Learning In Legal Education Research Articles

Measuring teaching effectiveness: transformative learning in legal education

ABSTRACT One of the ways of measuring teaching effectiveness is by looking at student grades and checking whether institutional attainment rates for student satisfaction have been met. However, to what extent do grades reflect teaching effectiveness or learner competence in modern legal education? With the advent of AI, teaching technologies, a changing world of work, and in light of a global pandemic, Covid-19, that has demanded changes to how we teach and assess students, how much guarantee can we give on the future prospects of a graduate, based only on their academic grades? This paper draws from the transformative learning theory and posits that incorporating a learner-centred approach to teaching, by contrast to the strict teacher-centred approach in traditional legal education, is essential for preparing law students for life and work, after university.

Unveiling the benefits of reflective learning in professional legal practice

ABSTRACT This paper delves into the transformative power of reflection in a postgraduate course focused on professional legal practice. With a dual focus on the learning and professional aspects of reflection, this paper sheds light on the advantages of incorporating reflective practices within legal education. Specifically, it explores the use of reflective writing for assessment purposes at King's College London and examines the broader application of reflection within the MSc Law and Professional Practice course. Drawing on practical experiences and insights gained from the implementation of reflection, the paper offers valuable lessons and recommendations for educators seeking to leverage reflective learning in legal education.

Організаційно-педагогічні умови підготовки майбутніх викладачів права до роботи в умовах змішаного навчання

The modern development of the educational process, marked by the rapid integration of innovative technologies and blended learning forms, presents an essential challenge to the higher legal education system: the preparation of future teachers capable of working effectively in a blended learning environment. Blended learning, combining the advantages of traditional classroom teaching with the possibilities of distance education, becomes crucial for adapting the educational process to the individual characteristics and needs of students, meeting the modern requirements for flexibility and accessibility of learning. This article conducts a thorough analysis of the key organizational and pedagogical conditions necessary for the successful implementation of blended learning in legal education, emphasizing the importance of integrating the latest educational technologies and methodologies. Significant attention is paid to the need to transform the role of the teacher, which requires a shift from the traditional model of knowledge delivery to active mentorship, management of educational activities, and organization of interactive, individualized learning. The aspects of technological support, development of professional competencies of teachers, individualization of the learning process, and the involvement of external experts to expand and deepen the educational content are discussed as crucial for enhancing the effectiveness of the educational process. The authors propose a comprehensively justified approach to implementing blended learning, considering the challenges and specifics of legal education, aiming to prepare a new generation of legal specialists capable of adapting and acting effectively in a complex and changing legal environment. The conclusions underline the critical importance of comprehensively considering the requirements of the modern educational environment, providing technological support, continuous professional development of teachers, and involving students in active participation in the learning process. These measures collectively contribute to the successful implementation of blended learning and the readiness of graduates for highly effective work in the contemporary legal environment, ensuring the quality and relevance of legal education at a new stage of its development.

In search of the evidence: digital learning in legal education, a scoping review

ABSTRACT There is a lack of consolidated knowledge that identifies best practices when using digital learning tools, technologies and interventions in legal education. This paper seeks to illustrate the scope and nature of the current evidence that supports digital learning in legal education. The paper provides a scoping review of 10 years of empirical research in digital learning in legal education. Moreover, the paper discusses different forms of evidence in an effort to understand the kind of evidence legal scholars invoke when presenting what works in digital learning in legal education and why. In the paper, we present a picture of the empirical field of digital learning in legal education, including where these studies are being done, and the types of studies conducted. Moreover, we thematise the main findings across the studies: improved student learning, student satisfaction with digital tools, and drivers of engagement. We conclude by identifying some potential knowledge gaps.

Technology-driven pedagogy in a legal education class: A case study

This study aims to examine the benefits of using technology-driven pedagogy to enhance students' awareness in a legal education class. The study utilizes qualitative research methods, particularly case studies, which involve in-depth investigations of single individuals, groups, events, or communities. Data were gathered through class observations, personal interviews, and focus group discussions. The findings from this study reveal that the use of technology-driven pedagogy enhances students' learning in legal education, creates a more engaging learning environment, and emphasizes the significance of a good internet infrastructure and support for effective classroom learning.

