Barker, D --- "Stakeholders in the law school" [2010] LegEdDig 15; (2010) 18(1) Legal Education Digest 53

• Stakeholders in the law school

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BOOK REVIEW

Stakeholders in the law school

Edited by Fiona Cownie

Hart Publishing, 2010, 257 pp

In her introduction to this collection of essays Fiona Cownie highlights the fact that there are various ‘interest groups’ which all have differing views with regard to the purpose of both university law schools and legal education. She states that the intention for the publication of this text was to conduct some in-depth analysis of what these ‘stakeholder’ pressures might have on the future of law schools and legal education.

She also introduces a controversial element which is taken up by Anthony Bradney in the final chapter of the book, questioning not only the influence of stakeholders, but arguing that the use of the stakeholder language can have a deleterious effect on any discourse that involves the law school.

However this is to anticipate the purpose of the book which has brought together a distinguished group of law academics from a differing group of backgrounds to examine the outcomes of the power relations which are played out in university law schools. The stakeholders include law academics and law students, the legal profession, representatives of government, feminists and the general public, to state but a few. Of course these pressure groups all attempt to assert conflicting pressures on the various aspects of the teaching of law, whether it is by the design of the curriculum, the nature of research or the quality of teaching. There is also the consideration as to the purpose of law school education? Is it for the production of future lawyers or the offering of a liberal education? In this regard she quotes from a talk given by Professor Michael Coper, Dean of the Australian National University College of Law, who argues that law cannot be concerned primarily with the content of rules which would make it a ‘professional ‘ or ‘vocational’ discipline, but that:

the study of law, of the philosophy of law, and of the role of law in society, takes its proper place alongside the study of any of the wide range of cognate disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.

In a book spanning such a wide spectrum of interests, it is difficult to select those aspects of the text which illustrate those crucial elements affecting the conduct of a law school and the wider circumstances of its governance. However it is possible to conceptualise the major players as they are divided into three significant groups in the book.

The primary group would have to be the actual participants in the daily activities of the law school, the law academics and students. The relevant chapters deal with law academics as a social group with Richard Collier examining them within the context of social class and their contribution to the ‘private life’ of the law school. Rosemary Auchmuty takes this examination a stage further with research into feminists as stakeholders in the law school, whereby the refusal of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in the United Kingdom to recognise a category of women’s studies research meant scholars carrying out feminist research went back into their subject-specific disciplines. This result was a demand by legal departments for their services in order to attract more government funding. This was especially true of post-1992 universities which were particularly interested in recruiting new feminist blood to their law schools. The opening part of Auchmuty’s chapter also contains an interesting account of the gradual opening up of legal education to women.

The influence of law students is the subject of chapters by Benjamin Richardson, and Andrew Boon with Avis Whyte. In the former, Richardson, currently a Canadian law academic, reviews all the aspects of gaining admission to law school, such as how admission tests, which could have a discriminatory impact, have now given way to the widening of access to legal education. Boon and Whyte interpret how these wider forms of access have impacted on the more active participation of students in the life of the law school and how this has affected the perceptions of law academics towards their student population. As Boon and Whyte state:

growth has created a more heterogeneous student body with a wider range of ability and learning needs and preferences not met by traditional structures and teaching.

The authors do not understate their message by the title to this chapter: ‘Will there be Blood? Students as Stakeholders in the Legal Academy.

The legal profession itself and preparation for practice are considered by Andrew Goldsmith and David Bamford and in a further contribution by Andy Boon, joined this time by Julian Webb Goldsmith and Bamford draw on their background in Australian legal education to deal with all aspects of legal practice including procedural and propositional knowledge, the ongoing discussion of a competency based approach and the putting of theory into practice.

Boon and Webb emphasise the fact that in England and Wales the traditional providers of legal education and training were not the legal academy, but that previously the history of legal education was largely dominated by the apprenticeship model. This meant that the legal profession gradually ceded much of its authority in legal education to the universities but until the 1990s retained its control over vocational education; it was in this later period that the:

profession’s relationship with the academy was the adoption of a new model for vocational educational:... based more on a partnership with providers than had been the previous regime.

Rob Midgley’s chapter is an account of the reforms which have taken place in South African legal education during the post-apartheid era, reflecting a situation where there has been a major transformation of law schools and legal education because of the considerable pressures of political change.

As has already been mentioned in the earlier part of this review, the final chapter by Anthony Bradney examines the validity of the concept of the stakeholder in either the university or the law school. In his view should the concept of stakeholder exist, the only benefits which will accrue will be to the stakeholders themselves, to the detriment of those who are not and to the harm of the law school itself.

As the editor, there is no doubt that Fiona Cownie has attracted an outstanding group of authors who have collectively made a significant contribution to the examination of the operation of the modern law school and its effect on the development of legal education.

Emeritus Professor David Barker AM

Editor