Digital Directions

Student Essay Competition - Highly Commended

UKCLE’s student essay competitions (part of the Higher Education Academy’s Student Awards) attract interest from around the UK. We have held seven competitions to date and previous winning essays can be accessed through the UKCLE website.

Congratulations to the winners of the 2011 competition writing on "Is the law degree fit for purpose?"

Over 40 essays were submitted and entries were of a high standard, and this year's highly commended award goes to Matthew McGhee from Magdalen College, University of Oxford. Read Matthew’s essay below:

2011 highly commended

Is the law degree fit for purpose?

Matthew McGhee (Magdalen College, University of Oxford)

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The premise of the question seems simple. The answer is, however, necessarily complicated, largely as a result of the multiplicity of meanings that one might attribute to the question. To establish whether the law degree is fit for purpose one must consider what the purpose of that degree might be. To risk introducing circularity, presumably the purpose is to train undergraduates to think like a lawyer. It is at this preliminary and fundamental stage that divergences of opinion occur. Does this make the aim to teach what the law is or is it to teach why it is the way that it is? This distinction is evident from a cursory look at two of the leading law degrees; LSE publicly state that they are black letter lawyers and concentrate on the words in statutes and cases to discover what rule applies where. The Oxford degree, on the other hand, has a very different outlook and encourages the development of an intuitive sense of the principles that form the basis of English law in an almost philosophical approach.

The more one considers the question, the more it opens itself to further interpretations. One is reminded of a Russian doll; if a crack is found and pried at, the doll opens up to reveal a different doll inside, with this process being repeated. To answer the question posed, one pries at its meaning only to find that a condition precedent to the answering of that question is the answering of a question to clarify the meaning of the first question! The doll inside the question of what it means to say that a law degree trains the undergraduate to think like a lawyer is what sort of lawyer is one envisaging? An academic lawyer or a practicing lawyer? And should a distinction be drawn between the judge and the advocate (both being practicing lawyers)? It seems that the shorter and more simple sounding the question, the greater its remit through unspoken assumptions giving rise to various permutations.

However, leaving to one side the complexities of the hidden meanings lurking behind the question, one might base an answer on the common view of the law degree as being a step on the way to the law as a vocation. Whether one chooses the path of a solicitor or a barrister, there are further steps to take beyond the qualifying law degree in the form of vocational courses. This may be compared with other jurisdictions where a law degree allows the graduate to commence practice without the need for further studies, an example being the Juris Doctor (JD) in the USA, though admittedly this is a postgraduate degree. Is this a failing of the UK law degree to fulfil its purpose in the sense that it does not adequately prepare its graduates for practice, as evidenced by the requirement for further training? One rather suspects not for two reasons. First, it is not possible that one course can teach a student all that one needs to know to be a successful practicing lawyer – a criticism of the BPTC (formerly BVC) is that it purports to train individuals in certain skills that are arguably best learnt through practice. This leads to the second reason, which is that learning how to practice effectively is a continual process and, whilst not wishing to descend into clichés, the adage that ‘you learn something new every day’ seems here to be particularly apt.

An issue that one must address is that one might have two lawyers who are equally successful in practice and are in all ways identical, except that one read a traditional law degree whilst the other took the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL). Does the very fact that there may be no difference between them show that the law degree is inefficient for the purpose that the common view attributes to a law degree, namely creating lawyers? This may seem to be the case if one looks exclusively at the GDL in comparison with the law degree – if one can do in one year what a law degree does in three years, with there being no difference between the two routes when it comes to practice, then it surely shows that the law degree is inefficient? However, this is only the case if one misrepresents the situation. If one is to judge efficiency by the timescale of the route, then one must take account of the fact that a precondition to the GDL is that one already holds an undergraduate degree. The simple reason for this is that whilst the GDL teaches how the law applies to a given scenario, it does not encourage the same incisive way of thinking that is required in practice in addition to a working knowledge of the law. Thus it would seem that the law degree is actually the more efficient route.

This highlights the error in the assumption that the function of a law degree is just to place its graduates one step closer to a legal career. The purpose of the law degree is not simply to manufacture lawyers. The proper purpose of a law degree is to allow its students to develop a sophistication of thought. That the law degree also fulfils the other precondition to commencing legal practice by imparting the requisite working knowledge in no way diminishes the relevance and value of the pursuit of intellectual betterment for its own sake, a purpose performed admirably by the law degree.

