Keynote Speakers

Prof. Paul Maharg
Disintermediation: the art of good business and the art of learning justice.

Disintermediation is a concept well-understood in many industries. At its simplest, it refers to the business process by which intermediaries in a supply chain are eliminated, often though not always by digital re-engineering of process and workflow. It can sometimes result in streamlined processes that appear more customer- or client-focused. It can also result in the destruction of almost entire industries and occupations, and the re-design of many aspects of customer- and client-facing activities. To date, HE and legal education in particular have given some attention to the process, but have largely followed the business/industrial framework of analysis. In this lecture I argue that the processes that bring about disintermediation are actually more profound than we acknowledge; and that they have been integral to legal education and to the textual tools, skills and forms of knowledge by which we have described, analysed and transmitted our conceptions of law and justice. I examine some of the consequences that, in the digital age, disintermediation is having upon our law schools and upon our teaching and learning, using examples of poetry and film to understand its effects. Finally I describe how we might re-engineer aspects of it in one version of the future of legal education. 

Prof. Khin Mar Yee
Legal Education in Myanmar

The Rule of Law is the main factor for the development of a country. Legal education is the essential contribution for the rule of law in Myanmar. The department of law came into existence in 1920 together with the Rangoon University (today the University of Yangon). During the early years, former law degree was known as Bachelor of Laws (BL) as part-time course. After 1964, students obtained BA (Law) degree. New system of higher education brought LLB degree in 1965 at the Department of Law, YU. There are a large number of LLB graduates produced from 18 Law Departments of different universities in Myanmar as on campus students and two universities of Distance Education. Once the LLB graduates obtained their degrees, after one year of chamber-reading they can apply for Higher Grade Pleader License which would entitle them to practise law in all courts except the Supreme Court. To be an advocate, the Supreme Court gives a license to the applicant who fulfilled the requirement. To be judge or public prosecutor, selection board exam have to be passed. Graduate diploma courses which are Diploma in Business Law, Diploma in International Law, Diploma in Maritime Law and newly Diploma in Intellectual Property Law are offered by the Department of Law, University of Yangon. In 1987, medium of instruction for teaching and learning was changed to English in all universities. Clinical Legal education was introduced in 2013. Professors and Lectures form Departments of Law of different universities and foreign professors give lectures related to Myanmar Laws and Legal Education in Myanmar. 

Confirmed speakers (in alphabetical order)

Ms. Deborah Ankor and Ms. Tania Leiman
Legal Education and Adaptive Change in a Disruptive Era.

In their March 2016 report for the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, Disrupting Law School, Pistone and Horn identify five factors which are disrupting legal education: disruption in legal services, nonconsumption of legal services, policy/licensure changes, disruption in higher education, and nonconsumption of legal education.

The legal services sector in the common law world, relatively mature and settled for some time, has seen significant recent change. These developments are at the cutting edge of the disruption of the legal services sector predicted by Richard Susskind and others.

These changes will have an impact on demand for law graduates and, in the US and Australia, are occurring against a reported background of existing oversupply of law graduates.  Perceptions about this lack of demand are likely to have flow on effects such as falling enrolments in law schools.

We explore how these developments might affect legal education and the role of law schools. We look at the dialogue of disruption in relation to the legal services sector, and the impact that changes in that sector may have on the demand for law graduates. We then begin to consider how we might best prepare our students for the coming environment, drawing on notions of adaptive change.

Mr. Saru Arifin
The Implementation of Problem Based Learning Method in Indonesian Law School Teaching and Learning Process

There are many models or methods that may be developed in the learning process of law, including the learning-based learning, Student Centred Learning (SCL), and Problem Based Learning (PBL). There are several features of these methods, they are to encourage a different perspective, learning is not one-way, utilizing instructional media, searches matter of law, the reasoning and legal arguments, honed sense of justice, votes not on the final exam, but the creative process of the students in interaction and supplies into the world and work practices.

This study aims to identify and analyze how are the student response to Problem Based Learning method practiced them in the course of regional autonomy law, and how it affects the learning process in the classroom. The method used in this research was a case study in law classes of Legal Autonomy with as many as 69 students. The results of this study indicate that students generally responded positively to the use of the case study method. This was indicated by their antsuiasme during the lecture by always actively discuss and freely in doing their task, both in terms of extracting the theory and application in the field. As for the influence of the learning model case studies on three things, namely: increasing their attending to lectures, cooperation, and increase knowledge of theory and practice as well. Therefore, this case study model applied in the relevant subjects that have a more practical than the conceptual, but it requires the time management and curriculum adaptability.

Mr. Peter Barnes
If You Want to Be a Good Lawyer, Don't (Only) Study Law

The obtaining of a law degree, however stellar the GPA, is at most a foundation upon which you can begin to build.  It is a skeleton which will, it is hoped, provide the structure.  The rest – the flesh and character of the lawyer to come – comes from the richness of wider experience.   Case law can give you an insight into that experience, but it is often unrepresentative, skewed; it can even be archaic.   My suggestion is that the wiser, more imaginative, and ultimately more successful lawyers are made through an embracement of the kaleidoscope of human knowledge and experience, and consequently the broadening of their field of studies at this formative time.   I hope to persuade by examples, a few anecdotes.  Whether or not this process is to be ensured by regulatory requirement or gentle encouragement is a second, supplementary question for debate.

Prof. Amy Barrow and Ms. Joy Chia
Beyond the Clinic: The Role of Socio-Legal Education in Cultivating Public Interest Lawyers

Clinical legal education programmes have traditionally served as a vehicle to drive the development of public interest law and lawyers with an increased sense of social responsibility to identify unmet legal needs and unrepresented litigants. Potentially, experiential learning opportunities offered by legal clinics instill in law students a sense of social responsibility and an awareness of ethical obligations upon entering legal practice. The reach of clinical education may be limited however, particularly if such programmes are not adopted as a mandatory requirement of the law curriculum. Socio-legal courses which explore the nexus between social justice and the law also potentially have a role to play in strengthening law student's perceptions of the role of law, its promise and limitations, as well as social problems within society and how these may be addressed. Grounded in pedagogical, empirical research conducted with undergraduate law students (LLB programme) in the Faculty of Law at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, this paper explores how socio-legal courses may be used as an alternative means of cultivating public interest lawyers where traditional clinical legal education programmes cannot accommodate all students.

Mr. Jason Buhi
Preparing Chinese Law Students for Global Practice: My Experience Teaching Lawyering Skills at the Peking University School of Transnational Law in Shenzhen.

China's willingness to experiment with different laws and legal institutions through "one country, two systems" in Hong Kong and Macau, as well as the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone's Qianhai District, suggests that this region's eventual legal infrastructure will continue to blend Chinese and Western components. The Peking University School of Transnational Law in Shenzhen is uniquely situated to prepare aspiring attorneys for this future, as it is the only law school to offer an American-style Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree coupled with a Chinese Juris Master (J.M.) degree. Teaching legal research and writing in this unique context often presents challenges due to possible impediments that some of our students may face (including lower second-language ability, adjusting to a more challenging and Socratic academic environment, and lack of familiarity with Western legal concepts). This presentation discusses the design of a curriculum designed to provide Chinese students the lawyering skills necessary to think like trained attorneys and convey legal analysis of a problem in written and oral form adhering to the conventions of the legal profession. 

