Mountain ridge

  • Directions conference, parallel session 3

    Final parallel session.  First up, Richard Hedlund (Lincoln University Law School) on ‘Modernising the (property law) curriculum at Lincoln Law School’.  He focused on the direction and restraints he faced in his adaptations, having taught PBL at York U.  Pedagogy wasn’t discussed much at Lincoln, and he tried to change that.  There was spoon-feeding, and…

  • Directions conference, Future of legal education II

    The next slot of parallel sessions, and I’m attending the second future of legal education  session.  First up, Eugene Lim, City U of Hong Kong, on ‘Teaching jurisprudence in a ‘technology-enabled’ classroom: An experiment with experiential learning’.  Two questions – how can experiential learning be applied to the teaching of legal theory?  and how can…

  • Plenary: Julian Webb – ‘Beyond Futureshock – will there be a law school in 2040?’

    Next up, Julian talking about technological life, ‘onlaw’, future shock and towards an ‘onlaw’ curriculum.   He started by talking about technology – what is it?  He quoted Schon on technology extending human capability.  Julian focused on ICT – information & comms technology, and how these are at the centre of a major social shift to…

  • Directions conference, day 2, Plenary session

    First session, and we have Lyria Bennett Moses (UNSW, via skype), on ‘What law students need to know about technology’.  Lyria argued that students need to know how technology is affecting legal practice – forms of new literacy – in addition to legal literacy.  Doesn’t necessarily mean detailed knowledge of machine learning; but lawyers need…

  • Directions in Legal Education 2018, Chinese University of Hong Kong

    I’m speaking at CUHK Faculty of Law’s conference on teaching and learning in law – slides on Slideshare, and at the Slides tab above, titled ‘An exhibition of future law schools: three portraits and a seascape’. Am now attending the parallel session on Future of Legal Education.  First up, Geraint Howells, ‘Every pint bottle should…

  • Multimedia, multimodal: rip, mix, replay

    I gave a paper at Osgoode Professional Development (OPD) yesterday, on ‘Multimedia learning: 2002-18: A case study across a century of digital learning’ – slides beneath the Slides tab above.  Our focus in the workshop was the design of a set of multimedia resources in 2002/4 at the Glasgow Graduate School of Law (GGSL), and…

  • Legal Innovation & Education Workshop, Toronto

    I’m at Osgoode for the next couple of months, and yesterday attended the Legal Innovation & Education Workshop organised by the Winkler Institute for Dispute Resolution, Thomson Reuters (TR) and Osgoode Hall Law School‘s Office for Experiential Education, and held in TR’s downtown offices.  This is a mix of liveblog & later comment on the…

  • Final thoughts: UNSW legal education research conference

    This was a great conference.  I so enjoyed being back in Australia, meeting up with colleagues and friends again, and hearing what they were doing.  I wanted it to go on for days.  The programme is a tribute to the typical creativity and energy that legal educators in Australian law schools are putting into legal…

  • Day 2, Plenary roundtable, UNSW legal research conference

    Sally Kift first, talking on regulatory pressures.  She summarised the pressures.  She mentioned working with the profession to bring them with us, and the importance of ethical judgment as well as strategy, creativity, empathy, reasoning, social intelligence.  Sally argued that we need to be more active on the issue.  She argued as I did for…

  • Day 2, session 3, UNSW legal education research conference

    This session is called ‘Writing for Law’.  First up, Philippa Ryan (UTS), on ‘Teaching law students the role of discourse markers’.  To improve their self assessment skills, their academic legal writing and how technology works.  Use natural language processing (NLP) to create an app to show the features of good academic writing. Why teach students…

  • Day 2, session 2, UNSW legal education research conference

    This session is called ‘Face to face or online?’.  First up, Christina Do and Leigh Smith (Curtin U), on ‘The importance of f2f teaching’.  They started by noting how digital literacy was becoming more important.  Colbran’s research was cited, and points to the increasing development of online courses.   Is this a good thing, they…

  • Plenary, Carrie Menkel-Meadow: ‘Thinking or acting like a lawyer?  What we don’t know about legal education and are afraid to ask’.

    Carrie Menkel-Meadow needs no introduction.  She’s looking at six claims that things change legal education and lawyering.  Her slides are dense with information, so will do what I can to summarise the myths and their details. Myth 1: legal education = think like a lawyer. What about doctrine in CL and civil jurisdictions.  Method is…