As a postscript to this discussion, that the natural inclination is to answer this question by asking whether the law degree adequately prepares its graduates for legal practice reflects on the national attitude – partly incited by successive governments – that one should undertake various projects and treat those projects simply as stepping stones, rather than enjoying the undertaking for its own considerable merits. This is somewhat ironic given the number of ministers in government who have done the law degree themselves, yet are evidently not in practice.

Student Essay Competition - Runner up

UKCLE’s student essay competitions (part of the Higher Education Academy’s Student Awards) attract interest from around the UK. We have held seven competitions to date and previous winning essays can be accessed through the UKCLE website.

Congratulations to the winners of the 2011 competition writing on "Is the law degree fit for purpose?"

Over 40 essays were submitted and entries were of a high standard, and this year's Runner up was Sitanta Ni Mathghamhna from Birkbeck College, University of London. Read Sitanta’s essay below:

2011 runner up

Is the law degree fit for purpose?

Sitanta Ni Mathghamhna (Birkbeck College, University of London)

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To determine whether the law degree is fit for purpose, one must first ascertain its purpose. Is it to provide a liberal education, the ‘’advancement of a particular disposition towards life, involving the acquisition both of knowledge, but also a particular habit of mind’’¹, or is it to equip students with a training which will enable an effective transition to the practice of law? Or indeed, a combination of both?

The undergraduate law degree (LLB) is first and foremost an academic qualification; postgraduate training must be undertaken before practice, for which the degree provides a foundation. Taking this into consideration as well as the fact that only 45% of students who enrol on the LLB end up practicing² it would seem that, even factoring in the fierce competition for training contracts and pupillages, a significant proportion of students undertaking the degree do so for purposes other than practising as a solicitor or barrister. Perhaps with the differing ambitions of law students in mind, the 1996 report of the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Legal Education Conduct (ACLEC) recommended the retention of “independent liberal education in the discipline of law, not tied to any specific vocation”. Therefore the LLB has a dual mandate – while its primary purpose is academic, it must also provide an adequate basis for effective transition to the professional stage of training for those students wishing to practice. With this duality in mind, the question then becomes ‘does the LLB fulfil the criteria of academic education?’ And furthermore, ‘would the expansion of the LLB to incorporate a vocational as well as an academic element render the degree more fit for purpose for those students wishing to practice?’

In answer to the first question it is my contention that the LLB does fulfil the criteria of academic education; undertaking a law degree is challenging, requiring precision of thought, excellent analytical skills and a heightened facility for succinct written and oral expression. Indeed when the Socratic Method of legal argument is employed, attempting to draw from students a combination of critical analysis and information, it gets to the very heart of the meaning of the verb ‘educate’, which has its roots in Latin, ‘to bring out’. The rigorous training, which is sufficiently demanding that less than 7% of law students receive first class degrees, compared with 14% of degree students in the UK overall³, is broad enough in scope to provide grounding for employment in a wide variety of disciplines, giving those 65% of students who don’t go on to practice an excellent foundation for further study or work in non-law related areas.

However there are viable alternative routes into the profession, such as the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL), a one year conversion course for non-law graduates in England and Wales. So why study the LLB if you can use any degree as a foundation for the GDL? Whilst many other degrees, especially language and science degrees for those wishing to practice intellectual property (IP) law, equip students with skill sets invaluable in a legal setting, the skills mentioned above which the LLB inculcates comprise a core component of the proficiencies necessary for successful practice within the profession. Additionally opting for the LLB over another academic discipline followed by the GDL negates the need to spend an additional, expensive, year in education.

In answer to the second question; should the LLB incorporate a vocational element, with students qualifying for practice upon the completion of the LLB, as is the case in certain jurisdictions? This would bypass the requirement for costly postgraduate training, as well as the need to secure that most elusive of creatures, the training contract / pupillage. Initial figures might suggest so, given the surfeit of law graduates and the marked lack of such legal apprenticeships available to instruct them. Indeed the United Kingdom has such an excess of lawyers that the Law Society of England & Wales launched a campaign during the summer of 2009 to warn students about the potential drawbacks of a legal career. Statistics bear out these concerns, with a total of 9,337 students enrolled on the legal practice course (LPC) and only 5,809 training contracts available⁴. Figures for the Bar are even worse; each year an estimated 4,000 would-be barristers compete for a paltry 500 pupillage places, prompting Bar Council chairman Nicholas Green QC to recently warn of the “real qualms” he had about a system which encourages Bar Professional Training Course providers to educate increasing numbers of students.