Prof. Camille Cameron
The Future of Legal Education: Taking the Long View in the Face of Flux, Uncertainty and the Often Conflicting Views of Educators and Regulators

A significant challenge facing legal educators today is the shifting nature of the practice of law and the provision of legal services. These shifts are described and explained in various ways. Some point to the increasing sophistication of artificial intelligence, including its ability to provide 'expert' legal advice. Some note that paralegals and others are increasingly providing services that were traditionally provided by law school graduates. Some see the outsourcing of legal work, whether across the street or across the world, as one of these shifts. In Futures: Transforming the Delivery of Legal Services in Canada, the Canadian Bar Association identified four key drivers of these and other legal shifts and changes: technology, politics, economics and demography. Professor Harry Arthurs describes how this "relentless change" is "destabilizing existing legal institutions, rules, processes and patterns of practice."

If we place on a continuum educators' views about the purpose of a legal education, with 'practice-ready' at one end and something akin to 'a sound grounding in legal theory, knowledge and analysis' at the other, these shifts matter regardless of where on the continuum legal educators place themselves. Using the Canadian legal education context as an example but drawing on other jurisdictions as well, this presentation will explore how legal educators can most effectively respond to these shifts and ensure that they are educating students for the students' future. Whether and how these shifts differ from those that have happened in previous decades will be considered. The presentation will also examine the role of regulators (bar and law societies) and the nature and sources of the often conflicting visions of legal education as between regulators and legal educators.

Prof. Stacy Caplow
Clinical Legal Education in the Year 2026:  Looking Back at the Last Decade

In 1984, about a decade after clinical legal education had been hesitatingly adopted in the US at many but certainly not all US law schools, and when it was still considered an unorthodox, possibly anti-intellectual (and expensive) challenge to traditional Law School teaching which principally employed a lecture method, Prof. Anthony Amsterdam of NYU Law School, in an essay in the Journal of Legal Education, imagined looking back from the 21st century on the evolution of clinical legal education.  His claim was that by then this methodology had been accepted and had flourished.  Although one of the principal architects of experiential learning through simulation courses, his claims of success actually were optimistic but not grand.

Prof. Stacy Caplow
Clinical Legal Education in the Year 2026:  Looking Back at the Last Decade

In 1984, about a decade after clinical legal education had been hesitatingly adopted in the US at many but certainly not all US law schools, and when it was still considered an unorthodox, possibly anti-intellectual (and expensive) challenge to traditional Law School teaching which principally employed a lecture method, Prof. Anthony Amsterdam of NYU Law School, in an essay in the Journal of Legal Education, imagined looking back from the 21st century on the evolution of clinical legal education.  His claim was that by then this methodology had been accepted and had flourished.  Although one of the principal architects of experiential learning through simulation courses, his claims of success actually were optimistic but not grand.

Almost 40 years later, and ten years after I first visited Hong Kong to investigate how clinical legal education might find a place in law faculties there (here), there is much to report about changes, new theories, directions and activities that were unimaginable to even the staunchest supports of clinical education in the mid-to-late 20th century.  I take a leaf from Prof. Amsterdam and will look at the status of clinical—or as it is increasingly denominated—experiential education today and what might continue to be accomplished over the next ten years.  

Ms. Anne Carver
Professorial Authority vs Freedom of expression in the classroom - the professor is always right (Film)

This short film presents the views of some of the law students at the CUHK Faculty of Law on how Professors encourage debate in the classroom and the benefits to the students of such discussion. The film also raises the question  and  presents evidence that ,while encouraging such debate, the Professors  at times simply do not permit  serious disagreement  that conflicts with  their  own deeply held values .The problem is  twofold. Do our students believe that it is, in fact, permitted to disagree with the Professorial perspective? The second, and more difficult question for us is, of course, do we actually believe it and do we permit it in the classroom?

Prof. Jane Ching
"Riding madly off in all directions": consistency and convergence in professional legal education

It is possible to see, in professional legal education systems, waves sweeping from continent to continent. The JD continues (arguably) to conquer. Competence statements for the point of qualification are developed in Australia, then appear in Canada and in the UK. CPD systems start to move, albeit slowly, from hours-based to outcomes-based models.

In many cases, however, those waves are of individual components of professional legal education being, in turn, adopted and rejected. The solicitors' professions in England and Wales and in Hong Kong are considering "bar examinations" in the shape of the proposed SQE and CEE. At much the same time, however, the USA problematizes bar examinations and begins to focus on the learning outcomes and experiential learning that is (only too) familiar to those of us from the UK, Australasia and Hong Kong. Something similar can be seen in legal regulation, where professions emerge, merge and disappear over time in different configurations. In England and Wales, legal executives gain the right to practise independently; at roughly the same time, Canada, Scotland and some US states develop regulated paralegal professions.

This presentation will consider the implications of these trends, often apparently taking place in isolation, without reference to other professions or, more specifically, to the experience and expertise of legal colleagues in other jurisdictions. There is, however, a limited set of professional legal education components such as the bar examination; undergraduate or postgraduate law degree; CPE/GDL course; PCLL or LPC type vocational courses; QLTS or OLQE mechanism; training contract or articles, and, it will be suggested, we can do more to examine these components by reference to the global experience. Before we ride madly off in any direction with our legal education structures, it behoves us to examine closely who has been there before, where they went and what they did. And, if they turned back, why.

Ms. Jenny Chan
Group exercises for assessments in legal education – sounds fancy, but can it work?

Legal educators increasingly adopt a variety of innovative in-class assessment methods to replace or supplement conventional examination types.  One of the most widely documented innovative assessment methods is the group exercise model in the form of e.g. group discussions, role-plays, simulations or group presentations. These activities are often referred to by inconsistent terminology, such as "collaborative learning", "student collaboration", "cooperative work", "group work" or "cooperative peer learning".  Furthermore, there is little hard evidence of the pedagogical value of these models. This paper introduces the most common collaborative learning forms, discusses their common features and explores if and how it is possible to evaluate their usefulness in legal education.

Prof. Wilson Chow and Prof. Michael Ng
Simulation in legal education and training: from adoption to adaptation

Direct purposeful experience, a synonym of "doing the real thing", occupies the most privileged position in the Cone of Experience (Dale 1969) which seeks to hierarchically rank learning experiences in terms of concreteness. It is followed by contrived experiences, synonymous to simulations. Both require the learner to 'do the thing', one in real life and the other through simulated case studies and exercises. Legal education in Asia has been undergoing significant changes in the past decade. In enhancing the interactivity and the degree of realism in students learning, some of these law schools have recently been taking advantage of experiential learning, with or without the aid of information technology, largely based on the models of the US and the UK. 