Problem-based learning in a flipped classroom: a case study for active learning in legal education in international law

ABSTRACT Higher education in law should develop students’ skills such as working collaboratively, communicating, and influencing others through critical legal reasoning. Traditional legal education is partially based on active learning methods, but problem-based learning (PBL) is still relatively rare, with a comparatively smaller number of field applications reported in available literature, and no reports of its use of in legal education in Portugal. This paper describes the application of the problem-based learning method to an Erasmus class of International Public Law in a Portuguese university, during an academic semester. The method was applied to half of the classes, with the remaining half being taught using traditional methods. Students’ perceptions and preferences for the different methods were assessed through surveys. In general, our results offer novel insights into the effectiveness of PBL, suggesting that student perceptions of the PBL method depend on their social skills, previous knowledge of the topics, and personal preference. Considering experiences from previous years, the teacher’s assessment is that using PBL methods allowed for feedback and closer follow-up on the students’ progress and created the opportunity for the development of relevant skills, which would otherwise be excluded from the classroom. These results, as well as limitations, are discussed.

Proaktivno delovanje institucija i aktera obrazovnog sistema u vanrednim okolnostima - iskustva studenata i nastavnika Pravnog fakulteta u Nišu tokom pandemije COVID-19 i mogućnosti unapređenja proaktivnog sistemskog pristupa u obrazovanju pravnika

Systemic Agency is the capacity of the system as a whole to respond to emerging issues by relying on the collective intelligence and joint action of all stakeholders involved in system processes. This paper explores the systemic agency of participants in legal education at the Law Faculty in Niš during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2022), when higher education fully resorted to online instruction. The first part of the paper outlines the conceptual framework of systemic agency. The second part briefly presents the initial institutional response and educational circumstances at the outset of the pandemic in Serbia. The third part examines the challenges encountered by LF Niš students and teachers, and observed benefits of e-learning, by analyzing the empirical research results of several surveys conducted at LF Niš in this period. Based on these insights, the author reviews the opportunities for improving the systemic agency of core stakeholders and the system as a whole for prospective e-learning purposes. Attempting to record the first teaching/learning experience at LF Niš fully conducted online, the author emphasizes the potentials of online/hybrid learning in legal education and promotes joint action in developing a more responsive, supportive and efficient systemic approach applicable in both regular and extraordinary circumstances.

Team-Based Learning in Legal Education

Team-Based Learning in Legal Education

A Law School Course in Applied Legal Analytics and AI

Technological advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are affecting the legal profession. Machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) enable new legal apps that, to some extent, can analyze contracts, answer legal questions, or predict the outcome of a case or issue. While it is hard to predict the extent to which these techniques will change law practice, two things are certain: legal professionals will need to understand the new text analysis techniques and how to use and evaluate them, and law faculties face the question of how to teach law students the required skills and knowledge to do so. At the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, the authors have co-designed a semester-long course entitled, Applied Legal Data Analytics and AI, and twice taught it to combined groups of law students and students from technical departments. The course provides a hands-on practical introduction to applying ML and NLP to extract information from legal text data, the ways text analytics have been applied to support the work of legal professionals, researchers, and administrators, and the techniques for evaluating how well they work.
 The article introduces the new text analytic techniques and briefly surveys law schools’ current efforts to incorporate instruction on computer programming and machine learning in legal education. Then it describes the 2020 version of the course, including the students, instructors, and course sessions in overview. We explain how we taught law students skills of programming and experimental design and engaged them in assignments that involve using Python programming environments to analyze legal data.
 The course culminated in joint projects engaging small teams of law and technical students in applying machine learning and data analytics to legal problems. The article explains how the instructors prepare the students for the final course projects, beginning early in the term with project ideas and databases of text, forming teams, working on the projects as a team and obtaining interim feedback, and finally completing the projects and reporting results. We draw some salient comparisons between the 2019 and 2020 versions of the course and report what worked well and what did not, the students’ reactions, and lessons learned for future offerings of the course.

