Barker, D --- "From the Editor" [2013] LegEdDig 1; (2013) 21(1) Legal Education Digest 3

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FROM THE EDITOR

This opening edition for 2013 heralds the development of at least three new law schools in Australia. Despite the caution issued in the Pearce Report in 1987 that there was no need for any further Australian law schools except possibly one more in Queensland, law schools in Australia have continued to be established at an increasing rate and recently we have seen the formation of three more at Curtin University, the Australian Catholic University and the University of the Sunshine Coast. Despite the warning that there might be too many lawyers in Australia, students themselves still want to study law and notwithstanding high University tuition fees continue to enrol in the many law programmes available throughout the continent.

At a more senior level there have been changes in the High Court with the retirement of the Hon Justice William Gummow AC and the Hon Justice Dyson Heydon AC, being replaced by the appointment of the Hon Justice Patrick Keane, Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia and Stephen Gageler, Solicitor-General of Australia. The elevation of the former to the High Court meant the appointment of his replacement the Hon. Justice James Allsop AO moving from the position of President of the Court of Appeal of New South Wales. The Hon Justice Margaret Beazley AO was appointed to replace Hon Justice Allsop in his former role as President of the Court of Appeal of New South Wales thereby resulting in the completion of a complex session of legal musical chairs!

The end of 2012 also saw the climax of an extremely successful year for the Australian Academy of Law under its new President the Hon. Kevin Lindgren AM. Apart from his own personal appointment as a Member of the Order of Australia, he oversaw meetings of the Academy which took place in Melbourne, Perth and Sydney, 12 editions published of the new Academy Newsletter, the appointment of 42 new Fellows of the Academy and the inauguration of the Academy’s Chief Justice’s Oration given by the current Patron of the Academy, the Hon Chief Justice Robert French AC, to a packed audience in the Federal Court, Sydney in November of last year.

In this the 21st volume of the Digest, the book review breaks new ground with a review of Law and Leadership, edited by Paula Monopoli and Susan McCarty, which advocates integrating leadership studies into the law school curriculum.

The first article digested in this edition by Matsui under the heading of Changes has the threatening title of Turbulence Ahead and is a description of what is occurring with regard to the future of law schools in Japan. It would appear that the reforms which have taken place have, if anything, introduced more complexities into what was already a convoluted process highlighted by the heavy involvement of the Japanese Government through its Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).

There are two articles digested under Clinical Legal Education, the first being by Krieger and Martinez which deals with the complex nature of the assessment of experiential learning. As so often happens in many of these digested articles, mention is again made of the influence of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s 2007 monograph, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Practice of Law (the ‘Carnegie Report’). The second is an interesting account by Mlyniec of the training of new teachers in the area of practical legal education. It incorporates a description of classes conducted at Georgetown Law School to initiate graduate clinical teaching fellows into the academy of clinical teachers.

Individual Subjects covers two contrasting articles. The first is a challenging article by Auchmuty who attempts to bring a feminist perspective to legal studies by arguing that the way forward in this area is to go back to basics and let the subject speak for itself, particularly by studying the development of the law by reading the primary sources, especially the cases. The other article under this heading by Saul and Baghoomians is on the esoteric topic of teaching human rights and its development generally in the Himalayas. This involves an elective international law course at the Sydney Law School, which takes place annually in Nepal over approximately three weeks and is organised jointly by the Law School with the Kathmandu School of Law.

There are two articles under the heading of Legal Education Generally. The first is by Cassidy who notes that a series of studies released over the past two decades conclude that the law schools of the USA are failing to prepared graduates adequately for the practice of law. To remedy this deficiency the author proposes at least nine ways for the improvement of legal education. In contrast an article by Morgan is on the manner by which legal education is constantly improving for the better. However the article stresses that the law school curricula should look to the kind of world students are likely to experience, rather than to the world their professors faced.

Rowe, Murray and Westwood endeavour to inject a professional approach to pre-practice legal education in an article covered by Practical Legal Education. The subject matter of this article involves an evaluation of a unit that forms part of the Australian National University Legal Workshop which has been undertaken with reference to a United Kingdom course conducted in a simulated virtual office based on a model developed by the Glasgow Graduate School of Law at the University of Strathclyde.

Skills involves three contrasting articles. The first by Margolis and Murray reviews the new approach to legal research generated by the information technology age. In their view ‘information literacy’ has provided a new paradigm for legal research pedagogy. Bartholomew describes a research project related to the problems of time management experienced by law students, emphasising that students want better preparation for the tasks associated with practice. In the third article under this heading Nowak describes how one American law school approached the problems of students developing better grammatical skills. The article explains how the Touro Writing Centre used discussions about professionalism and responsible choice-making as a vehicle for teaching basic writing skills.

The concluding heading of Students concerns two differing aspects of law students’ lives. The first by Larcombe, Malkin and Nicholson examines students’ motivations, expectation and what is now recognised as the serious problem for many of them of psychological distress. One aspect of their research was the investigation of the students’ expectations about their academic performance and any differences between the expectations of commencing and experienced law students. The other is an account by Florio and Hoffman of empirical research projects relating to student perspectives on legal education. They argue that in their view the necessity for such forms of research is brought about because of the current dearth of data on the law school experience. This is due to the vast majority of knowledge on the subject being drawn from anecdotal sources and the few empirical instruments currently in use, such as the Law School Survey of Student Engagement.

The variety of topics dealt with by the authors of the articles digested in this edition of the Digest is, as always, an interesting illustration of the diversity of approaches now being adopted within legal education.

Emeritus Professor David Barker AM

Editor