Creating Legal Writing Opportunities in the Digital EraMary Catherine Lucey
This article argues there is a need to provide law students with greater opportunities to conduct research based legal writing which develops their skills around critical thinking, reflection, review, and communication. Such skills risk being neglected if law programmes become unduly oriented towards assessing students by means of multiple-choice questions or closed book examinations of very short duration. This article hopes to encourage law teachers, with the assistance of appropriate technology, to introduce legal research writing assignments into substantive/doctrinal modules. In this way, legal writing is not confined to stand alone research/dissertation modules but is embedded more throughout the law programme.
Greta S Bosch
The article wishes to present an argument about how interdisciplinary modules can enhance legal education. This argument is developed against the back drop of major disruption in higher education and transformation in legal education. Following a definition of interdisciplinarity, the benefits of this method are analysed and demonstrated through practical examples from an interdisciplinary pilot module based in a UK Law programme. Some selected issues from Equality law will be used to demonstrate how an interdisciplinary approach has enabled students to look more critically at what the law chooses to protect and the ways in which laws are drafted and applied. Such enhanced learning outcomes from interdisciplinary legal education can support the re-calibration of legal education and complement the traditional doctrinal approach to legal education. It is argued that experiences and good practice from comparative law can provide inspiration for the strengthening of interdisciplinary legal education.
Andreas R. Ziegler
International aspects play an immense role in the work of most lawyers today. Accordingly, knowledge of how to deal with these aspects is of fundamental importance for the goal-oriented and high-quality training of lawyers. Ideally, these aspects should always be an essential part of the training, but this is only possible if sufficient basic knowledge and skills are guaranteed. The main finding of this article is that most universities (in Switzerland - and this probably applies elsewhere) offer a good choice of courses covering international aspects of law but do not ensure that all their students get the minimum necessary. In addition, the language skills so necessary on the (Swiss) job market are too often left to the student and not guaranteed by the university when delivering a degree. A third finding is, that it is not easy for students to find out which universities are more diligent regarding the adequate teaching of international aspects. Without a thorough introduction to the basic foundations and the skills necessary to find and apply non-domestic sources legal education in all areas of law is inadequate.
Daniel Barrow; Louise Glover; Tamara Hervey
Legal education is often thought of as divided between the ‘clinical’/‘functional’/‘vocational’ and the ‘liberal’/‘holistic’, or even ‘formalist’/‘positivist’. Drawing on original data from students participating in pro bono work in a fairly typical European law clinic, we should students do not appear to think such distinctions are particularly significant to their university learning journeys or their future career aspirations. Such distinctions may make sense at an institutional level, but at the level of an individual student and their learning experience, clinical/functional/vocational elements are not perceived as distinct from curricular learning in a liberal/holistic or even formalist/positivist mode.
Nigel Duncan; Caroline Strevens; Rachael Field
There is widespread concern for the mental wellbeing of our students. We argue that, while resisting the neoliberal tendencies that contribute to this, we have a responsibility for helping our students to thrive. Rooted in a theory of positive psychology: self determination theory, we present methods which may help us in this endeavour. These include our approaches to marketing and recruitment, curriculum design, assessment and feedback, experiential learning and developing a safe learning environment. We suggest how addressing these areas of our practice may assist students to develop their competence, and to experience autonomy and relatedness during their programmes of learning. In so doing we provide sources which underpin our arguments and which, we hope, will encourage a debate across European law faculties on this important topic.
Stuart MacLennan
European Union law has been an integral part of the legal order of the United Kingdom for over 40 years, and features in every qualifying law degree taught in the UK at the date of country’s departure from the EU. The United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union (Brexit) radically alters the nature and effects of EU law in the UK’s legal jurisdictions. It is, consequently, necessary for those responsible for teaching EU law within UK law schools to reflect and, potentially, fundamentally redesign their EU law modules. This article commences with a consideration of what constitutes the ‘typical’ EU law module in order to determine those areas of EU law teaching most likely to be affected by Brexit. This article proceeds to consider both the new sources of law with which students will have to become familiar, as well as changes to existing content necessitated by Brexit. This article then seeks to ‘reimagine’ European Union law after Brexit through consideration of the teaching of EU law outside of the EU. While it may be possible to emulate the approach of certain non-EU law schools the uniqueness of the United Kingdom’s position after Brexit means that a bespoke approach to the teaching of EU law after Brexit is necessary.