Experiential Learning during COVID, a Perspective and a Proposal

Higher education has become more available to students seeking post graduate degrees. When COVID protocols required mass closures, educators had to quickly pivot to remote teaching and learn how to reach out to students in many different circumstances. Experiential learning faced different challenges. This article traces the development of experiential learning in legal education. Experiential learning in the law school curriculum has had a nuanced existence. Experiential learning placements continued with COVID protocols in place providing new insights into different models for experienced based learning and parallel new work models. This article suggests that there are many lessons that can be carried forward post COVID as experiential learning becomes a more integral part of the law school curriculum.

A Study on the Effectiveness of Problem-based Learning in Legal Education in India

Legal education in India aims at enabling learners to think critically and apply what they have learned. Problem-based learning (PBL) can be used as an effective tool to achieve this objective. This study was carried out to understand the effectiveness of this tool in legal education. A comparative analysis of the traditional method with PBL has shown that the latter leads to benefits in the form of better retention of knowledge and recall, improved problem-solving skill, better decision-making ability and development of lifelong-learning ability. This article discusses the methodology adopted and the results generated through application of the method in the taxation law course taught to undergraduate students of law.

Experiential Learning During COVID A Perspective and A Proposal

Higher education has become more available to more students; however, post graduate education and post graduate educators had to quickly pivot to online learning when the world closed due to COVID. Experiential learning faced different challenges. This article traces the development of experiential learning in the law school curriculum and how the legal academy has responded to integrating the concept of experiential learning into the overall curriculum. This article also discusses one law schools experience with continuing experiential learning during the time of initial shutdowns due to COVID protocols and suggests lessons to carry forward in continued endeavors to include experiential learning in legal education.

Blended Learning in Legal Education

Blended Learning in Legal Education

Motivated to Collaborate: A Self-determination Framework to Improve Group-Based Learning

Before they enter practice, law students need to be able to work effectively in groups. This reality has been acknowledged by the universities and legal professional bodies. The Threshold Learning Outcomes (TLOs) for the Australian Law degree stipulate, for instance, that law students must acquire and be able to demonstrate skills in collaboration and communication. Meanwhile, a growing body of research is establishing the positive links between group work and a range of benefits, including achievement, critical thinking, problem-solving ability, creativity, wellbeing and satisfaction. Not only does group work enhance a student’s experience and individual performance, it also equips them with critical practice skills. Despite this, law students typically dislike and resist group work, which means they may not be achieving important professional competencies. Nevertheless, to force students into group learning would seem counterproductive. As we examine in this paper, students’ aversion to group work likely signals low intrinsic motivation – where intrinsic motivation means doing something because it is in itself enjoyable or optimally challenging; and where extrinsic motivation, by contrast, means doing something because it leads to or avoids a separate outcome. Making group work assessable as the primary way to induce student collaboration, or otherwise simply mandating it, means participation rests on external rewards and punishments. Extrinsic teaching approaches usually result in less effective learning. We argue in this paper that when designing group work, it is essential to consider and apply theories of learning motivation. This article asks the following: How can we increase the likelihood that law students positively engage in collaborative learning? To address this, the article draws on a theory of motivation, Self-Determination Theory (‘SDT’), to propose a framework and set of strategies for effective group-based learning in legal education. Pintrick and Schunk describe SDT as ‘one of the most comprehensive and empirically supported theories of motivation available today.’ It has been used in other legal educational areas, including curriculum design and assessment, and ethics and wellbeing. However, we consider it especially useful for group-based learning. The article adds to the small but growing legal education scholarship on teamwork, and makes distinct contributions in its motivational theory dimension, setting up an SDT framework designed to promote collaborative learning.

Repositioning lifelong learning in legal education

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.