This paper showcases the reformed Postgraduate Certificate in Laws programme at the University of Hong Kong which has not just changed from a knowledge-rich curriculum to one with greater emphasis on transactional knowledge and lawyering skills through the use of case files adapted from real cases, but also implemented, with necessary adaption and modification, pedagogical practices which have been proven overseas namely: (a) the use of a transactional e-learning platform known as Simulated Professional Learning Environment; and (b) standardized client interviews. Through an unprecedented empirical study of these simulation initiatives in Hong Kong, a common law jurisdiction in Asia, we argue that any sustainable transplant of pedagogical practices for legal education needs substantial adaptation to the societal needs of lawyering in a specific jurisdiction together with a very close fit with the prevailing behaviour of students in their learning and social life. This paper also highlights challenges that this 'adoption and adaptation' strategy is facing in any common law jurisdiction in the region.

Prof. Anne-Marie Cotter
Teaching Law for the Real World: Bridging the gap between law school and the legal profession

The Role of Law Schools
Practitioners: While pure academics who teach law courses and publish in their respective areas are very important, a new thought process should be developed at law schools to bring on board practitioners either as full faculty members or sessionals to teach law courses.  This would help bridge the gap between academia and the legal profession.  Some legal matters can only be taught by having practiced extensively and this would make the study of law more exciting for students and also more realistic by teaching beyond the textbook.

Curriculum: There is a need to update curriculum and course choices to include some necessary courses that should be considered part of any law program.  This would include Aboriginal law, where students would have the necessary understanding of Indigenous Peoples wherever one may live in the world.  Another area would be Human Rights Law, teaching in such areas as race, gender, disability.  A third area would be Access to Justice and Non-Profit law.   Even though a student may ultimately specialize in Corporate Law, I believe that it is necessary to know these areas as they will encounter such clients and this change would only serve to make students better lawyers in the future.

Global understanding: Law schools should not only offer more international law courses, but can simply incorporate comparative law into existing courses by offering one or two classes within the courses to show how other countries deal with core issues.  As well, if a professor knows several languages, students, depending upon the course, could be allowed to submit work in other languages, as I do for more courses. 

Practicum: In addition, there should be a practical component added to law courses to allow for the students to learn day to day skills one would encounter in practicing law.  Beyond moot courts and clinics, as an example, corporate law should include legal implications of running a company, managing a staff, and dealing with stakeholders and boards of directors, which would include practical experiences from the perspective of Executive Directors. This would also allow students to see the possibilities of using their law degrees outside the actual practice of law in managing companies.  Therefore, a partnership within Universities beyond the Faculty of Law to incorporate other departments would be of benefit to students who would like to use their law degrees in other fields such as medicine, engineering, and politics.

The Role of the Bar Associations and the Law Society
Mentoring Programs are essential in the teaching of law and are so often overlooked.  A partnership should be created between Bar Associations or Law Societies and Law Schools to effectively partner in this area.  Mentoring programs would be of benefit for both the students and for the Lawyer or Solicitor/Barrister. Even before the start of law school, once a student is accepted into the law program, a student should be assigned to a member of the legal profession who can guide them through their legal education on a yearly basis and act as mentor to them.  This would not only allow for an increased learning experience invaluable to the student but it would also allow students to be better prepared for when they graduate, allowing for a better transition from law school to law practice.  It would also, I believe, cut down on the ever increasing pressure on law school students by having that mentor guide them, assisting in their learning process and legal experience.

Dr. Prashant Desai
Legal education in imparting Social Justice

Education is an integral part of human development. It is education which ultimately results in shaping or transforming the whole society into a human civilization.
Spiritually, it is believed that the life on the earth is regulated by the laws of the Lord or the Divinity. It is 'rule of law', that draws the essential difference between human society and animal world. It is the legal education that plays an important role in promoting social justice. Education or awareness of laws, characterize the lawyers as 'Social engineers'.
Imparting of legal education has always been considered as one to the noblest profession. Legal education which is part of general education cannot be viewed in isolation. Today, legal education derives its impetus from the economic, social and political set up of the society. A well administered and socially relevant legal education is a sine qua non for a proper dispensation of justice. Giving legal education a human face would create cultured law abiding citizens who are able to serve as professionals and not merely as business men.
The quality and standard of legal education acquired at the law school is reflected through the standard of Bar and Bench and consequently affects the legal system. The primary focus of law schools should be to identify the various skills that define a lawyer and then train and equip its students with requirements of the field of law. The role of law schools in imparting legal education and developing lawyers who are rational thinkers and social engineers is central to the future of legal education and the development of a knowledge economy. This can be done only if the law schools are able to attract some of the best and the brightest lawyers to make a lifelong commitment to teaching, learning, and researching so that they are able to inspire generations of students to work toward establishing a rule of law society.

Mr. Denis Edwards
Teaching Rules: Legislation and the Law Curriculum.

Legislation features in most 'common law' law degrees. In some courses, it will be a significant part of the syllabus and students will be required to know the meaning and effect of key statutory provisions.  Yet in most systems legislation will rarely be taught and studied to the same extent as case law and, rarer still, considered as a subject in its own right.

The reasons for this are easy to state.  Cases decided by the courts are essentially stories.  The legal reasons for courts' decisions take their place in the law's own story, which has played out in the context of political, economic and cultural history. The art of case law, namely identifying ratios and obiter dicta, along with stare decisis and the drama of a supreme court overruling a well-established authority, all make for easy engagement of law students.  In contrast, legislation, with its unfriendly prose, technicality, arcane structure and, in many areas, inaccessibility, is tedious in comparison.  Furthermore, the common law tradition has sometimes viewed legislation as an unwelcome intruder.

The privileged position of case law fits neatly with the predominant wisdom on the rule of law, culminating in a preference for judicial review of legislation. Despite some attempts to unpick the established view, it continues to dominate. In turn, the role of courts continues to take centre stage in legal study, with implications for career choices of many future lawyers, burnishing the prestige of judges and encouraging misplaced thinking about the contribution of courts to both law and social reform.

Change is needed; but what and how? If reworking the law curriculum is a step too far, an equal place for legislation requires much more attention to its various stages, from drafting through interpretation to reform.  In short, a greater place for legislation's stories.

Ms. Lindsay Ernst
Internalizing International Human Rights Commitments Through Community Legal Education ("Street Law")

Since the first Street Law clinic began at Georgetown Law Center in 1972, law faculties around the world have been incorporating Street Law clinics into their clinical legal education offerings. 

The term "Street Law" covers a variety of legal education programmes and curriculums around the world that all share a common goal: to teach people about law and human rights in their everyday lives in order to foster active and empowered participants in society.  Street Law is not simply about conveying knowledge; it is also about utilizing interactive, learner-centered education methods to ensure understanding and knowledge, changes of attitude, and the development of the skills to do something with the knowledge.  Using the Street Law methodology, law students educate the public on human rights issues, create an experience of justice and exemplify the provision of knowledge and skills to the community.  

This presentation will consider the application and relevance of Street Law in the context of Hong Kong's experiential learning opportunities.

