Undergraduate Law Research Articles

Towards improving students’ attendance and quality of undergraduate tutorials: a case study on law

As part of continual efforts towards improving learning and teaching in the faculty, lecturers in the law faculty of the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol debated the question of students’ attendance and quality of tutorials in a recent email discussion amongst themselves. At the end of the debate the need for further research on the subject was highlighted, which initially spurred the research subsequently developed into this journal article. The article explores, through a discursive and comparative analysis of questionnaire responses, how to improve students’ attendance and quality of undergraduate law tutorials. The analysis is equally relevant for other courses in which tutorials are employed as a mode of learning and teaching.

Adventures in Pedagogy: The Trials and Tribulations of Teaching Common Law in China

The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) University Academic Board approved a new QUT Assessment Policy in September 2003, which requires a criterion-referenced approach as opposed to a norm-referenced approach to assessment. In 2004, in accordance with the QUT Implementation Plan, the QUT School of Law raised an awareness of criterion-referenced assessment and implemented criterion-referenced assessment in first year core undergraduate law units. The Implementation Plan anticipates that all law units across all year levels will implement criterion-referenced assessment between 2005 and 2007. This teaching note will distinguish norm-referenced assessment from criterion-referenced assessment and justify why QUT is implementing criterion-referenced assessment. It will focus on how the authors of this article designed, implemented and evaluated criterion-referenced assessment in a first year core undergraduate law unit, LWB143 Legal Research and Writing, in 2004. In 2004, the unit had a cohort of approximately 600 students and 12 members in the teaching team. Ten members of the teaching team were involved in marking the items of assessment and eight of them were casual academics. In light of the experience in 2004, the authors provide some insight into the way forward.

The relationship between academic legal education and the legal profession: The review of legal education in England and Wales and the teaching hospital model

Abstract At a time when the higher education sector in the UK is undergoing changes in funding mechanisms, university law schools face a revival of a longstanding debate between the ‘academy’ and the profession over the purpose of legal education and the content of the undergraduate law degree. This debate has been renewed by the work of the training framework review group, which has been consulting on the qualification scheme for solicitors, whilst the Bar Council too has been reconsidering its qualification and training requirements. The authors examine the latest proposals against earlier recommendations for reform from, amongst others, the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Legal Education and Conduct. Particular consideration is given to the integration of the academic and vocational/professional stages including their clinical legal components, as seen in the exempting degree programmes at Northumbria University. The authors argue that the integrated teaching‐hospital model is one way forward, ...

Zero Impact: Are Lawyers'Values Affected by Law School?

In 2001 approximately 700 Australian final-year undergraduate law students were surveyed as the first part of a three-year study of Australian lawyers' values. This study is being undertaken in an effort to understand what values are important in determining lawyers' attitudes to difficult behavioural choices confronting them in legal practice. It is hoped that knowledge of the actual values held by lawyers (in the context of critical professional choices) will enable better targeted values awareness education in both pre- and post-admission contexts. The main quantitative survey employed a number of hypothetical scenarios. These were designed through the use of ethical dilemmas to examine issues of conflicting loyalties within a context of self-interest and lawyers' perceived obligations to the community, employers, family, friends and clients. (1) Our approach in this paper is to set the scene by providing basic frequencies to responses in each scenario, followed by an analysis of themes elicited from respondents during the focus groups. Our immediate objective is to provide representative interviewee (that is, respondent) commentary designed to throw some light on the major choices of those respondents in the first year of the main quantitative survey. (2) Note that these focus groups were conducted some months after the quantitative analyses, and in particular after respondents had left law school. All respondents were, by that stage, working within a variety of legal workforce environments. In this analysis, it must be stressed, we have not attempted to match and compare individual respondents' comments with their earlier choices in the quantitative survey. That task awaits the longitudinal analysis now under way for the whole period of data collection during the three-year study.

Part‐time law students: The forgotten cohort?