Enhancing civic consciousness through student pro bono in legal education

ABSTRACTA key aim of encouraging law students to participate in student pro bono, a form of experiential learning in legal education, is to develop their commitment to volunteer lawyering after graduation. This paper examines student pro bono in legal education in Australia and the United States. A critical review of the current approaches to student pro bono in both jurisdictions demonstrates that although student pro bono exposes students to lawyering skills, the absence of structured follow-up as part of student pro bono, results in limited changes to students’ attitudes to commit to volunteer lawyering. The benefits of adopting reflective activities as part of student pro bono are discussed. It is argued that transformative pedagogies can encourage critical consciousness and social transformation necessary for active involvement in volunteer lawyering after graduation. Teaching and learning strategies are suggested to simultaneously enhance social and personal transformation and to develop lawyering skills through student pro bono.

A transformative approach to work integrated learning in legal education

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.

Enrolment of newcomers in expert cultures: an analysis of epistemic practices in a legal education introductory course

This article focusses on the transformative role of knowledge in student learning, paying particular attention to the mechanisms that facilitate the “enrolment” of students into their prospective expert cultures. It is vital for educational policy and practice to develop an understanding of how students enter a specialised knowledge domain. This requires a transformation in understanding as well as the appropriation of specific tools, discourses and practices. However, to investigate how this happens and identify aspects that matter for supporting processes of transformation and change, we need frameworks that move beyond traditional divides in educational research. In particular, we need to develop frameworks that capture the dynamic relationship between knowledge as historically developed but unfolding, evolving institutional arrangements, and student experiences. Drawing on the work of sociologist Knorr Cetina, we suggest an approach that highlights the concepts of epistemic machineries, epistemic practices and ‘epistementalities’ as a useful starting point to investigate such a relationship. We use a study of knowledge and learning in legal education during an intensive one-week course to illustrate how these more general concepts can be put to work to facilitate studies of the multiple levels and linkages involved in supporting enrolment processes. Thus the article builds on and contributes to previous discussions in this journal, where the need to develop new frameworks to account for the role of knowledge in student learning has been argued.

Group Learning in Law Schools: A Key to Fostering Professional Formation

This review of group learning in legal education draws upon empirical research from the social psychology of education and constructive-developmental theories of moral behavior to provide law school instructors with an approach to using small groups of four to five students in order to foster professional formation (also called professionalism or an ethical professional identity). Based on the idea of positive social interdependence or cooperation theory, this review states the case for viewing group learning as a pedagogy of fostering the cognitive, emotional, and social capacities involved with recognizing, facing, and resolving moral problems in small groups. An emphasis is made on how to foster self-authorship and individual accountability in teamwork. A model of assessment based on group learning that involves ongoing peer assessment and coaching is discussed. It draws upon relevant research from higher education, business, medicine and health sciences education, and provides practical suggestions for law school instructors and administrators who are interested in implementing group learning in the curriculum, including suggestions for how schools can assess their school's climate for cooperation and competition. An emphasis is made on how to foster self-authorship, reflection, and individual accountability in the context of small group learning. A model for dynamic assessment through ongoing peer assessment and coaching is discussed.

Jurisprudence Meets Epistemology: Facilitating Legal Understanding and Meaningful Learning in Legal Education with Concept Maps

This paper offers insight into some of the factors beyond previous academic achievement that may influence the performance of undergraduate Law students in Australia. A survey of interests, attitudes and expectations was conducted with commencing LLB students at the Melbourne Law School in 2007. The paper reports on the survey responses of students who went on to achieve very high marks in their first semester, students who achieved very low marks and students who did not complete first semester. Significant differences between the performance subgroups were identified regarding initial levels of interest in studying law, expectations of workload and academic support, and confidence in ‘readiness’ to undertake a range of academic tasks. These findings have implications for Law School selection committees, first year teachers, and staff involved in orientation and academic support programs. Better information for prospective students about the nature and demands of a Law course is also indicated.