The presentation will specifically discuss the Street Law sessions Lindsay Ernst launched in January 2015 in collaboration with Chosen Power, a Hong Kong–based members' organization for people with intellectual disabilities.  Under Lindsay's direct supervision, a team of 3 Masters of Law students and a team of 11 LLB students developed and taught interactive curriculum aimed at educating persons with intellectual disabilities about their right to political participation, their right to employment, their right to live in the community and their rights upon arrest.  The curriculum incorporated human rights standards from the Convention on the Rights of the Persons with Disabilities within the Hong Kong context and strengthened Chosen Power's advocacy work both at the domestic and international levels.

The Street Law Clinic model combines training in the methodology and content with supportive supervision.  Law student instructors receive academic credit; attend a multi-day orientation and weekly seminars; receive regular supervision through observations, feedback and consultations with faculty; and engage in reflection through journals, lesson planning analysis and portfolio assessment.

Dr. Gigimon VS
Legal Education: Looking to an Uncharted Future

The vision of legal education in India is to provide justice-oriented education essential to the realization of values enshrined in the Constitution of India. In keeping with the vision, legal education must aim at preparing legally qualified persons who will play decisive leadership roles, not only as advocates practicing in courts, but also an academics, legislators, policy makers, public officials, civil society activists as well as legal counsels in the private sector, maintaining the highest standards of professional ethics and a spirit of public service. If the objects of legal education have to be multifarious as above, can a common curriculum or a uniform LLB course structure serve the purposes of legal education seekers in India. Should everyone joining undergraduate legal education be trained to become Advocates practicing in courts when evidence suggest that not even half of law graduates ever join legal practice or continue to be in profession. Is the existing regulatory mechanism controlled by the practicing profession responsible for the neglect of post-graduate legal studies and near disappearance of creative research from law colleges?

Of course, the blame for the state of legal education ultimately has to be borne largely by the law teachers, half of whom are practicing advocates themselves. In this context the paper would examine the design of legal education for the future which depends on how the role of Universities is conceived and on what the objects and goals of legal education ought to be in terms of emerging social, economic and international needs, on the other. The paper will also look into the existing regulatory mechanism under the Advocates Act 1961 which is far too weak and inadequate to chart the course of legal education for the future.

Prof. Kris Gledhill
Teaching human rights as a topic for litigation

Teaching human rights as a topic for litigation (ie the standards and how to argue them, rather than a focus on institutions and themes) supports the view that human rights are binding and real rather than a policy-based ideal. This litigation can take a number of forms, not just traditional (and expensive) court-based processes, given the multiplicity of mechanisms available. This is not to say that human rights should not also be taught through different methods and in different faculties: but when taught in law schools, upholding them in a process that brings accountability can be seen as a core part of the rule of law and hence a lawyer's function.

Prof. Rick Glofcheski
Flipping the Tort class: an Adventure in Learning

In 2015-16 academic year, the speaker introduced flipped learning to his compulsory tort class at the University of Hong Kong. It is a large class, 275 students, consisting of LLB students, students from three double degree programmes, and Masters of Common Law students. Tort is a foundational course in the law curriculum. Flipped learning in tort is a work in progress but it has been well received by students, and some degree of success can be claimed. The speaker will chart his progress, from the very inception of the idea, his consultation with students, his implementation, the physical setting, the interface with Moodle-based resources, student survey feedback, problems encountered, and the way forward, and what he argue to be the learning gains..

Prof. Christoph Hafner, Mr. Jack Burke, Prof. Katherine Lynch, Prof. Anne Scully-Hill and Dr. Rajesh Sharma
An interdisciplinary project to developing a digital multimedia resource to meet Law students' legal English needs: findings, progress and resources.

Learning 'legal English', the specialist language that students encounter in law school, is challenging. Law students must learn to use English forms and structures in such a way as to meet the expectations of members of the legal academic community, consistent with the conventions of the legal discipline. Legal English presents a particularly daunting challenge for English language learners, like those who take up legal study at Hong Kong universities. A key challenge for such law students is learning to use legal English effectively to apply rules of law to fact situations and drawing conclusions in such a way that students demonstrate they are capable of 'thinking like a lawyer'.

The interdisciplinary Legal English project has been set up to help students meet these challenges and combines the expertise of lawyers and language teachers/applied linguists to develop a digital multimedia resource for legal English based on an analysis of the language needs of Hong Kong law students. The project addresses students' legal English needs both generally and with particular reference to the most common tasks and genres with which law students engage: essays, legal problem questions, memoranda, dissertations and oral mooting. The project has three aspects: 1) an in-depth analysis of students' legal English learning needs; 2) the creation and online publication of video-based instructional materials; and 3) implementation of the materials in language and content courses.

During this presentation the projects' investigators will outline the progress and findings of the project thus far and will share with the audience some of the digital resources created for the project.

Mr. Richard Hedlund
Lessons from Problem-Based Learning at York Law School

This paper will draw on my experiences at York Law School and Lincoln Law School, in the United Kingdom, to compare and contrast different approaches to legal education. The paper will look at York Law School's experience in promoting student-centred learning by delivering the core law curriculum through Problem-based Learning (PBL). The essence of PBL is a student-orientated and engaging way of learning through problem scenarios, as opposed to a traditional lecture and seminar approach to teaching. The problems take centre-stage in the process rather than, as in many seminar designs, simply being add-ons after a series of substantive questions. The paper will explore some of the pedagogical and practical strengths and weaknesses of PBL.

The paper will further draw on my current experiences as a lecturer at Lincoln Law School, where the LLB programme is taught through the traditional lecture-seminar system. The paper will explore some of the key differences to the PBL process, and the inherent strengths and weaknesses of the traditional system. In placing the two systems side by side, the paper will argue that PBL has significant advantages, but that its practical utility is limited, not least by its high staffing requirements. In light of those limitations, the paper will consider what benefits of PBL can most easily be transplanted into the traditional system.

Prof. Paula Hodgson and Ms. Betty Hui
MOOCs: Potentials in extending learning experiences

Students can broaden the scope of their learning experience through massive open online courses (MOOCs), which offer the possibility of learning from world-class scholars. Although conventional classroom teaching is dominant in universities in Hong Kong, blending an online learning experience has been attracting interest from some educators, who have adopted the flipped classroom approach in their teaching. These educators can choose to create their own teaching materials in video format to replace some lectures; they then have more time to conduct case studies on legal practice during contact hours. However, they can also identify relevant MOOCs as an alternative resource so that students can be exposed to international learners and practitioners.

This paper will explore various MOOCs on popular platforms such as edX and coursera, and courses on Contract Law, English Common Law, Copyright and Trademark Laws, Justice and A Law Student's Toolkit will be explored. While prestigious world-class universities have published high-quality teaching resources, these students can benefit from the opportunity to compare legal practices and interact with learners from diverse cultural backgrounds. This is not to undermine the importance of professional interactions through face-to-face courses. On the contrary, exposure to MOOCs may allow students to gain heightened awareness of conflicting ethical standards, deepen their understanding of judicial practices locally and internationally, and establish values by students and consider the values of others. Learning through MOOCs may help students to think like a lawyer by using legal reasoning. These students may take a Socratic approach to unbundling arguments and tracing evidence, but they can also bring questions to both the online forums in MOOCs and their class while developing self-directed learning habits.

