Academic Learning In Law

This timely book calls for a critical re-evaluation of university legal education, with the particular aim of strengthening its academic nature. It emphasizes lecturers’ responsibility to challenge the assumptions students have about law, and the importance of putting law in a theoretical and social context that allows for critical reflection and sceptical detachment. In addition, the book reports upon teaching experiences and innovations, offering tools for teachers to strengthen the academic nature of legal education.

Learning Law is an indispensable guide, providing the foundational knowledge and skills required for the study and practice of law.

Learning Employment Law provides concise and clear text, examples, and case excerpts that empower students to engage in sophisticated problem-solving regarding the most pressing issues in contemporary workplace law. The book succinctly reviews the historical backdrop of each issue to ensure that students gain the wider understanding necessary to effectively address contemporary problems. The book is comprised of 44 independent Lessons that can be structured by the professor to highlight different themes. Students will be exposed to common law and regulatory regimes, with a focus on the new workplace challenges of the platform economy, outsourced labor, and immigrant labor. Students will gain a sophisticated understanding of the challenges facing lawyers in this rapidly developing area of the law.

Effective Learning and Teaching in Law will provide all law teaching professionals with practical, authoritative guidance and advice on the successful teaching of their subject in both university settings and as part of professional training and practice. Written to promote the development of and recognition of the professional role of the law teacher, this book will help educators equip law students of law with the intellectual and practical skills required to succeed in their studies. Key coverage includes assessment, the design and planning of learning activities, the use of IT in legal education and developing suitable learning environments. The book is edited by a leading team of legal educators for the UK Centre for Legal Education (UKCLE) at the University of Warwick, and includes expert contributions from leading figures in the field. It will be essential reading for anyone involved with legal education today and will be particularly relevant for those developing their teaching career, or seeking professional accreditation.

The Assessment in Legal Education book series offers perspectives on assessment in legal education across a range of Common Law jurisdictions. Each volume in the series provides: Information on assessment practices and cultures within a jurisdiction. A sample of innovative assessment practices and designs in a jurisdiction. Insights into how assessment can be used effectively across different areas of law, different stages of legal education and the implications for regulation of legal education assessment. Appreciation of the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research bases that are emerging in the field of legal education assessment generally. Analyses and suggestions of how assessment innovations may be transferred from one jurisdiction to another. The series will be useful for those seeking a summary of the assessment issues facing academics, students, regulators, lawyers and others in the jurisdictions under analysis. The exemplars of assessment contained in each volume may also be valuable in assisting cross-jurisdictional fertilisation of ideas and practices. This first volume focuses on assessment in law schools in England. It begins with an introduction to some recent trends in the culture and practice of legal education assessment. The first chapter focuses on the general regulatory context of assessment and learning in that jurisdiction, while the remainder of the book offers useful exemplars and expert critical discussion of assessment theories and practices. The series is based in the PEARL Centre (Profession, Education and Regulation in Law), in The Australian National University’s College of Law.

"This book discusses every aspect of assessment from the broad topics of creating a culture of assessment and the institutional assessment process to the more specific topics of assessing student learning at the course and program levels and assessing teaching effectiveness. The book models assessment at the institutional level, the course level, and throughout the law school (experiential learning programs, legal writing courses, centers and concentrations, extracurricular activities, non-academic offices). In addition to explaining the assessment process generally and in a variety of specific contexts, this book provides example assessment documents and tools that law schools can adapt as necessary. Moreover, the book offers suggestions for law schools on peer, student, and self-assessment of teaching effectiveness, both formative (ongoing teaching development) and summative (personnel decisions). Administrators, new professors, and seasoned professors will find guidance and advice on all aspects of assessing teaching and student learning"--

"Legal education has created silos where certain professors teach "skills" courses and others teach "doctrine." This book challenges that division by building on learning theories that establish students cannot truly learn doctrine without explicit instruction in skills. Moreover, it provides suggestions to demonstrate how law professors can seamlessly weave skills-based assessments into a course to spotlight for students what they have learned and for professors what students haven't learned (as required by ABA Standard 314)"--

Most young people considering studying law, or pursuing a legal career, have very little idea of what learning law involves and how universities teach law to their students. The new edition of this book, which proved very popular when first published in 2007, provides a 'taster' for the study of law; a short, accessible presentation of law as an academic subject, designed to help 17- and 18-year old students and others decide whether law is the right choice for them as a university subject, or, if they have already made the choice, what to expect when they start their law degree. It helps answer the question 'what should I study at university?' and counters the perception that law is a dry, dull subject. What About Law? shows how the study of law can be fun, intellectually stimulating, challenging and of direct relevance to students. Using a case study approach, the book introduces prospective law students to the legal system, as well as to legal reasoning, critical thinking and argument. This is a book that should be in the library of every school with a sixth form, every college and every university, and it is one that any student about to embark on the study of law should read before they commence their legal studies. All of the authors have long experience in teaching law at Cambridge and elsewhere and all have also been involved, at various times, in advising prospective law students at open days and admissions conferences. Listed as one of the 'Six of the best law books' that a future law student should read by the Guardian Law Online, 8th August 2012.