Digital Directions

Moving forward: Legal Education in Scotland

UKCLE ran its second day conference designed exclusively for the Scottish legal education community yesterday (15 December 2010), focusing on the challenges and opportunities in a rapidly changing academic and professional environment.

Themes for the event included opening up the LLB curriculum and Professional Education and Training 2 (PEAT 2) collaboration. There were workshop streams on clinical legal education (LLB), Work-based Learning (PEAT 2) and teaching law on non-law curricula.

The first plenary session was given by Julian Webb, UK Centre for Legal Education (UKCLE) who addressed the topic of 'legal education and the legal services market' - reflecting on the changes both north and south of the border  in terms of a changing market in which different business structures may well offer different types of services.  Examples were given of high volume work such as debt recovery or conveyancing which can be semi-automated; or Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) which can operate for increasingly sophisticated processes.  The Indian market was cited as a high value market for this type of activity.  Julian also addressed the legal education market - raising issues regarding the private sector providers and the widening gap between universities and the profession.

The first parallel session with Donald Nicolson, University of Strathclyde and Dale McFadzean, University of West of Scotland addressed clinical skills at undergraduate level - two very different approaches that feature in-house or external engagement still keep the debate alive as to whether such projects should be client or student oriented.  Either way, the structure and future potential for clinical education will be shaped by this small but growing movement in Scotland.

Alongside this session, Patrick Randolph-Quinney, University Dundee, and Niamh Nic Daeid, University of Strathclyde, began the first session on science and legal education by bringing their perspectives from the fields of both philosophical and applied sciences to illustrate how problems in the presentation of scientific evidence in the legal environment are still being encountered, and how this may be ameliorated by changes to legal education.

After lunch, the second keynote was presented by Liz Campbell and Collette Paterson from The Law Society of Scotland who highlighted the recent changes to the route to qualification - in particular the new PEAT 2 (Professional Education and Training) programme which covers the traineeship period and CPD.  The new framework, which will come into force on 1 November 2011, retains the existing requirement of a minimum of 20 hours each year. To support solicitors in their CPD activities, from 2011 the Society will introduce basic templates, which will be capable of being completed online, to assist with identifying training needs, recording CPD undertaken and evaluating the outcome of the training. In addition, from 2011 a wider range of activities will be acceptable as CPD. These will include activities such as structured and formalised one-to-one training, coaching, and online training, rather than the present narrow definition of group study.

The third parallel session, a workshop led by Jim Moser from Dundas & Wilson and Collette Paterson from The Law Society of Scotland, explored the role of the profession in providing legal education at this new PEAT 2 stage.  Their small groups discussed the barriers and benefits to the new programme and reported back at the closing discussions.  Much debate surrounded the Trainee Continuing Professional Development (TCPD) requirements and how the accreditation of the providers for TCPD would differ from the delivery of CPD to the wider profession.  Many positive and negative aspects were explored and debated, which will be published as a review following the workshop.

The final parallel session led by Michael Bromby, Glasgow Caledonian University, and Fiona Raitt, University of Dundee, built upon the views of the forensic practitioners to explore how science is addressed in the legal curriculum and the role of the law schools to provide a more pervasive approach to underpin a general appreciation of the philosophy of science.  The perceived benefits of co-teaching of law students and science students led to a discussion about the mechanics and benefits of joint delivery of CPD to the professions in order to foster greater links in terms of critical thinking between the two.

New OSCOLA citation guide

OSCOLA is the Oxford Standard for Citation Of Legal Authorities.  It is widely used in law schools and by journal and book publishers in the UK and beyond.

The introduction to the new fourth edition of OSCOLA claims there are two golden rules for the citation of legal authorities: the first is consistency, and the second is consideration for the reader. This updated guide is is designed to facilitate accurate citation of authorities, legislation, and other legal materials.

