Future Of Legal Education Research Articles

An Impediment to Accord or a Springboard for Change? The Proposal to Introduce a Common Qualifying Exam in Hong Kong

The Law Society of Hong Kong has issued a consultation paper soliciting views about the future of legal education in Hong Kong, including the possibility of introducing a common entrance exam to regulate entry into the legal profession. This consultation process has generated a great deal of debate throughout the profession about the desirability, or even the viability, of such an exam, and how it would fit into the current system of inculcating skills into law graduates in Hong Kong; namely, the Postgraduate Certificate of Laws Programme (‘PCLL’). Little headway has been achieved by the main stakeholders on this issue. This article will examine the merits of introducing a common entrance exam in Hong Kong, and how it may impact on the development of adequate skills by law graduates with particular reference to contemporary major reports that have been published in England and Wales and New Zealand, common law jurisdictions which employ similar modes of educational training for general entry into their legal professions. Finally, an alternate model of assessment for the PCLL will be canvassed which is similar in some respects to the current system used for those training for the Bar in England and Wales.

Responsible Solutions

At the end of Brian Tamanaha’s instant classic, Failing Law Schools, tracing the economic forces behind exorbitant law school tuition and graduate debt and unemployment, he lays out his plan to help resolve the crisis. He would eliminate tenure, dispense with the final year of law school, rely heavily on adjuncts and apprenticeships, and loosen the ABA accreditation standards mandating “one-size-fitsall” law schools to allow the marketplace to fashion more affordable models of legal education. Some schools would remain in the traditional, three-year mode, with faculty conducting research. Others would morph into, or spring up spontaneously as, the “law school parallel . . . of vocational colleges.” Very candidly, Tamanaha explained that the “two-year law schools . . . would be dumping grounds for the middle class and the poor . . . . Few children of the rich will end up in these law schools.” He calls the plan “‘differentiated’ legal education.” Others, including Paul Campos, founder of the Inside the Law School Scam web blog and author of Don’t Go To Law School (Unless), and the ABA Task Force (“Task Force”) on the Future of Legal Education, have endorsed Tamanaha’s prescription.

The Future of Legal Education: Three Visions and a Prediction

I’m going to present three quite different views of what law schools ought to be and ought to do. The first holds that their primary, if not their sole, function should be to produce practice-ready for today’s profession. The second is that they should produce tomorrow’s lawyers, lawyers with the capacity to adapt to the rapidly and radically changing circumstances of legal practice. And the third is that law schools should play a leading role in the creation and transformation of legal knowledge, legal practice, and the legal system — a role that requires them to provide their students with a large and liberal understanding of law that will prepare them for a variety of legal and non-legal careers. I’ll end by making a prediction about which model represents the future of law school. Or perhaps you’ve guessed already.

General Issues and Challenges to Legal Education and Social Change in India

The author through this research paper analyzed the topic ‘General Issues and Challenges to Legal Education and Social Change.’ In Part I the author has dealt with a brief introduction of the topic. In Part II the author has focused on the past, present and the future of legal education in India. In this part the author has emphasized on the issues and challenges to legal education and the process of evolution and development of legal education in India over the years. The part also deals with the specific problems and difficulties which were tackled in order to spread legal education among the Indian masses. Part III throws light on the issue of social change, the role legal education played in bringing social by means of change in structure and change in function. In this part the author has dealt with the significance of legal education in bringing major changes in the society by means of legislative reforms, statutes, enactments etc. to eradicate different social evils ridden in the Indian society since ancient era. Relevant provisions of the legislations and decided cases have also been cited and discussed. In Part IV the author has concluded the article by summarizing the issue and by making suggestions in the above regard.

Developing an E-Curriculum: Reflections on the Future of Legal Education and on the Importance of Digital Expertise

Legal practice and legal education are both at challenging inflection points, where much of how and what we do as lawyers and how and what we have taught as legal educators comes under scrutiny. Legal technology is an important factor in driving the challenges we face. As we reform our curriculums in this moment of change, we should be guided by considerations of value added, values added, and economic sustainability. Law and technology is an area that is ripe for expansion in our teaching, with the possibility of satisfying all of these criteria. It also provides ample room for scholarly examination. Creating opportunities for learning how technology is shaping legal practice should be a priority for any school looking to provide a useful education for the lawyers of the present, let alone the future.

P.S. Majors to J.D. Jobs - How Can We Help You?: Assessing the Future of the Political Science Curriculum Vis-a-Vis the Future of Legal Education Through an Interdisciplinary Continuum

