Digital Directions

Casebooks: from Langdell to H2O

Earlier this week, Kevin Ramakrishna at the Best Practices for Legal Education Blog reviewed a new suite of classroom tools that the Berkman Center and Harvard Law School Library have developed:

"The casebook began with Langdell at Harvard Law School, and so it is reimagined by another Harvard Law School professor.  Jonathan Zittrain and other developers, introduced a new electronic “casebook” today at a luncheon held at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. 

The goal of the new system is not simply to provide students with a digital casebook, but a new suite of tools to help students and professors collaberate.  The suite is called H2O and includes a syllabus (called a “playlist”), a question tool, casebook creation tool, and a “rotisserie” discussion tool “which enables a structured discussion. Users respond to a question, then are assigned discussion partners, who critique their responses.”  The professor can also mark up the text using a resource called “collage” which “allows for tagging text, annotating it, and hiding portions of text without changing the original document.”

One key benefit to the system is to promote student discussion. “Students can outline and mark up cases they’re assigned to study and share them with a study group.”  Another benefit is that it could help create new course structures. “I like contracts, I like torts, I’m not going to teach contorts because there’s no book for it. but if I can easily do my own bespoke syllabus drawing on the work of others, I could.”"

Further commentary on this new approach can be read at The Atlantic and in a blog post by Ethan Zuckerman.

There is also a number of playlists available on the H2O website (see for example Chapter 2: Battery).  Here, you get a brief overview of what is covered and how the cases fit together.  Click on a case to see important aspects highlighted.

The casebook has never taken off in UK legal education, so will this new development make any difference over here?

The inclusion of "Question Tool", a backchannel for live lecture feedback and questions may well be a valuable asset, especially for teaching large classes; and the Rotisserie, which is a structured forum for offline discussion of class content is designed to encourage class interactions outside the lecture.

Currently, the use of VLEs such as Blackboard, Moodle, WebCT etc are constantly under revision to inlcude various bells and whistles to support learning and teaching.  Whilst bells and whistles are all well and good,technology-enhanced learning should be driven by the pedagogy rather than the technology.

The big difference here, is that the tools are specifically designed for legal education, albeit teaching by casebook.

Funding Legal Education in a Post Recession Britain

‘Funding Legal Education in a Post Recession Britain’, held at Glasgow University, began today with an Introduction from Head of the Law School, Rosa Greaves and the new College Head/DRM.

The first session, ‘A View from the Regulators and Professional Bodies’ was chaired by Eileen Paterson, Deputy Director of Professional Legal Practice and the speakers were Liz Campbell, Director of Education and Training, Law Society of Scotland and Callum Jones, Clerk, Faculty of Advocates. Rosa Greaves made an analogy to medical education – the building blogs of academic study, practical training and professional based training. Delegates were urged not to dwell on the problems but were urged to look for solutions to the problems we face, and to discuss innovative ideas.

Liz Campbell then spoke of the historical perspective of funding for the Diploma in Legal Practice (the Scottish equivalent to the LPC – Legal Practice Course). Notably, there is uncertainty as to the number of places and that maintenance awards will no longer be offered, this pot of money being possibly used to fund additional fee awards instead. Whilst the Law Society of Scotland sets recommended salary rates during the subsequent traineeship, these are recognized to be lower than other graduate trainees. 2007 was a bumper year with demand for traineeships much higher than supply, this trend was reversed in 2009 with a 72% drop resulting in places being available, but not taken up. For 2010, places may only marginally exceed demand.

The issues raised by Liz include rising levels of student debt, the issue of part time work and the removal of maintenance grants. What impact will this have on the make-up of the profession? Looking to the future, what creative solutions can possibly come forward – discussion ensued as to a form of training levy to be met by law firms that may exist in a number of ways. It may be adjustable to reflect the contribution the firm makes to educational training and materials. The Faculty of Advocates (the Scottish bar) model was also discussed where training is provided free by the Faculty whose members contribute towards the costs, however raising of the cost of a solicitor’s practicing certificate to meet this burden may not be welcomed. Prof Leo Martin of Strathclyde University put forward a tongue-in-cheek suggestion that lawyers follow the early career footballer transfer fee arrangement that may assist to combat against smaller firms who provide training from losing their newly-qualified lawyers to the larger firms, or at least recompenses their commitment to legal education which benefits the profession as a whole.

John Hamilton, Director of Training and Education Faculty of Advocates was unable to attend, however Calum Wilson set out why the Faculty of Advocates has an interest in legal education as their Intrants must first complete the LLB, diploma and traineeship. There is perceptively a second hurdle for students wishing to pursue a career at the bar, as the faculty requires examinations in 8 core subjects, most of which are covered within the LLB although many must undertake the exams for either or both of Roman Law and International Private Law, which are not frequently covered in typical undergraduate studies. A second issue was raised in relation to unpaid traineeships – Calum indicated that he knew not of any currently being undertaken – the law society may frown upon such practice but are not in a position to enforce payment and it is hoped that this potential problem does not arise in this time of economic austerity. The process of ‘devilling’ or pupilage for 9 months is funded by the Faculty, so there is no fee, although there is no payment for the devils either.

The second session, ‘Developments in Adjoining Jurisdictions’ was chaired by the event organiser, Douglas Mill, Director of Professional Legal Practice and the speakers were Anne Fenton, Director of the Institute of Professional Legal Studies, Queens University, Belfast and Melissa Hardee, Hardee Consulting, London.