"OSCOLA was first devised by Professor Peter Birks in 2000, in consultation with law students and faculty at Oxford University, and with Oxford University Press and Hart Publishing. It is used by the Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal, and the editors of that journal have also played an important role in its development. Subsequent editions of OSCOLA were produced in 2002 (by Professor Birks) and in 2004 (revised 2006, both by Timothy Endicott and Sandra Meredith). This latest revision of OSCOLA provides more detailed coverage of domestic legal sources, and in particular the treatment of Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish sources has been considerably expanded."

The new guide is also licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.  This makes life much easier for adding the guide (or parts thereof) to programme or module handbooks, VLEs or even printing and distributing the guide to students.

The license permits copying and distribution, but also permits the creation of derivatives subject to:

• Attribution — You must give the original author credit.

  Attribute this work:
  

• Non-Commercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

• Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a licence identical to this one.

This would allow law schools to derive their own referencing guide with some deviation from the Oxford Standard if required.  It would also allow other jurisdictions to tailor a similar guide with more appropriate examples or allowing for whatever variations may exist in the citation of cases or legislation.

There is also a Quick Reference Guide for key reference types and the section on citing international sources from the 2006 edition of OSCOLA is available as a separate document: OSCOLA 2006: Citing International Law.

I also find OSCOLA a great help for non-law students.  For example, my forensic psychology students must use their own subject-based referencing system (APA - American Psychological Association, which is similar to the Harvard method) but this guide illustrates how to reference a case, give pinpoints to quotes and a general appreciation of how cases are reported.

An online tutorial (Citing the Law using OSCOLA) is also available from Cardiff University and a link is given from the Oxford website.  Their Activity: Putting it all together is a great tool for testing students (and staff, I'm sure!)

Using simulation in teaching and learning: Simshare, SIMPLE and the OER approach

On Friday 3.12.10 the Northumbria Law School hosted a day’s workshop in the Centre for Life on simulation that focused on SIMPLE, Simshare and the use of simulation in higher education – see the website for details of the workshop.

Given the weather conditions Thursday pm it was remarkable that anyone turned up, but 14 out of the original 18 participants struggled in – some from as far as Lancaster. Our five speakers apart from me were coming from further afield, and with the weather closing in I contacted Dr David Davies of Warwick Medical School and Karen Barton from Strathclyde Law School, to determine if they could present on an arrangement of Skype video call + remote desktop control app via Powerpoint. We tested on the Thursday, and again on the morning of the workshop in the Centre. I was also thinking of using a combination of canned video uploaded to Dropbox + Skype for the Q&As as a backup, but in the end decided to risk it with skype. Worked well, didn’t crash once. A third speaker, Karen Counsel from Glamorgan managed, astonishingly, to fly up from Glamorgan to take us through her remarkable innovations in first year Torts sims and Masters sims (IP, domain name disputes, forensics – DL, too, with Hong Kong students – we could learn a lot from her meticulous work), and our own Kevin Kerrigan was also presenting on his use of sims in Criminal Procedure in the Law School.

In the morning we had a series of case studies, and after lunch simultaneous roundtables on how to use Simshare (me), on using sim activities within the context of conventional teaching & learning (Karen Counsel), and on using sims with large-group classes (Kevin). Good feedback, eg:

The session was excellent on Friday - a really good group of people, nice environment and opportunity to chat and go through things. The roundtable worked really well. […] a very enjoyable, productive and comfortable experience.

My only suggestion for taking things forward is what you stated at the end that there are some hands on, very practical sessions set up. I'll be taking this back to [law school] as my new Head of School seems keen so I am hoping we can take SIMPLE forward. I think there were a few of us with shared interests there on Friday so a distribution list of contacts from the session would be great.

What next?
There were at least five participants from Northumbria U., most from Health, and a couple from Newcastle U, who were very interested in the work being done by SIMPLEtons nationally & internationally, and we’ll be taking that further in liaisons with them.