Prof. Swati Jhaveri
The Pressure to Innovate: Whiter Legal Education?

Legal education in common law jurisdictions has for a long time remained static in its curriculum design (focus on cases and journal articles); classroom experience (large lectures or tutorials and seminars spent discussing case studies and hypothetical legal problems with doctrinal or jurisprudential essay questions) and the level of engagement with technology (used as a mode of delivering materials prior to classes versus as a learning experience in its own right).  However, the pressure to change from fellow educators, students, the profession and other stakeholders (including the public) is increasing.  Different jurisdictions are having to confront questions of changing expectations of students in what the classroom experience should be (with a growing need to tap their reliance on technology as a learning tool); changing expectations of legal competency and readiness for the profession; shifting areas of legal practice within jurisdictions; the increase in cross-border and global influences on the law; issues of quality and oversupply of lawyers and questions generally about the role of legal education and lawyers in society.  These pressures prompt questions about how to update and innovate.  For example, legal curriculum has historically prioritised delivery of doctrine over skills or values – whereas the pressure is on to re-balance this emphasis.  Legal education is thus at an intersection ripe for innovative curricular and pedagogical change.  This paper looks at three such intersections: technological innovation; plurality in curriculum and assessment design; and modalities of the classroom learning experience.  It will explore whether change is necessarily required and, if so, how that may look in the Asian common law context in particular.

Prof. Eric Johnson
Teaching Doctrine Directly: Inverting the Casebook Method

Deliberately trying to make learning the law easier and less onerous is, I argue, a means to helping students reach deeper levels of understanding.

In teaching the common law, it is traditional to abstain from explanatory textbooks and to rely primarily on judicial opinions for readings. Students are supposed to sift through the opinions for rules of doctrine and then compile these rules into a handmade outline – essentially the student's self-made textbook for the course.

This approach is inefficient and even damaging. It encourages students to tidy up the law and artificially simplify it. In their endeavor to complete this task, students learn to push away the contradictions, fuzziness, and complexity of the law as it is found in the real world. Yet real-world complexity is what we should strive for our students to understand.

Thus, I suggest inverting the traditional method: Give students an outline version of the course upfront, at the outset. Then use the rest of the semester to search for more profound insights.

The main blackletter doctrine of a course can be taught, without cases, in the first few class sessions. After this, students can take a multiple-choice test to assess their learning. Then, the balance of the semester can be spent going back through all the material again, but in much greater depth. Cases are assigned, but not for conveying basic doctrine. Instead, cases are a means to see how rules of doctrine are stretched, changed, or even selectively ignored by the courts.

Teaching doctrine in isolation from cases also allows the use of other enriching readings in lieu of judicial opinions, such as briefs, portions of trial transcripts, narrative recollections of litigators, cease-and-desist letters, and transactional documents. Such readings help students develop a fuller picture of the law and lawyering.

Ms. Patty Kamvounias
Teaching and Learning in Law outside the Law School: Challenges and Opportunities

In most jurisdictions, the aim of legal education is to equip students with the knowledge, skills and values necessary to enter the legal profession. University law schools therefore predominantly teach Bachelor of Laws (LLB) and Juris Doctor (JD) programs of study leading to admission to legal practice. In recent years law schools have increasingly recognised that their graduates may not all become practising lawyers but may use their legal education to build careers in business and industry or in government and the public sector.  Law schools have also recognised that courses of study for other professionals also require some legal knowledge particularly if those professionals work in environments heavily regulated by law.  Law school professors may therefore find themselves teaching aspects of law relevant, for example, to nurses and medical practitioners or teaching contract law and intellectual property law to engineers. By far the largest cohort of students outside law schools required to undertake legal studies in their non-law degree programs are students enrolled in Accounting and Business degrees.  This is mainly due to professional accounting accreditation requirements.  Law professors may therefore be teaching 'legal environment of business' subjects or teaching corporations law and/or taxation law to students entering the legal profession and/or others entering the accounting profession. Decisions therefore need to be made about both the content of the curriculum and the delivery of the curriculum in these different contexts.  This paper presents an overview of the challenges and opportunities of teaching law outside traditional law degree programs. It also provides examples of teaching and assessment practices that will be useful to law teachers designing and implementing law subjects offered outside the law school.

Ms. Queenie Lai
Active and Simulation-based Learning for Future Corporate Lawyers: Client pitch, Role-play and Other Ideas

When we think of simulation-based or role-play learning in law, we tend to think of litigation courses that offer students such experiences. For those of us teaching corporate and commercial law, how can we engage students through simulated experiences in corporate transactional work that would inspire interest and encourage deep (as opposed to surface) learning?

Drawing from my own experience in curriculum design for postgraduate courses such as Corporate Finance and Writing and Drafting Commercial Documents, I will share examples of active learning activities that encouraged student participation and hands-on involvement. One such example is the "Client Pitch" exercise, an original curriculum that simulate law firm practice, designed for students to understand the process of initial public offering and put listing rules in context. Based on an authentic IPO project synopsis, students representing competing law firms lead presentations in the form of a client pitch and assist their potential client evaluate the feasibility of listing in Hong Kong.

Simulation-based learning and role-play practical exercise allow students to study legal rules and theories in the context of the commercial world.  Students start envisaging themselves as a practitioner and think of commercially practicable solutions and how best to meet the expectations of hypothetical clients. The aim is to motivate students to study, not just for examinations, but adequately prepare themselves for their career ahead.

Understanding the legal rules is only half the journey.  At the end of the course, students should not just understand the technical rules but the bigger market environment, and how to meet client's expectations. The aim is to train students to be effective corporate legal practitioners who are not just technically competent, but commercially aware, interested in business, who can relate to clients and – above all – who can contextualize their advice.

Mr. Marc Limon
Think tanks - practical education by bridging the academia-policymaking divide

Most individuals who enter the professional world of human rights policymaking, either as UN staff, diplomats, NGO representatives, etc., using come straight from university, having completed a post-graduate degree in human rights, international relations, or law. Upon beginning their new entry-level position, they often find that the reality of international human rights diplomacy and the reality of securing influence in the international human rights system, is often very different from what they read in their course textbook, or from what the learnt from their course professors. Seen from a different angle, while the world's universities produce a plethora of insightful and robust research on human rights, and while much of this is published in academic journals, very few diplomats or UN decision-makers ever read such work - thus calling into question its impact and value. 

Think tanks like the Universal Rights Group seek to bridge this divide between academia and the 'real world' of international relations and international diplomacy. By producing research and analysis on issues of immediately contemporary importance to States and other stakeholders, by making that analysis easily accessible and understandable to diplomats, NGOs and others, and by bringing the academic community and the diplomatic community together for meetings and discussions, and by providing research and internship opportunities to students, think tanks provide an interface between the two worlds. 