Despite the fact that part‐time law students comprise a significant proportion of law undergraduates, there continues to be an absence of legal research that considers the experiences and aspirations of such students as a distinct group. Against this backdrop, it is argued that these students require further research and attention for a number of reasons. First, their location allows a consideration of the extent to which broader governmental objectives for higher education are being met within law schools. Second, the extent of their presence in higher legal education places an important obligation upon law schools to explore the specific needs of this cohort and to consider the extent to which part‐time law students can be legitimately subsumed into the undergraduate cohort in terms of resources and planning. Third, the legal ambitions of many part‐time law students require a fresh consideration of the expectations of the recruiting legal profession and the legal profession's commitment to broadening social diversity within its ranks. Finally, as the experiences of part‐time and full‐time students become closer, a proper analysis of part‐time law students may provide invaluable information as to how law schools could adapt to meet the needs of all students in the future.

Legal Ethics for the Real World: A Model for Engaging First Year Law Students

Although courses in legal ethics are now part of the main stream curriculum in the majority of undergraduate law programs, a perceived lack of ethical orientation among legal practitioners, has led to calls for an even greater emphasis upon ethical education. At the same time, legal educators frequently report that students often fail to engage with the content of courses on legal ethics. This paper outlines an approach to reconceptualising legal ethics which emphasises the links between legal ethics and legal practice. In addition, it describes a model for incorporating this approach to legal ethics into the first year curriculum using an online teaching site.

Towards improving students' attendance and quality of undergraduate tutorials: a case study on law

As part of continual efforts towards improving learning and teaching in the faculty, lecturers in the law faculty of the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol debated the question of students' attendance and quality of tutorials in a recent email discussion amongst themselves. At the end of the debate the need for further research on the subject was highlighted, which initially spurred the research subsequently developed into this journal article. The article explores, through a discursive and comparative analysis of questionnaire responses, how to improve students' attendance and quality of undergraduate law tutorials. The analysis is equally relevant for other courses in which tutorials are employed as a mode of learning and teaching. Responses N % Yes 46 76.67 No 14 23.33 Total 60 100% Responses N % Yes 7 35.00 No 11 55.00 Unanswered 2 Total 20 100% Responses N % Yes 32 53.33 No 28 46.67 Total 60 100% Responses N % (a) Favourite Law subject 14 23.33 (b) Motivated by tutor's approach 37 61.67 (c) The module is particularly difficult to understand 16 26.67 (d) The module is very easy to understand 3 5.00 (e) The tutorial questions are clear and easy to attempt 13 21.67 (f) Suitable timing 8 13.33 (g) Other (please specify………) 5 8.33 Responses N % Yes 51 85.00 No 9 15.00 Total 60 100% Responses N % (a) Always 30 50.00 (b) Sometimes 30 50.00 (c) Never 0 0.00 Total 60 100% Responses N % (a) Always 18 90.00 (b) Sometimes 2 10.00 (c) Never 0 0.00 Total 20 100% Responses N % Unsuccessful 1 0 0.00 2 0 0.00 Adequate 3 2 10.00 4 13 65.00 Successful 5 4 20.00 ‘I don't know’ 1 5.00 Total 20 100% Responses N % Unsuccessful 1 2 3.33 2 6 10.00 Adequate 3 21 35.00 4 21 35.00 Successful 5 10 16.67 Total 60 100%

A TALE OF TWO SECTORS: DYNAMIC CURRICULUM CHANGE FOR A DYNAMICALLY CHANGING PROFESSION

Recent decades have witnessed dynamic change in the working environment of 21st century lawyers. While the practice of law has changed radically, it is not clear that legal education reform has kept pace with the demands of modern practice. In an environment where the tertiary sector has also been transformed by external drivers beyond its control, the QUT Law Faculty has undertaken a major reconceptualisation of its undergraduate law programs. Encouraged by the Australian Law Reform Commission’s 2000 exhortation to re-orientate legal education around “what lawyers need to be able to do‿, rather than remaining bound to the traditional focus of “what lawyers need to know‿, the Faculty embarked on curriculum renewal centred around the development and implementation of a graduate capability framework. The Faculty wished not only to address the generic issues of first year transition, it was also committed to providing a package of teaching and learning opportunities that combined substantive content, theoretical and practical knowledge with the development of certain generic (and some discipline specific) skills; all of this in a legal context to a basic level of competency for all students, regardless of the diversity of their prior background and experience. This paper will describe this particular pedagogical response to meeting the needs of the 21st century legal practitioner.