Thanks to a generous grant from CALI in the USA we have the invaluable services of an applications developer, Gavin Maxwell, till the end of June 2011; so if you’re thinking of developing sims using SIMPLE (or games that include sims, or vice versa) now is the time to be doing something about it. By all means get in touch with me. Note that the simulation-sharing site, Simshare, is about sharing any sort of sim, not just SIMPLE sims. So if you have any sims that you want to share with the world as Open Education Resources (OER), just go to the site, register, and upload & share... If you want further info, contact me.

Further information
We’ll be putting slides & related workshop resources up on the Simshare website (I’ll let you know when that’s available) and I’ll post some comments etc on Zeugma later. Any questions etc by all means get back to me. For more information on how you could use sims & games, see the forthcoming book edited by Prof Sara de Freitas and me, Digital Games and Learning (Continuum Press --early Jan 2011 – ideal Twelfth Night present, focusing as it does on Shakespearian themes of transformation, disguise, identity, etc… see flyer: Digital_Games_and_Learning); and two chapters in a book I’m editing with Caroline Maughan, Affect: The Impact of Emotion on Learning and Teaching the Law, coming out later in 2011. There will also be more workshops like this, both early in 2011 – one in Glamorgan on January 18 (hosted by Karen Counsel), and one in Glasgow, at Glasgow Caledonian University. (hosted by Michael Bromby there), the date of which will be up on Simshare as soon as we know it.

Publication Opportunity
I’m planning to edit a long-overdue SIMPLE book, to be published around 2013/14. Currently we have five authors signed up, internationally, from US to Australia, writing both academic and technical chapters. If you’re interested in getting involved in using SIMPLE and writing about it, or know anyone who might be, do drop me a line.

Thanks
Finally, and most importantly, thanks to UKCLE (especially Danielle Lysaght and Hansa Surti) for their invaluable financial support; to Gavin for Simshare support, to Kevin for stepping in at short notice to help out on the roundtables, and to Ian, Maureen and Ann for their excellent admin support, and for keeping their cool… What a team.

Paul Maharg

Happy (belated) Birthday BAILII!

The British and Irish Legal Information Institute BAILII is a well-known member of the World Legal Information Institute, which runs similar free services around the world.

In 2010, BAILII had its 10th birthday.  Three years ago, in August 2007, BAILII included 76 databases covering 7 jurisdictions. The system contains around 11 gigabytes of legal materials and around 200,000 searchable documents.  By August of this year, it now contains 284,568 searchable documents, a 29 gigabyte database and has 32,275 individual users per week and close to a million weekly page requests.

Adam Wagner gives a tribute to BAILII and other open access repositories in the UK Human Rights Blog.  Their blog said:

"BAILII’s unassuming website looks like it has barely changed since its launch in March 2000. But its basic text-driven interface belies an elegant search engine providing access to an enormous wealth of case law and legislation. In a common law system such as ours, the decisions of judges form the law of the land. Amazingly, without BAILII, nobody without an expensive subscription service would be able to read the case law which shapes the UK justice system"

They offer a variety of BAILII RSS feeds (live updates) for a wide range of courts as well as specialist topics such as Special Immigration Appeals Nominet's UK Dispute Resolution Service or the First-tier Tribunal (Health Education and Social Care Chamber) which may be useful additions to complement learning materials on your VLE.

There are 2,387 domains that refer to BAILII - advice is given on how to link to cases and materials so that the link will always work, and to link to specific paragraphs.

BAILII makes its website available on a subscription-free basis for the benefit of the public, including pro bono organisations, neighbourhood law centres, students and users in developing countries. BAILII incurs substantial running costs in maintaining its database and website, and is dependent on a continuing flow of donations in order to remain in operation. Commercial users of BAILII (including legal or other professionals, and publishers) and educational institutions are requested to make annual donations to BAILII in order to assist BAILII in meeting its running costs.