The dissonance between these figures is troubling; no other profession tries to funnel such an inordinate volume of qualified university graduates into such a small professional opening. A proletariat of undergraduates (in Dostoevsky’s words) are now faced with stark choices regarding their tertiary education, as mounting costs deliver diminishing returns. While qualification upon completion of the LLB might relieve the pressures created by the paucity of available pupillages / training contracts, it would also potentially create under-qualified practitioners. Overall the nature of UK legal education, with a clear partition between academic and professional training, is well suited to both the intricacies of the common law system, as well as the differing ambitions of students. Winston Churchill once observed that his early education enabled him to absorb ’’the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence – which is a noble thing.’’⁵ The LLB provides the grammatical foundation of the common law and its relation to society at large, while professional training supplies the vocabulary, in the form of explicit instruction, required to put that learning into practice.

Student Essay Competition 2011

UKCLE’s student essay competitions (part of the Higher Education Academy’s Student Awards) attract interest from around the UK. We have held seven competitions to date and previous winning essays can be accessed through the UKCLE website.

Congratulations to the winners of the 2011 competition writing on "Is the law degree fit for purpose?"

Over 40 essays were submitted and entries were of a high standard, and this year's Winner was Lisa West, a student from Liverpool John Moores University. Read Lisa’s essay below:

2011 winner

Is the law degree fit for purpose?

Lisa West (Liverpool John Moores University)

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To ask if the law degree is ‘fit for purpose’ is an ambiguous and presumptuous question. Whose purpose and which law degree is being referred to? There are qualifying degrees, exempting students going on to study the LPC and BPTC from an additional year’s study, but likewise there are non-qualifying degrees, and then criminology, criminal justice and other such degrees. All of these are law based and designed for different purposes. If you search for law in the UCAS website, for a course starting in 2011, before you are even given a list of providers you are given 35 options as to what type of law degree you would like to look at; and even if you select “law on its own as a single subject” you are given the choice of 354 different courses¹.

To take a generic LL.B and determine whether it is fit for purpose is still subjective, as each student will come with a different purpose in mind. To demonstrate this I will look at myself and my four housemates, and from there determine if ‘the law degree’ meets their needs.

At this moment in time I am looking to continue to study, before teaching at degree level. For this purpose the degree has allowed me the chance to browse the many areas of law and determine which I prefer. In that sense it has fulfilled its purpose. However, studies have been targeted towards looking at a broad selection of subjects, many of which are compulsory to satisfy the qualifying law degree criteria². To make this degree fit for the purpose of teaching it would need to adopt a broader approach in the first year of study, and to do this by offering a diverse selection of 12 credit modules. This would allow students pursuing academia to narrow down the subjects they take in the second and third years, and in some instances this could lead to a Masters degree or a PhD without the research and worry we now endure in trying to choose which direction to take. As it stands, the LL.B is fit for purpose in the sense that it will suffice for the masses, but will not always meet individual’s needs.

Taking now my first and second housemates, who wish to complete the LPC and BPTC. There has been criticism recently that the LL.B does not fully prepare students for these practical courses, but is that the aim of the undergraduate degree? I assert that the degree should be the foundation of knowledge, and that the practical courses piece together the knowledge and the application of it. Even if one is to disagree with this assertion, there has been a 20% fall in the number of students going on to complete the LPC and as such, proposals to integrate a practical element into the degree should be prevented, as they would only benefit a select group within each cohort³. Suggestions for an entirely separate degree structure for those intending to go on to practice should be dismissed as what would then happen to students who change their minds while on this new degree, or more troublingly, those not on it who would need to be⁴. Therefore, I submit that in providing the necessary knowledge for students to then go on to complete a practical training course, the degree is sufficient and fit for purpose. Those who believe that the undergraduate degree should equally provide a ‘dress rehearsal’ for these courses, however, will always disagree.

My third and fourth housemates took a very different view to their LL.B studies. My third housemate wishes to follow a non-legal path, and took the degree believing it harboured a wide and varied skill set which would put them in a better position than other graduates. My fourth housemate took the LL.B because they wanted to move away from home and, as The Guardian so eloquently puts it, “doss around”⁵. The purpose required by my third housemate, I believe, is the easiest of them all to satisfy. The research, interpretation and analytical skills gained by the study of the LL.B are outstanding, as they are embedded in the undergraduate course⁶. Alongside these skills comes an attention to detail which can only come with time. A student who takes the LL.B for this reason, I assert, is one which knows the value of investing in oneself and ones future. However, the purpose of my fourth housemate is one which is not easily satisfied once one passes the first year of any degree, and is a very poor reason for pursuing the law.