A Model for the Integration of Legal Research into Australian Undergraduate Law Curricula

Legal research is a fundamental “lawyering” skill, and as such its importance in legal education has had more recognition than other discipline-specific attributes. However, in 1988, when an initial review of research skills training in Australasian law schools was completed, the predominant philosophy appeared to be that the skill would be developed via a process of “osmosis”. Since then, a transformation of sorts has occurred. Legal research training has become an integral part of the curriculum of most law courses offered within the Australian region. At the same time, skills generally have gained increasing importance in the tertiary sector and especially in the law school curriculum. Within this context, some law schools have instigated reviews of their overall skills training, and this has had a flow-on effect on legal research training. This current Australian legal tertiary framework of enhanced importance for skills training and an increased use of technology for teaching, forms the backdrop for the 2002 survey. This paper firstly reviews the developments taking place within higher education as reflected in the various government reports. It then outlines the relevant literature on literacy competency within information sciences. Also pertinent is the law schools’ response to doctrinal research skills training. Previous surveys of legal research teaching in Australia are summarised. The paper then examines the outcomes of the 2002 survey and makes some conclusions and recommendations based on the analysis of results taking into account the challenges identified for the tertiary education sector in Australia.

Policy, policy, policy—the possible impact on law undergraduates of recent UK government initiatives

Policy, policy, policy—the possible impact on law undergraduates of recent UK government initiatives

What a LUVLE Way to Learn Law

This paper presents an evaluation of the development and implementation of the Lancaster University Virtual Learning Environment and its subsequent pilot to support collaborative learning on a compulsory first year undergraduate law course. This has been a collaborative venture between academic staff in the Law School and the University's central learning technology support staff to move beyond a simple web-based discussion space that was used previously on this course, to the more substantial web-based learning environment provided by LUVLE. The course has been designed to promote independent, collaborative, networked learning with a significant emphasis on problem-solving activities. The complexity of the web-based negotiations that form the main collaborative component of this course provides an ideal test-bed for LUVLE. LUVLE was designed and implemented for the start of the academic year in October 2001. The technology underpinning this environment is the Lotus Domino software. Outside the lecture-seminar format, LUVLE provides the main communications medium between staff and students for administrative and academic issues. During the negotiation exercises there is also considerable student-student interaction within LUVLE.

Deep or shallow approaches to study undertaken by undergraduate distance learning law students of the University of Wolverhampton

POSTAL CORRESPONDENCE courses were for many years the traditional means to acquire qualifications, gain promotion or change one's career, and thus to get on in life. Radio and television came to play their respective parts in the process, and these in turn have been supplemented although not supplanted by a variety of on‐and off‐line electronic delivery modes. However, the means to learn are delivered, students must study and be assessed, and it is likely to remain necessary to retain a variety of traditional learning, teaching and assessment modes and methods, whilst building on them for the future. In an era when the process of globalisation operates in a variety of spheres, not least in respect of education and communication, the importance of distance learning is bound to be of continuing and probably increasing importance, and the quality of the teaching delivered and the learning absorbed is crucial. This paper, based on recent research undertaken by members of the School of Legal Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, set out to investigate some aspects of the effectiveness of law students’ distance learning with particular reference to how they acquire legal knowledge and the extent to which they take a deep or surface approach to that learning.1

The experience of external examiners1

This article reports on the role and responsibilities of external examiners on undergraduate law degrees in the UK. It is believed to be the first qualitative national survey of external examiners as a group within the UK. The results indicate that law external examiners are predominately male, white and occupy senior posts although there are clear distinctions between ‘old’ (pre 1992) and ‘new’ (post 1992) universities. The study is significant because it throws light on differing practices across the UK in ‘old’ and ‘new’ universities in relation to number of visits, induction, perception of standards, fee structure, number and nature of tasks to be completed and (in particular) the power to change marks even if only samples have been moderated. As a result of this report there is evidence that there have been changes in practice in law schools.

