Professional legal education in Scotland

Scotland is a small jurisdiction. With a legal profession of approximately 9000 solicitors and over 450 practicing advocates serving a population of around 5 million, our legal bar is smaller in size than the legal bar of many states in the United States.1 Our solutions to problems of professional education are appropriate to our jurisdictional size, our character, and our history. However, one theme of this Article is that common educational issues exist among jurisdictions despite differences in size or in legal structure. Another theme deals with a matter of particular concern in Scotland, namely the problem of educating for practice, and in particular creating the most effective forms of program and curriculum design for training and education at the professional stage. Part I of this Article summarizes the current Scottish professional legal education program, set in the context of the legal education and the legal profession generally. Part II illustrates some aspects of the professional education program with reference to a case study, the Diploma in Legal Practice at the Glasgow Graduate School of Law. Finally, this Article outlines some of the issues or themes from the Scottish experience that might be applicable to alternatives to the United States' Bar Exam

On the edge: ICT and the transformation of professional legal education

Information and communications technology in professional legal education courses is perceived as problematic for teachers and course designers. It is so not because technology is inherently difficult or strange, but because at a deep level it can threaten the practice and identity of teachers. However the contextual challenges of their position, caught between academy and practice, may actually enable professional legal educators to take account of new technologies. The article discusses this proposal, using the example of the incremental development of a discussion forum. It suggests that the tools of pragmatist and transformative meta-theory may point the way forward for professional legal educators to create their own community of practice in the use of ICT in professional legal learning

Virtual learning environments in action

In this workshop Paul and Patricia demonstrated the webcast lectures developed at Glasgow Graduate School of Law as part of a learning environment where students can take control of their own learning experience. They outlined the practical benefits of such a learning environment for both professional and undergraduate legal education, and discussed the theoretical implications of this approach for the pedagogy of legal education

On the edge: ICT and the transformation of professional legal learning

Information and communications technology in professional legal education courses is perceived as problematic for teachers and course designers. It is so not because technology is inherently difficult or strange, but because at a deep level it can threaten the practice and identity of teachers. However the contextual challenges of their position, caught between academy and practice, may actually enable professional legal educators to take account of new technologies. The article discusses this proposal, using the example of the incremental development of a discussion forum. It suggests that the tools of pragmatist and transformative meta-theory may point the way forward for professional legal educators to create their own community of practice in the use of ICT in professional legal learning

Sea-change

In this article Maharg analyses William Twining's inaugural lecture, ‘Pericles and the Plumber’, delivered at Queen's University, Belfast in 1967. He applies Twining's conclusions to two historical case studies in educational design, one at Columbia in the 1920s, and one at Strathclyde 1999–2010. He argues that, over 40 years later, the lecture is still relevant to many of our current concerns, and suggests that, building upon Twining's conclusions, we should view law schools as design schools, and construct a Pragmatist koine around such a concept

Rogers, constructivism and jurisprudence: educational critique and the legal curriculum

The focus of this chapter initially is the educational writings of Carl Rogers and the relevance of them to contemporary legal education. Rogers focuses upon the primacy of experience, and can therefore be cited as one sympathetic to many of the aims of Dewey in the US pragmatist tradition. His work is part of the tradition of humanist education, yet his views also sit well beside a number of contemporary educational and cognitive research directions, all of which have relevance for the teaching and learning of law. In this article I shall put forward two arguments. First, I shall argue that Rogers, seldom cited in legal educational literature, has relevance for those involved with legal skills education. Perhaps more signi®cantly, his views on the diþerences between teaching and learning resurface in contemporary theory on learning processes, especially constructivist theories and phenomenographical methodologies, which similarly focus on the learning experience. Secondly, and on a wider front, I would argue that both Rogers and constructivism lead us to consider issues which are not only at the heart of educational debates, but are also the concerns of jurisprudence. In this respect I hope that the article will illustrate the overlap between jurisprudence and legal education, and the extent to which educational issues (particularly epistemological ones) are also jurisprudential ones

The culture of mnemosyne: open‐book assessment and the theory and practice of legal education

The concept of open-book assessment is inherently controversial, not least because it contradicts a basic condition of examinations, one so basic to the event that we rarely question it: the single confrontation of examinee with exam question, the element of isolated and unaided struggle—Jacob wrestling with the mysterious Other. Surely it is cheating to allow texts into an exam-hall? What is the point of the exercise then

Test of professional competence: first pilot examination

Arising from the work of the Test of Professional Competence (TPC) Panel, and adhering to guidelines set out by Education and Training Committee, it was determined that there would be a Test of Professional Competence that, inter alia, included an open-book assessment of trainees’ skills and knowledge. To this end, the Panel drew up extensive learning outcomes, assessment outcomes and administrative and procedural documentation for the examination

Virtual firms: transactional learning on the web

The article discusses how today's diploma students are introduced to legal transactions in a virtual environment

(Re)telling stories: narrative theory and the practice of client counselling

The field of narrative studies is currently influencing methodology in many areas of research and learning in the arts and social sciences - historiography, psychology, philosophy, theology, therapy and education amongst others. Researchers in these domains have used narrative theory to help them examine how narratives concerning professionals are constructed, and what this tells us of the professionals themselves, their view of their profession, their place within it, and their relations with clients. Most of these studies emphasise the teleological role that narrative inquiry can play in providing individuals with the opportunities to achieve new understandings about the nature and process of practice and the communities within such practice is enacted. This article describes the application of aspects of narrative theory to legal education. It describes the use to which narrative criticism was put in a third level module on clinical legal skills at Glasgow Caledonian University. Some key concepts in narrative theory were used in class discussion of videotaped client counselling interviews between solicitors and clients. The narrative concepts were also reinforced in other areas of the module dealing with negotiation and writing skills. Through the discussion of the videotapes and reflective practice using recipes, students came to a deeper appreciation of the experience of one important aspect of legal practice