Modernising legal education

Summary

This project draws together international insights from academia, industry and regulators around the theme of innovation and technology in legal education.

Researchers

Project background and aims

Over the last decade, cost-pressures, technology, automation, globalisation, de-regulation and changing client relationships have transformed the practice of law. Yet in the face of these changes, legal education has remained surprisingly unmoved. Technology is still a relative rarity in legal education as either a means or ends, and opportunities to acquire skills beyond what regulators prescribe or what legal academics are willing to teach, are few and far between. In pursuit of a modernisation agenda, the ‘Modernising Legal Education’ edited collection draws together international insights from academia, industry and regulators around the theme of innovation in legal education.

Edited by Catrina Denvir and published by Cambridge University Press in 2019, this volume offers readers an opportunity to reflect upon the role that legal technology can and should play in education, both as a tool to enhance teaching and a subject of study in its own right. The contributions offer insight into and examples of new initiatives, and provide a fertile source of inspiration for those interested in technology in legal education.

Methodology

The collection draws together work from a variety of authors each of whom employ a range of different analytical methods. Examples include: qualitative analysis of observations and feedback collected following the implementation of innovative and experimental teaching methods (including the use of Virtual Reality to enhance the teaching of Legal Ethics, the virtual gamification of Criminal Law); comparison of online versus face to face approaches to teaching the legal curriculum, and; analysis of regulatory structures governing the legal education and training pathway.

Output