Ms. Yingxiang Long
Prepare your Students to Become Innovative Private Lawmakers: For Future International Commercial Lawyers

According to the World Trade Organisation's figures, international transactions have increased dramatically since the 1950s. Over the past two decades, the speed of the growth in international trade in services has outreached the growing speed of international trade in goods. Accordingly, the legal sector as one of the main sectors of international trade in services has developed dramatically. Therefore, the number of international commercial lawyers will increase to meet both the needs of clients' demand and development of legal sector worldwide.

Originally, lawyers were considered as litigators in many jurisdictions, for example, in England and Wales and in China. Although, overtime, the tasks of the profession expanded from supporting litigation in courts to other legal tasks, the roles of lawyers in local jurisdictions largely remain as interpreters of local laws. Although individual lawyers may, as private citizens or politicians, initiate proposals to change legislation, or undertake litigation that changes the law, they are not normally considered to be lawmakers.

Given the fact that international commercial legal practice is potentially more complex than legal practice in a single jurisdiction, for example, due to conflict of jurisdictions, cultural differences and language barriers etc, the challenges of finding a single set of governing regulations to satisfy parties from a range of different jurisdictions are particularly pronounced. Further, in the international commercial legal sector, there are fewer mandatory regulations than in other legal sectors. This means that lawyers have to use their own discretion to choose governing laws for their contracts or, more creativity, create new "private laws" by way of articles of association and model contracts for large international corporations whose annual turnover may exceed that of some small countries.

This paper will explain the knowledge and skills that international commercial lawyers need to fulfill this role as innovative lawmakers and how to prepare students through teamwork, simulation and reflection.

This presentation is funded by the Chinese National Social Science Foundation, Project No. 14BFX076, Subject in "The Civil Law Protection of Consumer Rights in Service Industry".

Prof. Michael Lower
Blended Learning: Using Blackboard to create a Community of Inquiry

This talk describes the experience of designing and implementing the creation of a blended learning environment to support the creation of a Community of Inquiry linked to an undergraduate law course ('the innovation'). The focus of the Community of Inquiry was the law concerning the ownership of the family home. Students were introduced to this area of the law, to the relevant primary and secondary literature and to some of the controversial issues in this area. They were asked to contribute to the debate through a short paper and contributions to a discussion forum. The aim was to create, within the Land Law course, a Community of Inquiry engaged in a collective attempt to research the law in this area and to contribute to its development and a better understanding of it.

The concept of 'teaching presence' is central to the creation of an effective Community of Inquiry. This project looks at the forms that teaching presence might take in the context of a blended learning environment. How can teaching presence be embedded in the digital aspects of the blended learning environment? Can group discussion mediated by a discussion forum help to distribute the teaching role amongst the members of the Community of Inquiry? Is the ability of the teacher to orchestrate the digital and real-time elements of the Community of Inquiry an important element of teaching presence? The project also looks at the significance of participation in a Community of Inquiry for the student. Can it lead to the acquisition of new knowledge, skill and competences? Can it lead students to some sense of a new identity as emerging legal practitioners or researchers?

Mr. Azan Marwah
 "The ideal clinical law student" – how law schools can arm their students to take full advantage of clinical legal experience

The  ultimate  goals  of  law  schools  are  the  improvement  of  access  to  the  law, access to justice and the quality of justice.

University-based legal clinics around the world are at the epicenter of development of legal practice. Universities dramatically increase access to the law   using technology (e.g. the Legal Information Institutes) and support important otherwise financially unsustainable access to justice projects (e.g. the Innocence Project). In most jurisdictions, these efforts have radically improved the profession and the public's access to the law and justice (e.g. Street Law).

Unfortunately, large elements of the local legal profession are often unaware or untouched by these developments. They often represent vested interests, or have conflicts that prevent them from challenging the status quo. They are amongst the least likely sources of radical development in legal practice, access to the law or access to justice. Furthermore, there is substantial inequality of access to the legal profession.  

However,  it  is  apparent  to  me  from  my  own  experience  with  clinical  legal students that students often fail to take advantage of these experiences. Many are simply not equipped to undertake basic tasks (e.g. legal research). Valuable time is often wasted during internships and clinical placements teaching these basic skills. The result is that practitioners and the clients of public interest clinics do not fully utilize these opportunities.

Rather than only relying on the local legal profession to expose law students to current practice – the Universities should be engaging with the profession to innovate legal practice using the best international examples. This presentation will present some of these examples.

Mr. Paul McKeown
Values in Clinical Legal Education

'[U]niversities have forgotten their larger educational role for college students.  They succeed, better than ever, as creators and repositories of knowledge.  But they have forgotten that the fundamental job of undergraduate education is to turn eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds into twenty-one- and twenty-two-year-olds, to help them grow up, to learn who they are, to search for a larger purpose for their lives, and to leave college as better human beings.' (Harry R Lewis, Excellence without a soul: Does liberal education have a future? (PublicAffairs 2007), p.xiv)

Prof. Mohammad Mahdi Meghdadi and Ms. Boshra Sadat Emami
Human Rights Education, With an Emphasis on Islamic Teachings and Clinical Legal Education

Lack of education and people's unawareness of liberties and human rights lead to some unpleasant difficulties and consequences. The most important of them is the downfall of human value and his dignity, lack of respect for justice, freedom and human rights, promotion of injustice and inequality and various social problems particularly corruption, despotism, and finally the degeneration of human society and its deviation from the path of prosperity and success.

While according to the teachings of Islam and based on international regulations, people have the right to education and this fundamental right is fixed for all people without any discrimination, the government has a duty to educate democracy and human rights and to promote public culture by using effective and efficient methods.

In this paper, the necessity and principles of this right of people is explained in details, along with the government's duty from the perspective of Islamic teachings, and international regulations. Then one of effective training methods i.e. clinical education of law will be introduced. This method is based on intimate, profound and continuous communication with masses and classes of people; also in addition to efficiency, this method has much stability.

Dr. Angela Melville
Educational disadvantages and Indigenous law students: lifestyle choice or systemic barriers?

Indigenous students are under-represented in Australian universities, including in law school, and have lower educational outcomes relative to non-Indigenous students. Australia has now had 40 years of policies aimed at improving educational outcomes for Indigenous people, however little progress has been made. It is argued that this failure is due to the pervasiveness of a deficiency model, which explains lower education outcomes in terms of individual deficiencies, such as a student's 'lack' of ability, motivation or effort, rather than examining systemic problems within educational institutions.

This paper rejects the simplistic, victim-blaming deficiency model, and instead examines the historical, cultural, political, and economic factors which underline the under-representation of Indigenous students in Australian law schools. It identifies systemic barriers that prevent Indigenous students from enrolling in law school in the first place. Indigenous law students also face higher attrition rates relative to non-Indigenous law students. Indigenous students find law schools to be intimidating, unfamiliar and alienating environments, which privilege a narrow Western model of legal education that continues to deny Indigenous understandings of the law. The main solution to educational disadvantage under the deficiency model is for Indigenous students to change their behaviour. This paper seeks alternative solutions that draw upon the insights of Indigenous students, families and communities, and which have been proven to improve the participation of Indigenous students in higher education.