With the 2007-08 economic recession having dramatic effects on all employment sectors, including law, law schools are feeling the pressure from employers to make their graduates more “practice ready.” Problems arise when the traditional model of legal education (and its theoretical based Socratic engagement) does not keep pace fast enough with demands of these employers. As law schools around the country slowly attempt to revitalize curricula to reflect the more technical realities of new associate practice, the question becomes where does the still-important study of the theory of law go? Can the economic pressures from employers on institutions have a legitimate impact on first year law school education, where the seeds of legal analytical thinking are considered to be sown? If so and that theoretical foundation must give away to more practice-oriented pedagogy, where does that leave the still-important attribute of being able to “think like a lawyer”? As Oliver Wendell Holmes said at the end of the nineteenth century, law is not only the study of logic, but also that of “societal advantages,” history and economics; it is interdisciplinary. If the real push by the market downward on law schools is felt to shift to a more technical-based training model, does that mean that undergraduate majors will then derivatively be obliged to teach in the traditional model of the law school first year? What would be the relationship between these two institutions then? Will the three-year J.D. model remain in place or will undergraduate programs, particularly in political science, give way to a new breed of “pre-law” student? More importantly, what would these things do to the traditional political science curriculum as an antecedent for law school? This work will first briefly examine the history and current status of both the traditional political science major as a “pre-law” vehicle as well as the history of the traditional model of legal education. Then it will document the movement afoot in legal education to produce more “practice ready” J.D. graduates that have attempted to respond to a dramatic market downward shift in employment activity for J.D. graduates, with the employment rate of the class of 2011 being the lowest since 1994. It will then turn to a study of current relationships between actors involved in legal education and those in undergraduate political science education and how the latter has continuously produced highly capable and competitive participants in the former. Lastly, it will propose curricular modifications in undergraduate political science majors based on the movements occurring in law school curricula. Other proposals include a legal research component to existing research methods courses or as a stand-alone course, honors school offerings, introducing the Socratic method into the undergraduate political science classroom and experiential education curricular decisions for political science majors interested in law school.

Required legal skills for the 21st century lawyer: legal education at a crossroads

More and more, the world is moving towards an increasingly inter-dependent legal jurisdiction. While national legal cultures and legal jurisdictions continue to exist, legal practitioners and educators are increasingly required to know and understand the international implications of imposing national laws. At the same time, legal education and legal culture has remained seemingly unchanged in the wake of the reality of legal practice in the 21st century. This article discusses the results of a research project undertaken with the support of City University of Hong Kong. The focus of the research project is a market assessment of the required legal skills for lawyers in the 21st century. In this first article, I discuss the current state of the research findings and its implications for the skills required of 21st century lawyers and the future of legal education.

The Case of the Common Law in European Legal Education

The journey across the Channel Tunnel is not far, but the distance that divides systems based on the Napoleonic code from the precedential basis of the Common Law is considerable. The Common Law countries of Europe suffer an extra set of difficulties in relation to European Legal Education. They must contemplate, consider and discuss the development, integration and harmonisation of European law, as well as absorbing a completely different judicial system. The adjustment involved in trying to keep up with massive political change in the growing coverage of the European Union is exacerbated by the absence of a set of shared assumptions that exist between jurisdictions from the same juridical family. The UK can seriously wonder whether the Common Law approach will have a long-term future in Europe or whether it will be subsumed within the Civil Law culture of its multiple European colleagues. However, globalisation is having its effect and this paper considers the English model of legal education, training and qualification, the impact of the judicial family divide between European law and Common Law education and the impact of changing legal professions and professionalism on the future of legal education across Europe.

The new associate member from the University of Khartoum: African dimensions

At an early stage in his career William Twining went to teach in Africa, going first to Khartoum and then Dar es Salaam. In both places he participated in lively debates about the future of legal education, and the experience encouraged him to take forward adventurous interdisciplinary work. On his return to the United Kingdom this background strengthened his commitment to avoid all forms of parochialism in legal thought and instead to develop global perspectives on law.

Skills & Values: Discovery Practice, Chapter 4: Answers to Interrogatories

Over the last few years, there has been much discussion about the future of legal education. Much of this was set in motion by the Carnegie Report (Educating Lawyers, 2007), which speaks to the fundamental notion that it is better to teach legal doctrine (rules and cases) in context. It argues for something we have known for years: that if we can teach the fundamental aspects of each area of law, and do so (where appropriate) in the way it crosses a lawyers’ desk, our students will not only understand and engage with the material better, they will be more “practice ready” when they graduate. The only problem with that idea - which the Carnegie Report failed to address - is that the materials we have to teach with are not, generally speaking, designed to work in that way. The Skills & Values Series was designed from the ground up to fill that critical gap, and will eventually be available for most law school courses. This volume in the Series - Discovery Practice - came out of my teaching a course in the law of civil discovery very much in a Carnegie - “doctrine in context” - format, for nearly 20 years. (This paper is Chapter 4 from the book). The design of the course is fairly simple. Throughout the course, students are deeply engaged in doing outside of class what they are learning in class. That means that in between classes, they are engaged in a simulated civil litigation, with students either representing plaintiff or defendant, and assigned in pairs as opposing counsel. As a result of this design, the book material provides an introduction to the topic of the week, and the problem set materials are at the heart of the course. The problem provided with the book (and in the online companion site) allows the teacher to set up a simulated product liability litigation between an injured plaintiff and a defendant drug company. (If you would like more information about the book and online site, contact your Lexis publishing representative).

Future of Legal Education

Future of Legal Education

The Future of Legal Education: A Comparative Perspective

The Future of Legal Education: A Comparative Perspective

Jurisprudence, philosophy and legal education—against foundationalism

There are grounds for being optimistic about the future of legal education. Not least of these is that there is emerging a broad alliance, embracing a range of intellectual positions, which is increasingly outspoken in its criticism of the dominant vocationalism which characterises so much legal education. Neil McCormick has recently added his forceful voice to the criticism of the narrow and intellectually barren fetish of ‘learning the rules’ which constitutes the great bulk of the practice of law teaching. The context of MacCormick's advocacy of the virtues of a broad philosophical orientation in legal education was the publication of Barnett and Yach's survey of jurisprudence teaching in the United Kingdom.

Computers, communications and the future of legal education*

Computers, communications and the future of legal education*

ABA Approval of Law Schools: Standards, Procedures, and the Future of Legal Education

ABA Approval of Law Schools: Standards, Procedures, and the Future of Legal Education