Nelson, J --- "In This Issue" [2004] LegEdDig 49; (2004) 13(2) Legal Education Digest 2

In This Issue

Dr John Nelson

[2004] LegEdDig 49; (2004) 13(2) Legal Education Digest 2

The subject of the one review article in this issue is a book by Philip Kissam published in 2003 and entitled The discipline of law schools: the making of modern lawyers. It seeks to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of American legal education through a study of the ‘routines, habits and tacit knowledge of law schools’ with the objective of exposing and encouraging reflection about the discipline of law schools and suggesting alternative practices to counter the discipline’s negative effects.

There are a total of four articles under Skills in this Digest issue. Hutchinson & Cuffe describe a web-based teaching and learning project designed to extend the research project management capacities of students beyond their compulsory undergraduate legal research instruction. Van Haaren-Dresens outlines an online course on legislative drafting conducted by a Dutch law school which also aims to foster student collaborative learning skills. In his article, Martin describes the process followed in developing a computer-based module designed to introduce students, through the use of problem-based learning, to legal problem solving and its importance to their professional practice.

The balance of the articles digested for this issue are on a mixture of topics, stretching, for example under Clinical Legal Education, from Copeland’s arguments identifying the benefits of and supporting situating clinical legal education programs in the environment of a community legal centre to Letsika’s reflections on teaching lawyering skills within a law clinic situated in Lesotho. Under Context, Criticism & Theory, Horrigan looks at how the traditional dichotomy between theory and practice in legal education and professional and corporate practice has marginalised theory as something non-essential to real law and real-world practice and suggests ways in which applied jurisprudence can be reconnected to substantive law. In the last of the articles in an issue of the Journal of Legal Education devoted to women in legal education (other articles were digested in vol.13 no.2 of the Digest), Resnik reviews the gains in the status of women over the years and what still needs to be done and presents a justification for a recent joint AALS and ABA conference on this theme.

Kenny offers an overview of the provision of judicial education programs in Australia, appearing not surprisingly under Judicial Education. Under Law Teachers, Schuwerk traces the duties, conceptualised as deriving from a fiduciary relationship, owed by law professors to their students, in preparing entering law students to be reasonably competent and ethical practitioners. Gladding describes a recent revolution in Japanese legal education which will place universities at the heart of legal training and increase dramatically the number of new lawyers entering practice, who will possess a greater array of skills than in the past.

Under Practical Training we have an article in which McCall recounts an experiment in the use of legal practitioners to breathe life into commercial and property subjects. While he concedes that there is nothing new about using the skills of visiting practitioners to teach law or legal practice subjects, he contends that, for practical legal training students, both the prospect of interaction with expert practitioners in ‘real-life’ tasks and the interaction itself can make a difference to the process of their learning, especially in ‘lifeless’ commercial and property subjects.

Research contains an article by Doherty & Leighton setting out their findings from a study of research funding for law in the United Kingdom, in which the main funding bodies and the nature of the legal topics that receive funding were identified. One interesting finding is that funded research is not attractive to many law teachers, which leads the authors to speculate on the reasons for this reluctance and suggest strategies that might encourage them to take advantage of the funding opportunities available. Finally, under Technology, Richards describes an online tutorial system introduced by one law school and open to all staff to use as a teaching tool to supplement but not substitute for face-to-face teaching. He underscores the point that care and planning in the implementation phase are crucial to success in the inclusion of the internet in the legal education process.