So it appears that the big question is actually what is the point in a LL.B? My opinion is simple; if you ask a cohort of first years in their first lecture what they want to do with their degree the majority will say they aspire to become solicitors and barristers. If you ask again in second year more will say they wish to become solicitors, and when you ask at the beginning of the third year, and after their studies of the dreaded Land Law module, most will not have a clue. The point is that it opens students’ minds to the possibilities and options available to them. The law degree helps us to build skills which will aid us no matter what direction we wish to take after we finish our undergraduate journeys. To tailor degrees to individual purposes would be pointless because we easily change our minds: the majority of students come fresh faced from college or Sixth Form with only a vague idea of where they want to be in five years. So the point? The point of a law degree is to learn about ourselves, our aspirations and futures, what we enjoy and to develop our skills. We just happen to learn the law along the way.

SSRN - law schools and Research Paper Series

The Social Sciences Research Network is "devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research and is composed of a number of specialized research networks in each of the social sciences".  I've used it on and off over a few years to download papers from various academics, but only just got around to uploading my own papers recently.

Marie S. Newman (Out of the Jungle) recently asks whether universities, and law schools in particular, are considering the Research Paper Series, or branded approach to collating all papers from all staff, or perhaps thematic collections of papers from staff.  Indeed, the The Legal Scholarship Network (LSN) is directed by two US academics and is mainly US in terms of content - see here for the full list of the LSN Research Paper Series.

 Most of the ones listed are from the US, but Ulster's Transnational Justice Institute has a series and so have Warwick, LSE Legal Studies, Queen Mary, Oxford and Westminster law schools.  Each page can be badged, much as what Marie was discussing in her blog post, but there is a financial cost to setting up the series.

For me, the benefits seem to be:

• Working Papers or 'work in progress' can be uploaded
• Seminar papers from external visitors could be collated
• Papers published elsewhere can be entered, so long as an exclusive copyright isn't assigned
• It brings together all outputs from across a school or grouping
• Downloads and views can be tracked
• Citations are linked when citing papers are within SSRN
• Gives greater exposure, serendipitous finds etc.
• Fairly short links can be given on a website or CV

The all-time Top 10 for the LSN (downloads since 1997)is an interesting collection.  Daniel Solove's 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy had 226,199 views and 81, 974 downloads yet had only been cited in one other paper within the SSRN.  Google Scholar (yes, I know, Google is making me stupid and I will address this in the next blog post!) gave me 50 citations, so this functionality doesn't work so well with SSRN.  You can also link to other papers by the same author, and SSRN lists other papers that other people viewed and then downloaded.

In relation to cost, I don't seem able to find the 'price list', but it is free for the single user, such as myself, but schools or centres would probably need a critical mass of contributors and/or papers to make it worthwhile.  SSRN suggest that an 'increase in readership' can be obtained, but I suspect that the downloading of scholarship has to be compared to what was available before - this is likely to be university staff or school/centre homepages that are perhaps incomplete, or do not monitor downloads.

Blawg Review: On blogs and 'accidental' legal education (teach your children well...)

This week, Blawg Review #232 is hosted by Susan Cartier Liebel at Solo Practice University on World Teachers' Day. Held annually on October 5th since 1994, World Teachers' Day commemorates teachers’ organisations worldwide. Its aim is to mobilise support for teachers and to ensure that the needs of future generations will continue to be met by teachers.

For those who don't know, Blawg Review is carnival blog that is hosted by guest bloggers using their own blog site to provide content of a (usually specialist) theme.  It usually has a technology / IPR / alternative slant and, in the main, hosted by US bloggers.  There have been UK and Irish hosts in the past, most notably BabyBarrista (TimesOnline), CharonQC (Mike Semple Piggot), Cearta (Eoin O'Dell) and Lex Ferenda (Daithi MacSigthi).

