Barker, D --- "From the Editor" [2009] LegEdDig 31; (2009) 17(3) Legal Education Digest 3

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FROM THE EDITOR

In this last edition for 2009 it is interesting to reflect on breaking legal education stories in some of the jurisdictions served by the Digest. In the United Kingdom there have been the centenary celebrations of the founding of the Society of Legal Scholars as well as the publication of a book commemorating this event. In Australia, the Australian Academy of Law moved on to the national scene with a symposium conducted as part of an Australian Legal Convention for the first time. This took place at the 36^th Convention at Perth, Australia, in September where the President of the Academy, the Hon Robert Nicholson AO, chaired the Academy’s session entitled: ‘A Continuing Debate: Professional and Commercialism in Legal Practice.’ Worldwide, the International Association of Law Schools can look back with satisfaction on their two recent conferences – one in Canberra, Australia in May of this year, on the ‘Role of Law Schools and Law School Leadership in a Changing World’, and the other in Washington, DC., USA in September on ‘Constitutional Law’. Moving on to the content of this edition of the Digest, the book review is yet another text in the burgeoning output of publications on legal writing. This book, simply entitled Legal Writing is by Lisa Webb and illustrative of the fact that the topic of legal writing which was once a neglected area of legal studies, is now recognised as being in the forefront of providing a basic foundation for a legal education.

The first article digested in this edition is by Husa and can be found under the heading of Curriculum. It draws its inspiration from the pedagogical theory of constructivism which incorporates a basic premise that law cannot be taught, and that instead the student assimilates legal understanding from a variety of sources. The author emphasises the importance of comparative law within legal education, particularly with regard to its deeper integration within the teaching of national law.

There are two articles under the heading of Individual Subjects, the first being Bjornstol’s article involving an overview of legal human rights education in China and the impact of this on human rights in that country. An interesting aspect of this article has been the influence of the Nordic institutions as the only foreign organisations to have focused on providing instruction for Chinese human rights teachers. The second article under this category is concerned with the challenges faced in teaching criminology to final year law students who lack a background familiarity in sociology and the concepts of political ideas. This has involved the author, Almond, in implementing a project to develop a deeper understanding of the links between criminological theory and policy making within the criminal justice system. An interesting aspect of the project is the way in which the author has created a fictional client upon which the whole project has been based.

Under Legal Education Generally Arthurs examines the influence of the political economy in the determination of the outcomes of legal education and research. Within this context there is a description of how this concept is reflected in the new curriculum of McGill Law School in Montreal, Canada. Readers will be fascinated to learn some of the outcomes from the teaching of this curriculum, such as answering the students’ desire for predictability, the offering to them of what is described as ‘niche marketing’ and the engagement of students in such discussions within the program to free them from the tyranny of rules.

The ongoing debate regarding Legal Ethics is once again engaged by Happel and Jennings who illustrate the problems of educational institutions refusing to recognise and deal with the issues of academic dishonesty, particularly cheating and other forms of deception, such as plagiarism. The article highlights the challenges confronting colleges and universities of ensuring that their graduates need to understand and live by the principles of trust and integrity.

The difficulty of discriminating between Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility is illustrated by the allocation of the article by Wyburn to the latter category. Basically this is because it concerns those aspects of practical legal training which touch on the acceptability of a person’s character to gain admission to the legal profession. The article illustrates the problems posed by recent Australian judicial decisions regarding applicants’ character fitness to be admitted as legal practitioners.

The outcomes of the Carnegie Foundation’s Report on Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law and the Clinical Legal Education Association’s Study Best Practices for Legal Education have been the focus for previous discussion in the Digest. Now under Skills, Montana describes how the St John’s University School of Law, New York is attempting to emulate some of the recommendations of these reports with the development of an externship opportunity entitled ‘Street Law’. In this program law students teach a practical law course to high school students in the local community of Queens, New York. This title was first coined in 1972 by Georgetown University Law Centre when they developed a similar high-school based law-related education program similarly involving the teaching of high school students, this time in the District of Columbia.

Students involves three contrasting articles dealing with aspects of the student experience. In the first Gottfredson, Panter, Daye, Allen, Wightman and Deo describe their research regarding predictors of law student life satisfaction based on Diener et al’s five item Satisfaction with Life scale. Macduff and Du Moulin consider another aspect of student satisfaction involving problems arising from complaints by students with respect to the pressures from the heavy workload of legal study programs. The outcomes of the research described in this article suggests that rather than reducing student study hours, it might be more appropriate to examine how various aspects of the curriculum contribute to positive and negative student perceptions of a heavy workload.

In the third article under this category Deech attempts to counteract what the author considers is a misunderstanding by students of the purposes of higher education. In Deech’s view this might be remedied by the development of a new student contract which is now being used by many British Universities. However, drawing on experience at the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA) the author queries whether the current contract deals adequately with the accountability of educational institutions for decisions about that type of education being provided.

Teachers is the subject heading for a wide-ranging article by Rapp who reflects on all the problems faced by new law teachers, particularly with regard to the ongoing continuous introduction of new technologies into the lecture room.

The concluding heading of Teaching Methods and Media incorporates two articles. Ireland discusses contemporary learning methods involving elements of online learning and traditional classroom teaching which she places under the title of blended learning. She describes how she has combined these elements in teaching Intellectual Property at the University of Western Sydney Law School, Australia in accordance with the recommendations of a curriculum review conducted by the law school.

It is interesting to compare a similar innovative approach described by Pawlowski and Greer in their course of Law Through Film and Literature. They emphasise how the process of watching films and reading the texts stimulates law students and fulfils their learning outcomes long after they have been awarded their degrees.

Emeritus Professor David Barker AM

Editor