How do lawyers perceive the relevance of economics and business methods knowledge in their professional practice? Evidence from GreeceJoseph Hassid; George Maniatis; Michael Polemis
This paper examines the value that lawyers in Greece attribute to knowledge of economics and business methods, identifying the legal fields in which it is most useful and the areas of economic and business expertise that support legal practice. Our findings, based on a survey of Greek legal professionals indicate the broad relevance of economics and business methods across various legal fields. Our findings suggest that lawyers benefit most from knowledge of economics for business, market functioning, and competition and antitrust economics, alongside an understanding of law office organisation. Prior advanced education and professional roles also significantly influence perceptions of the usefulness of economics and business methods knowledge. Lawyers with advanced economic education tend to recognise the value of economic knowledge more broadly across all the examined areas of economics. Similarly, business legal advisors view economic knowledge as beneficial to their practice, whereas self-employed legal practitioners tend to assign slightly lower importance to economic knowledge. Legal specialisation emerges as a key factor shaping the perceived usefulness of different areas of economic and business knowledge..These findings offer guidance for curriculum development, particularly for courses in applied economics and business methods aimed at better equipping future lawyers for the contemporary legal environment. .
Myrto Leivadarou
Legal education has been structured around traditional doctrinal analysis and the case method. However, educating students to “think like a lawyer” requires more than mastering traditional legal skills; it also calls for creativity, adaptability, and imagination. This article reimagines legal pedagogy through the lens of ballet, a discipline that embodies the perfect balance between discipline and expressive artistry. Just as in a pas de deux, two dancers maintain distinct identities while moving in harmony, legal education must strike a balance between legal precision and legal creativity.
Building on this analogy, the article introduces pedagogical strategies such as embodied learning, frequency-building combined with improvisation, kinaesthetic empathy, and the educator as choreographer. These methods cultivate both doctrinal mastery and imaginative engagement. By adopting this model, legal education can move beyond rigidity and prepare lawyers who are technically proficient, empathetic, creative, and responsive to the complex realities of law in society.
Claire Archbold; Conor McCormick
This article examines the development and delivery of The Practice of Public Law in Northern Ireland (POPL), which is an advanced undergraduate module designed to offer an authentic, ethically informed experience of public law in practice within a jurisdiction where the government legal service plays a central role. The article positions this initiative within the limited literature on pracademia in legal education, noting that public law from a governmental perspective is an unexplored site of clinically inspired pedagogy. Drawing on the Carnegie Report’s call for the integration of legal knowledge, skills, and professional identity, as well as several sources of legal ethics principles, the paper explores how such frameworks can inform curriculum design in politically sensitive legal environments. Employing a reflective, co authored methodology that integrates scholarly and practitioner perspectives, it offers a contextualised account of the module’s pedagogical distinctiveness and the challenges of balancing realism with professional and curricular constraints. These perspectives are nested in the unique circumstances of Northern Ireland, where constitutional law, administrative law, and the politics of a divided society intersect with civil service and legal professional values. The paper goes on to make a broader claim about the value of carefully designed experiential learning as a means of fostering professional ethics and governmental literacy among law students, and the jurisdictionally transferable potential of these features.
Antonio Aloisi; Pilar Galeote; Nicolas Parra-Herrera
This paper reconceptualises legal innovation by moving beyond the dominant focus on technology. Although the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping legal practice, the study demonstrates that innovation also depends on work reorganisation, interpersonal skills and ethical judgment. Drawing on a survey of 460 legal professionals in Spain, the research uncovers a striking disconnect: whereas law firms tend to equate innovation with efficiency gains and market expansion, most individual lawyers associate it with the cultivation of relational capacities such as communication, negotiation, and leadership.
Moreover, the impact of automation proves far less dramatic than popular narratives suggest. Digital tools enhance efficiency in routine and process-driven tasks, yet they do not fundamentally diminish the need for human expertise in complex, high-stakes legal work. Digital transformation, therefore, cannot be reduced to the implementation of new technologies; it also requires rethinking how lawyers work, interact, and exercise leadership. To capture this broader understanding, the paper introduces the “TIE Lawyering model”, structured around three interdependent pillars: Technology, Interpersonal skills and Ethics. Under this framework, the most effective lawyers are those who combine technical and legal competence with mental dexterity, emotional intelligence and a sustained commitment to professional integrity.
Ultimately, the paper contends that meaningful innovation in the legal sector must remain human-centred. While AI can streamline processes, it cannot substitute for the distinctly human capacities that define legal practice. Genuine progress lies in leveraging technology to reinforce, rather than displace, the core elements of lawyering—empathy, trust, ethical judgment and effective communication—within a profession grounded in service and discretion.