Prof. Malcolm Merry
Lessons from History

Legal education came surprisingly late to Hong Kong but its story has been full of events.  This paper traces the progress of the teaching of and training in law through the past five decades and asks whether it contains any discernable patterns or trends.  If so, might they contain pointers – or warnings -- for the future?

Mr. Christian D. Pangilinan
Developing an English-language integrated legal writing and research program for non-native English speaking students

Given the importance of English as a working language in the practice of law, providing law students with opportunities for developing their written and oral legal communication skills must be a key goal for law schools that seek to prepare their students for transnational practice. In this presentation, I discuss the innovative Transnational Legal Practice Program at Peking University School of Transnational Law. This program features several innovations designed to allow first-year students in the program to promote the development of students' skills in several areas: (1) reading sophisticated authentic English-language legal materials; (2) writing organized, cohesive and coherent prose; (3) operating within academic integrity expectations; (4) writing in legal prose with legal style; (5) developing and implementing research plans; and (5) producing persuasive legal documents. Successfully achieving these objectives (1) not assuming that students already have mastery of prerequisite skills, (2) designing legal writing problems of appropriate difficulty with the aim of promoting increasing independence, and (3) providing frequent feedback and assessment.

Prof. Daniel Pascoe
How can Legal Education Speak to the Discovery Enriched Curriculum?

At City University of Hong Kong, the 'Discovery Enriched Curriculum' (DEC) is a newly-popular pedagogical approach focused on discovery, innovation and creativity.  Within the 2016-2019 Academic Development Proposal, approved by the University Grants Committee, each and every undergraduate programme at CityU is required to incorporate at least one DEC 'project' into its syllabus – meaning that each student directly contributes to the creation of new human knowledge by the time of graduation.  Accordingly, the DEC approach lends itself naturally to the 'hard' sciences and the creative arts, through innovations such as new software, exhibits, mobile apps, artwork and patents.

However, its application to legal studies is more uncertain.  In this paper, I summarise the background to the CityU School of Law's dilemma in incorporating DEC into the LLB curriculum, noting the previous literature on the benefits of discovery-based learning in the legal setting.  Are we as a law school already speaking to the DEC goals, or is substantial revision of the curriculum needed to conform with the university's plans?  Is DEC as important in the legal field as it is in the 'hard' sciences and creative arts? Should DEC-friendly elective courses be compulsory in undergraduate legal education?  These are the implementation problems that I seek to describe, and provide some solutions to in the paper.

Prof. Michael Peil and Prof. Nima Dorji
"Designing a GNH-centric law curriculum: The View from Bhutan"

In the wake of the peaceful transition to a constitutional monarchy, in 2009, His Majesty the King commanded that steps be taken to open the first law school in the Kingdom of Bhutan.  From the outset, His Majesty's curricular vision was a course of studies that drew upon international best practices, reinforced traditional national values, and reflected the nation's commitment to its unique alternative development paradigm, "Gross National Happiness (GNH)."  His Majesty mandated a curriculum that would prepare students to become socially responsible citizens and leaders as soon as possible after graduation from the law school.  As a result of three years of consultations and discussions with experts around the world, Bhutanese stakeholders from a wide variety of sectors, the law school developed a five-year curriculum with several defining characteristics:

1. A heavy emphasis on experiential learning;
2. A five-semester sequence in intensive legal Dzongkha (the official language of Bhutan, and the language of the courts);
3. Compulsory courses in environmental law, sustainable development, cultural preservation, and Law and Gross National Happiness; and
4. A strong emphasis on public service.

In this paper, the authors describe the process by which the tenets of GNH were brought to bear on a law-school curriculum, and the importance of national and international experiences in crafting the law school's curriculum.  They also discuss the policy choices faced during the crafting of the curriculum and the reasons for the decisions made.

Prof. Sanoj Rajan
Beyond the Classroom Teaching: The Social Responsibility of Law Schools in India.

Harlan Fiske Stone has once observed that the character of the law schools determines the character of the legal profession (Stone, The Public Influence of the Bar, 48 HARV. L. REV. 1, 3 (1934) at 14). Conventionally a law school's responsibility is confined to that of creating good lawyers by the standards of the profession and also ethical, conforming to universal moral benchmarks, such as honesty, justice, personal integrity, dedication to the greater social good and compassion (Sylvia Brown, A True Meeting of Minds: A Conference Report from Japan). In today's system, the role of law schools goes beyond their primary objective of imparting legal education and produce capable lawyers. Law Schools are getting more and more involved in causes beyond teaching-learning process and are getting engaged in activities, which supports the society and at times initiate societal reforms.

In India the social responsibility of the law schools come in two counts, first to create lawyers with high ethical standards that are imparted through a law curriculum closely monitored by the Bar Council of India. Secondly the contribution of the law schools towards the society in the form of the legal aid services and dissemination of law at the behest of the National Legal Services Authority and State Legal Services Authority. The present paper intends to explore the social responsibilities of law schools in India by a thorough study of practices of Law Schools in line with the National Legal Services Authority Act 1987 and the National Legal Services Authority (Legal Aid Clinics) Regulations, 2011

Dr. Muamar Salameh
Development of Legal Education in Arab Countries
Evaluation of the Bilingual Programme in Arab Countries

Law is usually taught in the language of the country in which the law course in taken.  It has also been noted that some of the law courses in the Arab countries are taught in either French or English.

The last two decades has seen an increase in foreign investment due to effects of globalization, which have opened up more job opportunities for law graduates with English as a second language. As a result law colleges have been continuously developing and amending bilingual study plans to be able to deal with these changes and to cope with needs of the labor market.

This study will focus on the development of legal education in Arab countries and evaluate the effectiveness that the bilingual law program has on the labor market in the Arab countries. Most of the law colleges that follow this type of program are based in the Gulf region. Currently in Saudi Arabia, there are four universities offering bilingual law programs, in Kuwait also there are two universities, in Bahrain one university offer bilingual program in law in both language Arabic and English.

One purpose of this study is to investigate any issues related to delivering a bilingual law program to students, and whether such programs achieve the desired learning outcome objectives or not. Another purpose is to investigate the possibilities of focusing on the delivery of specialized legal courses that are needed and essential for the current job market. Since the curriculum may only include a certain number of credit hours, some of the courses delivered in English might overcome essential Arabic courses or vice versa, which could lead to a lack in students' formation of legal knowledge.

Mr. Adam Severson and Mr. Isaac Shaffer
Law in Action: A Case Study in Clinical Legal Education in Hong Kong

Justice Centre Hong Kong provides a live-client clinical legal education programme, providing students with practical legal experience in the context of assisting asylum seekers and refugees in Hong Kong. This approach builds professional competencies and empowers students to work collaboratively side-by-side with experienced asylum lawyers from numerous jurisdictions. Key to our model is sensitizing Hong Kong's law students to international human rights concerns, fostering social awareness of refugee/protection issues, and capacity building. This is law in action: providing a structured and supportive environment for the integration of theory and practice. 