This, it would appear, is the first blawg review to focus on legal education specifically, yet does so in a way that illustrates the 'Accidental Educator':

"Who is the accidental educator? In this case, the lawyer, regardless the myriad motivations for doing so, who shares his or her expertise that benefits many through the ever-expanding world of the internet. The tweeter who tweets one article that helps another find invaluable life-saving information and who continues to do so often and in random fashion. The lawyer who condemns in the court of public opinion a rule of law which is just plain wrong. But for this forum it might go unnoticed by the majority, unheard and unexplained. The opinionated who challenges you to rethink your position. The provocateur who baits others to engage in a much needed public debate. They are all educators if they make you think. They are all educators if they challenge your ideas, your biases, your beliefs. If they create and promote the conversation, they educate. You don’t have to agree, but you listen."

Susan then reviews and celebrates some of the blawgosphere's educators - again, mainly US but this does introduce the reader to further niches: bicycle law?

Last week, Colin Miller updated a list of US ‘legal educator’ blogs, following on from Daniel Solove‘s earlier census reports which were restrictedly solely to law professors.  It can be found on the Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN) and downloaded here.

Whilst interesting to flick through, the organisation of this list is mainly by law school or blog title.  Some titles reflect the name of the blogger, such as Lessig Blog, or Brian Leiter's Law School Reports, others are plain subject titles such as the Mass Tort Litigation Blog, some might even be a collective effort from one particular institution: The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog.  Others, however, are less indicative of their content: Law Prof on the Loose!  What it does not do, is organise by field, subject or specialism – which might be of more use to those looking for a particular type of blog to read.

Miller does offer some stats on the (roughly) 60/40 male-to-female ratio for these bloggers, and that Harvard Law School leads the field with 23 bloggers on their faculty.  This does, as he observes, offer some “indication of where law schools stand in the blogosphere”, and it will be interesting to see if these observations change over time.  Interestingly, Harvard does not lead the table of ‘number of blogs on which educators at those schools post’.

In the light of Susan's comments on accidental educators, the authors of the blogs in the above list are clearly opining in one way or another, yet few comment on their approach to teaching.  Paul Maharg observed in his blog Zeugma that only one such blog focused on legal education as their primary theme: the Best Practices blog, maintained by Prof Mary Lynch and here are links to some of her recent posts:

So, what can we say about these legal bloggers?  Yes, they are giving an educational experience to the reader, but it is more than likely that the reader will be a fellow academic, a practicing lawyer,or other professional.  Less likely is that law students will read or engage with these blogs, other than perhaps blogs written by their own teaching staff. It might be interesting to consider whether bloggers are better at blogging an opinion or viewpoint than transmitting the same point whilst teaching a class.

Evidence Net - new from the HEA

For those who were at the HEA's annual conference in July, you may have heard about the launch of Evidence Net.  It is a new Academy initiative that provides access to evidence on learning and teaching in HE, as well as opportunities to discuss and explore how that evidence can usefully impact on practice and policy to enhance students’ learning experiences.

The website covers three main areas: resources, events and networks. The EvidenceNet team will be producing and commissioning summaries and syntheses of research so that you can always keep up to date with new research or policy documents, get a quick overview of key or seminal articles, and make sure you don’t miss out on high profile work. EvidenceNet is aimed at anyone working in teaching and learning in higher education, and the website is searchable by keyword, discipline area, pedagogic theme, or type of resource.

This website is the hub of EvidenceNet's activity but  the virtual community is expanding thorough a ning social networking site and wiki pilot site.

A quick search for the term 'law' within resources yields 17 hits.  This is conveniently broken down in a side bar so that I can see that 3 relate to technology, 9 are equality and diversity, 2 are policy and 1 is CPD etc.

The team will be expanding the content and adding new features throughout phase two over the next year so that this site will grow to become an authoritative stop for learning and teaching research and resources.

Legal Education and Technology II: An Annotated Bibliography

Paul Maharg's blog, Zeugma, has recently highlighted the second edition of Pearl Goldman's annotated bibliography.

The first edition in 93 Law Libr. J. 423 (2001) reviewed the impact of technologies on law schools between 1970 and 2001.  This second edition includes the year range 2001 to 1 March 2008, thus illustrating the need for an update on the number of articles, commentaries, conference papers, essays, books, and book chapters.

Goldman categorises the bibliography into seven key themes: specific technologies, curriculum, distance education, pedagogy, law schools, the future of technology in legal education, and miscellaneous.

In total, 554 entries are made in the 2008 edition compared to the initial 221 entries made in 2001, representing a good 50% increase; although some of the entries are duplicated under two or more categories.  Nevertheless, this does represent a useful and well organised set of resources - just a shame it's not hyperlinked to HeinOnline, Google Scholar, other databases, or even, dare I say, Del.icio.us?!