How we interpret and understand the historical contexts of legal education has profoundly affected how we understand contemporary educational cultures and practices. This book, the result of a Modern Law Review seminar, both celebrates and critiques the lasting impact of Peter Birks’ influential edited collection, Pressing Problems in the Law: Volume 2: What is the Law School for? Published in 1996, his book addresses many critical issues that are hauntingly present in the 21st century, amongst them the impact of globalisation; technological disruption; and the tension inherent in law schools as they seek to balance the competing interest of teaching, research and administration. Yet Birks’ collection misses key issues, too. The role of wellbeing, of emotion or affect, the relation of legal education to education, the status of legal education in what, since his volume, have become the devolved jurisdictions of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland – these and others are absent from the research agenda of the book. Today, legal educators face new challenges. We are still recovering from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on our universities. In 1996 Birks was keen to stress the importance of comparative research within Europe. Today, legal researchers are dismayed at the possibility of losing valuable EU research funding when the UK leaves the EU, and at the many other negative effects of Brexit on legal education. The proposed Solicitors Qualifying Examination takes legal education regulation and professional learning into uncharted waters. This book discusses these and related impacts on our legal educations. As law schools approach an existential crossroads post-Covid-19, it seems timely to revisit Birks’ fundamental question: what are law schools for?

This edited collection offers a critical overview of the major debates in legal education set in the context of the Lord Upjohn Lectures, the annual event that draws together legal educators and professionals in the United Kingdom to consider the major debates and changes in the field. Presented in a unique format that reproduces classic lectures alongside contemporary responses from legal education experts, this book offers both an historical overview of how these debates have developed and an up-to-date critical commentary on the state of legal education today. As the full impact of the introduction of university fees, the Legal Education and Training Review and the regulators’ responses are felt in law departments across England and Wales, this collection offers a timely reflection on legal education’s legacy, as well as critical debate on how it will develop in the future.

This book discusses the opportunities and challenges facing legal education in the era of globalization. It identifies the knowledge and skills that law students will require in order to prepare for the practice of tomorrow, and explores pedagogical shifts legal education needs to make inside and outside of the classroom. With contributions from leading experts on legal education from various jurisdictions across the globe, the work combines theoretical depth with practical insights. Seeking to understand the changing landscape of legal education in the era of globalization, the contributions find that law schools can, and must, adopt educational strategies that at least present students with different understandings of what studying and practicing law is meant to be about. They find that law schools need to offer their students choices, a vision of practice that is not driven entirely by the demands of the marketplace or the needs of major international law firms. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, this book makes a significant contribution to the impact of globalization on legal education, and how students and law schools need to adapt for the future. It will be of great interest to academics and students of comparative legal studies and legal education, as well as policy-makers and practitioners.

This book is a critique of the rapidly changing nature of legal education in major Asian jurisdictions as diverse as Afghanistan, Australia, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam. It provides cross-country comparative material, including western legal education systems, and particularly detailed coverage of Japan.

Legal research is a fundamental skill for all law students and attorneys. Regardless of practice area or work venue, knowledge of the sources and processes of legal research underpins the legal professional’s work. Academic law librarians, as research experts, are uniquely qualified to teach legal research. Whether participating in the mandatory, first-year law school curriculum or offering advanced or specialized legal research instruction, law librarians have the up-to-date knowledge, the broad view of the field, and the expertise to provide the best legal research instruction possible. This collection offers both theoretical and practical guidance on legal research education from the perspectives of the law librarian. Containing well-reasoned, analytical articles on the topic, the volume explains and supports the law librarian’s role in legal research instruction. The contributors to this book, all experts in teaching legal research, challenge academic law librarians to seize their instructional role in the legal academy. This book was based on a special issue of Legal Reference Services Quarterly.

In the last few decades university teaching has been recognised as an activity which can be studied and improved through educational scholarship. In some disciplines this is now well established. It remains emergent in legal education. The field is rich with questions to be answered, issues to be raised. This book provides the first overall review of legal education scholarship. The chapters outline the history of legal education research and provide a detailed analysis of the trends in areas of publication. Beyond this, the book suggests a typology for further conceptualising the field and a series of suggested paths for future research. The book originated from the 2017 UNSW conference "Research in Legal Education: State of the Art?" It features internationally respected authors who bring their perspectives on how legal education – as a field of research – should be conceptualised. The collection is arranged into three themes. First, a historical view is taken of the emergence of legal education scholarship and its roots that predate modern educational theory. Secondly, the book provides overviews of the extant field of publications, highlighting areas of interest and neglect, and delineating the trends in current publication. Thirdly, the book provides a set of suggested typologies for describing legal education research and a series of essays for future directions which both critique current approaches and provide inspiration for future directions. The State of Legal Education Research represents an authoritative introduction to the field, a set of conceptual tools with which to describe it, and inspiration for researchers to expand and grow research into legal education.

An invaluable and fascinating resource, this carefully edited anthology presents recent writings by leading legal historians, many commissioned for this book, along with a wealth of related primary sources by John Adams, James Barr Ames, Thomas Jefferson, Christopher C. Langdell, Karl N. Llewellyn, Roscoe Pound, Tapping Reeve, Theodore Roosevelt, Joseph Story, John Henry Wigmore and other distinguished contributors to American law. It is divided into nine sections: Teaching Books and Methods in the Lecture Hall, Examinations and Evaluations, Skills Courses, Students, Faculty, Scholarship, Deans and Administration, Accreditation and Association, and Technology and the Future. Contributors to this volume include Morris Cohen, Daniel R. Coquillette, Michael Hoeflich, John H. Langbein, William P. LaPiana and Fred R. Shapiro. Steve Sheppard is the William Enfield Professor of Law, University of Arkansas School of Law.

Clinical legal education (CLE) is potentially the major disruptor of traditional law schools’ core functions. Good CLE challenges many central clichés of conventional learning in law—everything from case book method to the 50-minute lecture. And it can challenge a contemporary overemphasis on screen-based learning, particularly when those screens only provide information and require no interaction. Australian Clinical Legal Education comes out of a thorough research program and offers the essential guidebook for anyone seeking to design and redesign accountable legal education; that is, education that does not just transform the learner, but also inculcates in future lawyers a compassion for and service of those whom the law ought to serve. Established law teachers will come to grips with the power of clinical method. Law students struggling with overly dry conceptual content will experience the connections between skills, the law and real life. Regulators will look again at law curricula and ask law deans ‘when’?