Prof. Natalie Skead, Ms. Kate Galloway, Prof. Mary Heath, Prof. Anne Hewitt, Prof. Mark Israel, and Prof. Alex Steel
'Building the capacity of sessional law teachers to meet the changing demands of legal education'

The legal education landscape in Australia is in a state of flux. With the entry of a growing number of law schools into the market, there is greater access to, and, therefore, a widening participation in, legal education by an increasingly diverse student cohort. Law graduates will find themselves having to draw on a broader range of skills in order to navigate diverse professional settings and with a wider range of clientele. These ongoing changes necessitate constant evaluation by the legal academy of the purpose and direction of legal education. 

Sessional law teachers share these challenges. In addition, many are confronted with the unique difficulties and stressors resulting from precarious employment. This is exacerbated by very limited access to professional development opportunities.  The Smart Casual project aims to fill this gap, producing discipline-specific professional development resources for sessional teachers in law. These resources are designed to assist law schools in meeting the professional development needs of sessional law teachers and supporting them in meeting the challenges of the changing context of law teaching. 

The Smart Casual project has produced three freely available self-directed professional development modules, which can be viewed at https://smartlawteacher.org/available-modules/. We are now developing six new modules

• wellbeing in law for both students and sessional teachers
• Indigenous peoples and the law
• communication and collaboration in law
• critical legal thinking
• reading law, covering the foundational legal skills of case reading and statutory interpretation
• legal ethics and professional responsibility

The strategic themes of diversity, digital literacy, gender and internationalisation are being integrated across all nine modules.

This paper considers the changing direction of legal education and the contemporary contexts of sessional law teaching.  It situates the Smart Casual project, the resources it is developing and its adoption of the strategic themes within these contexts.

Ms. Virginia Tam
The Role of Lawyering Skills

The legal industry is facing increasing pressure for change in a global marketplace. For clients in the 21st century, "good lawyering" goes beyond having a sound knowledge of the law. Clients want lawyers to function as business partners, counsellors, advocates and team builders. They also want law firms to price their legal services competitively and with certainty. A lawyer's advice or work product is assessed not only by its quality but also its value to the client. As a result, law firms expect law graduates to have the emotional maturity, business instinct and professional judgement to function in the real corporate world. Are these realistic expectations? Can these skills be taught and developed in law schools? Will the challenges faced by the legal industry as a business lead to changes in the teaching of law as an academic subject?  

Prof. Lisa Webley
Researching Legal Education: Methods, Outcomes and Directions

This paper will explore how legal education research can be both a fruitful scholarly endeavour in its own right and also a practical tool that can be harnessed to improve individual and collective learning and teaching practice. It will consider a range of research methods open to the legal education researcher and differences between legal education and traditional legal research.

Further, it will also examine some common elements in well-designed high quality legal education projects and subsequent publications, and the lessons we can take from these into our own studies. In doing so it will touch upon how we may involve our students in the research process both as participants and also co-researchers so as to expose them to a broader range of research skills than they often encounter in the legal curriculum; the role of the literature, and the type of literature that legal education researchers may wish to draw upon; and how findings may be fed into curriculum design.

Prof. Sarah Wilson
Teaching History in the modern Law School: Some perspectives on the importance of Historical approaches for the study of Law in the twenty-first century

This paper is based on my experiences of how, as a law teacher, I have always encouraged students to think about law historically. This is now channeled through a dedicated 'Law and History' module, exploring law today and its relationships with society and social change, using an approach fashioned from my research activity (e.g. Wilson, 2014), and from how I have embedded 'the past' and its significance in teaching across a wide sweep of legal subjects. This hybrid approach combines wisdom from conventional Legal History's interest in the importance of understanding law's own history for the present with Modern History's ideas on a 'trajectory … still unfolding' where past, present and future lie on the same continuum of societal evolution and development (Tosh, 2010).

The paper explains how the module 'tracks' the undergraduate LLB curriculum in several ways: through engaging with QLD foundational subjects and 'key themes'; drawing on optional/elective modules; and through presenting opportunities for exploring individual interests not catered for within existing formal provision. It also explains how students are encouraged to develop individual interests in formal learning activities and in assessment. It draws on some memorable teaching experiences and inspiring reflections from students, and it also highlights challenges presented by requiring students to engage with a different discipline, albeit one with similarities as well as differences from their own.

The paper suggests that analyzing law historically has an important place in undergraduate studies of law, and that this should be embedded across the curriculum rather than confined to optional study. This draws on support from Legal History's insistence that engaging with law's own past is essential for appreciating fundamentally law's integrity and its importance (Baker, 2000) and for achieving 'confident law reform' (Ibbetson, 1998). It also stresses the importance of engaging with what is missing from Legal History and the wider doctrinal tradition; namely acknowledgement of how law is influenced by society and social institutions, as embodied in contextualism and socio-legal studies. It argues that in utilizing these more rounded approaches to legal analysis, the discipline of Law can pioneer the integration of historians' expertise in the 'temporalities of social life' into 'social theoretical debate', from where it has been notably absent hitherto (Sewell, 2005). It also argues that the twenty-first century Law School should play a key role in this, and that students' understanding of law will benefit as a result.

Prof. Lutz-Christian Wolff
Legal Education without Teaching?

The broad discussion of the viability of innovative law teaching methods in recent years shows awareness of the fact that there is room for improvement. The discussion aims at ensuring greater alignment of the mode of delivery of law courses with students' learning needs. But is this kind of increased student centeredness really helpful? Is 'helicopter law teaching' not counter-productive when it comes to create independent and critical thinkers who can stand on their own feet from day one of their professional careers? This presentation attempts to discuss these and other questions with an emphasis on suggestions what law schools can and should do to create an environment which fosters independent learning.  

Prof. Mimi Zou
'Micro-modules under the microscope: in and beyond flipped classrooms'

A micro-module is a short, multimedia presentation on a defined topic. It may comprise of a micro-lecture or demonstration, a narrated slideshow, or a screencast accompanied by a voiceover. Micro-modules can be uploaded and shared online with students, which can be viewed outside designated class periods. Used as a component of flipped classrooms, micro-modules can free up valuable face-to-face time for interactive learning activities, such as applying learned knowledge to problem-based team activities in the classroom. Even without transforming the lecture hall into a flipped classroom, micro-modules can also be used to supplement traditional classes such as: enhancing students' understanding of key terms and concepts as well as the more difficult materials, creating curiosity and interest around new topics, reviewing summaries of key materials for assessments, and 'bringing the world into the classroom' with an array of 'virtual' guest speakers. Drawing on my recent experiences in making 20 micro-modules for a course on Elder Law, this presentation seeks to 'demystify' the production of micro-modules and explain how this learning and teaching tool can be used in multiple ways for supporting flipped classrooms and beyond.