. This submission discusses how this body of research has impacted on students, law staff at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), colleagues in other disciplines and outside LJMU. The impact of these innovations in bringing reflective practice, self-awareness literature, and the use of diaries to legal education for the purposes of helping to improve retention rates and student performance is demonstrated (Publications 1 and 2). Analysis was undertaken using qualitative education research techniques, particularly the use of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), which is uncommon in legal education. Publication 3 highlights the value of a longer transition process and the value of quantitative education research techniques in legal education. Publications 4 and 5 take legal education development into the emerging area of student voice by employing participatory action research with students. This type of research is also rare in legal education. The potential of this approach to gathering data, analysis and publication, which might influence on-going conversations about the development of legal education, including testing learning environments that prepare students for the Solicitor’s Qualifying Examination is discussed. The methodological reasoning for using the chosen methods of research is also discussed, as is the general need to test innovations in law curricula. In summary, these publications illustrate the use of education research methodology and methods that are seldom employed in legal education. The sustainability of this approach, the value of communicating with students and potential further research that could be informed by these publications is deliberated. A final conclusion drawn is that there should be more engagement from legal scholars with the external education research community.

The North East Asia, geographically belongs to the sub-system in the East Asia, has once created the ”East Asian Community” which consists of China and its surrounding countries, as referred to ”Chinese World Empire” in this article. It popularized the Confucius thinking in term of culture, Suzerain-vassal System in politics, and Tribute Trade System in economy. In short, it was a China-center traditional regional integration in East Asia and also a life community with common culture value. Passed downward through the modern history, Japan, under this common culture value, promoted actively the ”Asianism” as well as the ”Great East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere”, which was once popular in the North East Asia but abandoned in WWⅡ. Meanwhile, the existing Chinese ”Universalism” and ”Chinese World Empire” in the East Asia were suppressed by Western influence to East and were succeeded by Japan afterward. The ”Chinese World Empire” was contained by the U.S. in the postwar period and encountered the crisis of the civil war. For the hundred years, it was merely self-protected. Therefore, the theory and practice of traditional eastern ”East Asian Community” were all collapsed. After WWⅡ, following by the defeat of Japan, Japanese style ”Great East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere” was buried in the ash. The defeated Japan, learned the lesson and protected by the U.S. military, revived its economy and became the economic great power, and a technology great power because of reinvestment in RD it might be less attractive comparing to the Chinese-blood relations and interests of abundant resources and huge market. The ”Allying U.S. to restrain China” of Japan could be defeated by the ”Alienating Japan to engage China” of Korea. But for the purpose of national survival, the rivalry status between state and state is the last choice. The regional political and economical integration, such as ”East Asia Free Trade Area” or ”East Asian Community”, is not only the temporal phenomenon, rather the vision for co-existence and prosperity among the nations in the future. To lead by ”Japan as No. 1” or ”Peaceful rising China” in the regional integration towards ”East Asian Free Trade Area” or ”East Asian Community”, it will be defined by the result of duel between China and Japan for hegemony. Whoever winning the leadership in the East Asia would share with U.S. of its world leadership, arrange the international order, break the status quo, and reach the 2050 new era described by Goldman Sachs. The voice for ”East Asian Free Trade Area” or ”East Asian Community” has already been spoken loudly. The East Asian nations are also on the way to organize the ”Community”. Those nations are not bounded to the idea of boundary and have to learn to abandon ”Exclusive Sovereignty”. With gradual concession to the coming ”Asian” era and the agreement of peace, equality, consensus, they will push the regional integration in East Asia and build a life community of fellow feeling ”State of East Asia”. Let the power struggle among nations limit to the leadership of ”East Asian Free Trade Area” or ”East Asian Community”. That is the imminent issue for the intellectuals to work on with all effort.