9th International Journal of Clinical Legal Education Conference

The 9th International Journal of Clinical Legal Education Conference, in partnership with the 6^th Global Alliance for Justice Education (GAJE) Conference will be hosted by The Institute of Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Valencia from 11-12 July 2011 University of Valencia, Spain

Their rather inspired choice of conference theme is: Life, the Universe and Clinic: What questions does Clinic answer?

"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."

"But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything," howled Loonquawl.

"Yes," said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools gladly, "but what actually is it?"

A slow stupefied silence crept over the men as they stared at the computer and then at each other.

"Well, you know, it's just Everything ... Everything ..." offered Phouchg weakly.

"Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means."

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy

Themes of the Conference

We expect a lot from clinical legal education.  At the same time it is expected to achieve or encourage professional skills development, ethical awareness, deep legal knowledge, collaborative and lifelong learning, reflective practice, social justice activism and a host of other ambitious objectives.  Recent years have seen increased and at times conflicting demands placed on clinics by institutions, by students and by clients and there is rarely an opportunity to pause and re-examine the nature and value of the clinical enterprise, the scope of its aspiration and the path ahead. 

This conference will offer participants a chance to ask questions and seek to articulate answers about the purpose(s) of clinical legal education.  Papers will explore the educational, socio-economic and political contexts of clinic, the opportunities for achieving more and the pedagogic and other limitations that clinic faces.  If clinical learning is not the answer to life the universe and everything the conference will address what it can and should realistically be expected to achieve. 

This year’s particular conference themes include:

• The purposes and rationales of clinical legal education
• What clinical legal education can and cannot achieve
• Questions clinicians should ask themselves
• Clinic and professional development: skills, knowledge, ethics, professionalism
• Clinic and lifelong learning: collaboration, teamwork, reflection
• Clinic and personal development: experience, interpersonal skills, emotional intelligence, maturity
• Clinic and social justice: public legal education, community projects, legal aid schemes, pro bono public, balancing client and student needs
• Clinic and the law curriculum: the learning outcomes of clinic, relationship to other learning methods, clinic and curriculum coverage, curricular innovation, simulated experience, intra or extra-curricular activities
• Clinical collaboration: cross disciplinary initiatives, cross jurisdictional partnerships, barriers to collaboration

Papers are also welcome in relation to standing conference themes:

• Internationalising clinical legal education
• Clinic twinning projects
• Clinical scholarship
• Reporting research findings (final or interim)
• Assessment /grading of clinical legal education
• Evidencing best practice
• New clinics and new clinicians
• Review of clinic operations
• Student and faculty attitudes to clinical learning

 Conference overview and partners

The annual IJCLE conference serves as a unique forum in which clinical educators from all jurisdictions can come together to discuss all aspects of clinical teaching and learning, to learn from one another and to share best practice.  This year’s conference addresses fundamental questions about the place of clinical legal education in higher education and legal service provision.

In 2011 the conference will be held in partnership with the 6^th Global Alliance for Justice Education Conference (GAJE) 12-15 July.  The theme of the GAJE conference is “Combatting Social Injustice Through Justice Education”.  The conferences will be held consecutively with some joint sessions so as to bring together delegates with a very wide range of interests but to enable each conference to retain its unique identity and character. 

GAJE is an alliance of persons committed to achieving justice through education. Clinical education of law students is a key component of justice education, but GAJE also works to advance other forms of socially relevant legal education, which includes education of practising lawyers, judges, non-governmental organizations and the lay public.

See www.gaje.org for further information about the GAJE conference.  Discounted rates are available for delegates booking both conferences.  

The Institute for Human Rights at the University of Valencia (IUDHUV) is a research unit within the Law Faculty.  It offers courses on human rights, law, and international protection of rights and participates actively in post-graduate courses and organizes practicum for its students in the field of human rights.  It also serves as the host unit for the pioneer legal clinic focusing on international protection of human rights.  More information is available at: www.uv.es/idh/.

More details will be available soon at the conference website: www.ijcle.com.