Legal information literacy: a pilot study

Presents the claim that information literacy skills are an essential characteristic of the independent learner and examines the development of the Information Literacy module devised at the University of North London for first year undergraduate law students. Information literacy is used here as an umbrella term which includes information retrieval skills required to interact with online environments, IT skills needed to manipulate the retrieval tools, and analytical and evaluative skills required to assess the relevance and reliability of the information found. Provides a detailed explanation of how the Information Literacy syllabus was developed through examination of the literature. Bases the statistical analysis of the module’s impact on the results of two separate questionnaires and categorises the results according to level of abilities, gender and mode of study. Identifies issues that arise from the data and that require further analysis for future study.

Working out women in law schools

Although well over half of law undergraduates are women, in nearly all law schools they are likely to encounter more male lecturers than women. Few of them will meet a woman law professor and even fewer will see a female head of department. Compared with their male counterparts fewer women students and academic staff will go on to the top of their profession. There is clear evidence that women of all ranks in universities are paid less than their male counterparts. The university sector as a whole is only slowly coming to recognise that some proactive policies might he needed before equal opportunities for women and other groups traditionally excluded from the portals are assured. This paper explores some of the explanations for the position of women in UK law schools.

Why Teaching Matters and Technology Doesn’t: An Evaluation and Review of Web-based Lectures (Flexible Delivery in a First Year Law Subject, Part II)

Graduate attributes may be broadly defined as the qualities, capabilities and understandings of a graduate which a university community agrees students should develop during their time at the institution, both for their future professions and to make a contribution as ordinary citizens. This article examines the benefits and disadvantages of an integrated and incremental approach to developing these attributes, and to teaching the generic and legally specific skills that underpin them in an undergraduate law program. The progress toward the integration of both generic and lawyering skills within the undergraduate law program at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) will be used as the exemplar for this article.

Education law: The chrysalis in the undergraduate law curriculum

Education law: The chrysalis in the undergraduate law curriculum

The Moot Reconceived: Some Theory and Evidence on Legal Skills

One of the major contemporary challenges to legal educators is the effective incorporation of skills training into the undergraduate law curriculum. Many of the most interesting issues in curriculum development in law schools are concerned with the identification of skills that should be taught, the subjects with which they should be associated, and the particular means of teaching by which skills can be conveyed to the undergraduate. It is possible simultaneously to affirm the importance of skills training, while feeling uneasy about legal educators’ capacity to give reasoned answers to the above curricular questions. These doubts arise from a lack of useful applications of assessment theory to educational practice, and most particularly, legal educational practice. The way in which teachers assess the material which they teach has far-reaching implications for student learning. Assessment not only influences what, and how, a student learns; it also has pervasive “feedback effects for how one teaches. We argue that this point is especially germane to skills training. Assessment theory informs the structure, content and processes of skills training.

Student Peer Mentors: A Teaching and Learning Strategy Designed to Promote Cooperative Approaches to Learning and the Development of Lifelong Learning

This article1 relates to the implementation of a cooperative learning program through the use of student peer mentors. The development of the program occurred in two undergraduate law subjects, Contacts2 and Torts, and was supported by a 1993/4 CAUT3 Teaching and Learning Development Grant4. This article will focus on the operation of the program in Torts and in the first section will examine why we designed and included the program within that subject's teaching and learning strategies. As detailed in this section, these reasons relate to a review of relevant educational literature, Australian Government reports on the desired future directions for tertiary legal education and on the results of the 1993 trial of a new assessment method in Torts.

Legal skills and clinical legal education ‐ a survey of undergraduate law school practice1

Legal skills and clinical legal education ‐ a survey of undergraduate law school practice¹