It was particularly important and interesting to see the issues and developments in other jurisdictions. Northern Ireland is a small jurisdiction (1.8m population, 2,500 solicitors, 620 barristers, 548 law firms of which 271 are single practitioners – the largest firm having only 18 partners) facing large financial cuts. There are a set number places at Institute for Professional Legal Studies (120 for solicitors and 60 bar places) and the Graduate School of Professional Legal Studies (28 places) of which all are self-funding. For 2010/11 neither have filled their places and the issues of financial viability of the courses along with the educational impact of running with small cohorts were discussed.

Of particular interest was the joint delivery of training to the two branches of the profession (which also leads to greater collegiality and two branches, rather than two professions) where common areas exist, leading to economies of scale. Anne noted the benefits of sharing ideas and understanding between not only students, but staff and practitioners, which also received the support of the judiciary.

Melissa Hardee started with a question:

Is legal education too expensive…[for what you get]?

With unrestricted access to the LPC, the bottle-neck in England and Wales is entry to a training contract, unlike Scotland where the bottle-neck is entry to the LPC equivalent, the DipLP. With higher LPC course fees and capped undergraduate tuition fees, there are some emerging trends that LPC graduates are moving into paralegal work, paralegals are being hired in place of law firms taking in trainees and some training contracts are being deferred or withdrawn.

On the horizon is the Greene Report (due 11/10/10) which may see a raise or removal of the capped fees system, possibly a Graduate Tax or some other form or variable contribution. The problems that are brewing are the new pathways that may come with alternative business structures (ABS) both north and south of the border and the wider definition of ‘lawyer’ and provision of legal services beyond that of a qualified solicitor.

Many questions were raised by Melissa, to ‘provoke’ and engage the audience – I didn’t note them all, but attach a couple of badly-taken photos (I blame the light!):

Melissa felt that one final question should be take n for discussion from today:

Should law be a postgraduate subject?

Melissa agrees that it should, but also feels that the one year Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL – a postgraduate conversion course that covers the essential LLB elements for progression to the vocational level) is too short to generate the critical legal thinking required of the profession.

Hype Cycle for Education 2010

Last year, I reported on the 'Hype Cycle for Education 2009' from Gartner IT, which has been the most viewed page from this blog!

This year, the Hype Cycle for Education, 26 July 2010 states:

"The priority for education institutions in 2010 is to continue balancing organizational efficiency with personal productivity. IT is driving change in many ways: first and foremost by the proliferation of delivery mechanisms that threaten to bypass the CIO. CIOs need new tools to stay in control."

So, what's new in Education for 2010?  Open Source is mentioned at just about all stages of the cycle: open source portals and e-learning applications are climbing the slope towards the plateau.  Likewise, social media, e-portfolios and wikis are climbing the slope too.  Blogs, on the otherhand, have entered the plateau, so expect to see more solid use of those if the future.

Sliding into the trough are: e-textbooks, microblogging, virtual worlds, e-learning repositories and mashups.  At the peak is mobile learning and other low-midrange handsets.

Additionally, the Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2 August 2010 notes that:

"High-impact technologies at the Peak of Inflated Expectations during 2010 include private cloud computing, augmented reality, media tablets (such as the iPad), wireless power, 3D flat-panel TVs and displays, and activity streams."

A pdf presentation from the report's author, Jackie Fenn, describes the 2010 hype cycle and notes some of the significant changes.  On the up, from trigger to inflated peak, is augmented reality (AR) - which seems set to replace Second Life and other such virtual worlds.  The clear benefit of AR is that an entire new world does not need to be re-created - just use the real one and superimpose anything new that you need!

Earlier this year, I saw an excellent presentation by Minhua Eunice Ma from the University of Derby on Virtual Reality and 3D Animation in Forensic Visualisation.  This example of the use of AR for forensics can be expanded into several areas of legal education where students can undertake experiential learning with more 'reality' than is possible with current virtual reality (VR) software which, along with the other public virtual worlds are still languishing in the trough of disillusionment with 5-10 years to wait until mainstream adoption.

Microblogging, which includes Twitter, continues along the cycle towards mainstream adoption within 2/3 years.  It has not, however, passed through the trough so it still has some inflated expectations that need to die out.

Of the 100 or so Hype Cycle Reports from Gartner, one of the six new additions for 2010 includes Business Use of Social Technology:

"This Hype Cycle complements the "Hype Cycle for Social Software, 2010" and was initiated to provide our perspective on the accelerating adoption of social technologies for specific business functions and within selected industries. As reflected in the clustering of technology profiles in the early stages of this Hype Cycle, the business use of social technologies is just emerging. We expect adoption to accelerate and to expand across business functions and industries. Even where overt social-media initiatives are not planned, examination of social technologies will become an imperative where key business participants (such as employees, customers, constituents and partners) engage in social interactions outside of structured or sanctioned enterprise technology solutions."

This, of course, has relevance for law firms, their delivery of services or advertising through social media.  Many law firms have a subject area blog and several law firms are using twitter to communicate news, ideas and thoughts to others in the legal community and the world at large.  I would argue that law firms are further along than 'emerging' into business use, but agree that 'imperative' use is some distance away.  I read somewhere on the Gartner site that potential customers are more likely to look for reviews and advice on social networking sites before purchasing... this, then, may well extend to include both individual and commercial clients looking for legal services in the not too distant future.