Teaching Legal Education In The Digital Age

Legal education is at a crossroads. As a media-saturated generation of students enters law school, they find themselves thrust into a fairly backward mode of instruction, much of which is over 100 years old. Over those years, legal education has resisted many credible reports recommending change, most recently those from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and from the Clinical Legal Education Association. Meanwhile, the cost of legal education continues to skyrocket, with many law students graduating with crushing debt they have difficulty paying back. All of these factors are likely to reach a crescendo in the next few years, setting the stage for a perfect storm out of which can come significant change. But legal education has successfully resisted systemic change for many years. Given that dubious track record, the only way significant change can reasonably be predicted is if something is different this time. Fortunately, there is something different this time: the ubiquity of technology. Since the MacCrate report in 1992, the internet has achieved massive growth, and a generation of students has grown up with sophisticated and pervasive use of technology in nearly every facet of their lives. This book describes how the perfect storm of generational change and the rising cost and criticisms of legal education, combined with extraordinary technological developments, will change the face of legal education as we know it today. Its scope extends from generational changes in our students, to pedagogical shifts inside and outside of the classroom, to hybrid textbooks, all the way to methods of active, interactive, and hypertextual learning. And it describes how this shift can--and will--better prepare law students for the practice of tomorrow.

Teaching Legal Education in the Digital Age explores how legal pedagogy and curriculum design should be modernised to ensure that law students have a realistic view of the future of the legal profession. Using future readiness and digital empowerment as central themes, chapters discuss the use of technology to enhance the design and delivery of the curriculum and argue the need for the curriculum to be developed to prepare students for the use of technology in the workplace. The volume draws together a range of contributions to consider the impact of digital pedagogies in legal education and propose how technology can be used in the law curriculum to enhance student learning in law schools and lead excellence in teaching. Throughout, the authors consider what it means to be future-ready and what we can do as law academics to facilitate the knowledge, skills and dispositions needed by future-ready graduates. Part of Routledge’s series on Legal Pedagogy, this book will be of great interest to academics, post-graduate students, teachers and researchers of law, as well as those with a wider interest in legal pedagogy or legal practice.

This collection of essays by legal scholars explores the digital revolution that has transformed legal education. It discusses the way digital materials will be created and how they will change concepts of authorship as well as methods of production and distribution. The book also explores the impact of digital materials on law school classrooms and law libraries, and the potential transformation of the curriculum that these materials are likely to produce.

During the coming decades, the digital revolution that has transformed so much of our world will transform legal education as well. The digital production and distribution of course materials will powerfully affect both the content and the way materials are used in the classroom and library. This collection of essays by leading legal scholars in various fields explores three aspects of this coming transformation. The first set of essays discusses the way digital materials will be created and how they will change concepts of authorship as well as methods of production and distribution. The second set explores the impact of digital materials on law school classrooms and law libraries and the third set considers the potential transformation of the curriculum that the materials are likely to produce. Taken together, these essays provide a guide to momentous changes that every legal teacher and scholar needs to understand.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a forceful reminder that education plays an important role in delivering not just academic learning, but also in supporting physical and emotional well-being. Balancing traditional “book learning” with broader social and personal development means new roles for schools and education more generally.

This edition shows educators how to bridge the digital divide that disproportionally affects culturally and linguistically diverse learners with research-informed technology models. Designed to support equitable access to engaging and enriching digital-age education opportunities for English learners, it includes technology integration models and instructional strategies, sample lessons, collaboration tips, educator vignettes with creative solutions, and discussion questions.

The essential guide to teaching in a virtual environment Online Teaching in the Digital Age provides educators with the essential knowledge needed to successfully develop and teach an online course. Throughout this practical hands-on guide, the authors offer 15 years of personal online teaching experience in language accessible to both the novice and advanced online educator. Developed through theory and practice, the text shows educators how to take the materials used in a traditional classroom and transfer them to a new virtual environment. Additionally, it gives educators the confidence and skills needed to run real-time (synchronous) and time-arranged (asynchronous) online discussions. Most reassuring of all, this book shows that few traditional course elements need to change in order to start teaching online.

The European higher education sector is moving online, but to what extent? Are the digital disruptions seen in other sectors of relevance for both academics and management in higher education? How far are we from fully seizing the opportunities that an online transition could offer? This insightful book presents a broad perspective on existing academic practices, and discusses how and where the move online has been successful, and the lessons that can be learned.