Nelson, J --- "In This Issue" [2004] LegEdDig 1; (2004) 12(3) Legal Education Digest 2

In This Issue

Dr John Nelson
[2004] LegEdDig 1; (2004) 12(3) Legal Education Digest 2

The main feature of this issue is an account of the recent report of Johnstone & Vignaendra on their wide-ranging empirical research study into learning outcomes and curriculum development in Australian law schools. As all but one law school participated in this project, it provides a remarkably accurate and insightful snapshot on the status quo, as well as suggested new directions for individual law schools to follow. Its findings will also provide valuable guidance for legal education in other countries, where similar issues are bound to arise in the process of developing the law school curriculum to enhance the learning outcomes for students.

Apart from two articles on legal writing under the heading of Skills, there are no particular themes to have emerged from the 14 articles digested for this issue. Kosse & ButleRitchie report the results of their survey of the academy, bench and the bar to elicit their opinions on the legal writing skills of graduates and, not surprisingly, conclude that, given the general agreement that new lawyers do not write particularly, advocate that increased status and more resources need to be accorded by law schools to this most important skill. Liemer proposes that both students and teachers will benefit if the latter broaden their approaches to teaching legal research and writing by moving beyond mere skills instruction through the creation of teaching materials based on substantive law or ‘the law you love’.

There are also two articles under Clinical Legal Education. Gould explains the particular problems and benefits for students of an undergraduate clinical subject, which involves them working on capital cases, whether investigating matters after conviction or assisting at the trial. An extensive Street Law program pioneered by the College of Law in the UK is described by Grimes, including the benefits both to students and to the community and how the program was designed and delivered.

Yet again there are two articles dealing with teaching issues contained in Teaching Methods & Media. Wong revisits problem-based learning and explains his views on how problems can be designed to harness the beneficial influence of PBL on student learning outcomes. Wangerin contends that far too much time is spent by law teachers lecturing, thereby taking valuable class time away from the kinds of teaching that inculcate critical and conceptual thinking skills, and discusses how technology can be used to free up face-to-face classroom time through the judicious use of electronic lecturing.

Under Admission to Practice Barnard & Greenspan compare the approaches adopted by the medical and legal professions in the US to the licensure and certification of new practitioners and propound an incremental approach to bar admission based on the lessons to be learnt from the medical profession. Assessment Methods contains a discussion by Payne of an experiment with peer-assessment under which separate groups of students, using criteria based methods, have produced remarkably consistent results. Kleefeld under Curriculum puts forward an incrementalist’s proposal for teaching students to think like a lawyer by injecting practical, ethical and philosophical perspectives into the curriculum through the introduction of a first-year subject entitled The Concept and Practice of Law.

Droddy & Peters present the results of their research into the impact of law school on the political attitudes of students and come up with some conclusions which are at variance with accepted viewpoints on the socialising effects of law school. Rode looks at how the profession’s obligation to deliver pro bono service can be translated into law school programs and reports on a survey of practising lawyers to determine the impact of their experiences at law school on their subsequent commitment to these activities in practice. Under Purpose we have an article by Henderson who counters student criticism of law school by seeking answers to the question, ‘what is the purpose of law schools?’

Students has a two-part article by Van Hoorebeck about the perils, in the age of easy Internet access to model essays, of one of the most serious offences in the academic world, student plagiarism, and how one anti-plagiarism software program can be used by lecturers to detect and punish the cheats. Finally, under Libraries & Information, in the hope of inspiring other law schools to develop similar programs, Leary explains the genesis, purpose and methods by which the University of Michigan Law Library provides research and document delivery services to school faculty, as well as the benefits to the entire law school community.