The importance of teaching dispute resolution in a twenty-first-century law school

Civil justice reviews over the past 20 years have encouraged the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and particularly mediation. Mediation is arguably now becoming more mainstream in terms of dispute resolution process choice. In some instances law changes have been introduced requiring parties in dispute to consider using mediation; similarly, lawyers have an ethical responsibility to provide advice to their clients about the range of dispute resolution processes available. What is lacking however is a corresponding appreciation of the changing attitudes to the teaching of dispute resolution in the majority of UK Law Schools, where the promotion of adversarialism within the curriculum appears to remain the focus as the primary and only method of dispute resolution. The article argues that this is unreflective of current attitudes and thinking towards dispute resolution in most common law countries, where litigation is no longer necessarily the primary dispute resolution process of choice. Whilst there was token appreciation of the importance of mediation advocacy and its inclusion recommended within the Bar Practice Training Course (BPTC), the recent LETR was silent on any suggestions about the inclusion of dispute resolution based curriculum content at any stage of legal education in England and Wales. The article will explore the historical development of lawyers’ attitudes to dispute resolution within the civil justice arena and academics’ teaching of curriculum associated with it in UK Law Schools. The article will pose questions on why recent legal history suggests that Law Schools should now perhaps take a more socio-legal approach to their curriculum content and embrace the teaching of dispute resolution as a defined subject area for the 21st century law school

Report on USA visit into the establishment of a mediation clinic

In December 2006 The Department of Crime and Policing made a successful bid for funding support from the HEFCE Teaching Informed and Enriched by Research Initiative (RIT). This is a report on part five of the bid regarding the visits made in phase one of the project to other international institutions who teach programmes with alternative dispute resolution (ADR) components, some of which engage in experiential learning through clinical legal education (CLE)

The Mediation Clinic at Canterbury Christ Church University: report and evaluation

In January 2008, with the assistance of funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and after nearly a year of preparatory research, the Christ Church Mediation Clinic was set up. This is a unique project in as much as it is the first such clinic to be based within a UK university. This report will reflect on the progress made with the project, the contemporary relevance of a mediation clinic, it will include a summary of the clinic’s main aims, the research required to establish the right model of clinic and an explanation of how the curriculum has been developed using dispute resolution as a focus. The report will conclude with a summary of the service provision element of the clinic and a brief analysis of the work undertaken so far

Presentation. the launch of the Canterbury Christ Church Mediation Clinic

The development of the Mediation Clinic project has been possible through a Higher Education Innovation Research in Teaching fund. Ben Waters will outline the rationale for developing such a project. Despite the perceived resistance demonstrated by the private sector to use mediation for the resolution of civil disputes, since the millennium, particularly following the implementation of the Access to Justice Act 1999 and the introduction of the Civil Procedure Rules, there has been a growth in alternative methods of dispute resolution for civil claims and particularly the use of mediation. Court of Appeal decisions such as Dunnett v Railtrack, indicate that parties to a civil dispute should give serious thought to mediation as a method of resolving their dispute, not only for all the benefits that this process can provide, but also to avoid the risk of costs penalties which the court has power to order for failing to do so. At an international mediation conference, which Ben Waters attended in 2007, Sir Brian Neill, himself a former Lord Justice of Appeal, delivered the keynote speech. Sir Brian described mediation as “An unstoppable force”. It is therefore argued here that there is a much to be said for these words and this presentation provides justification for the establishment of the first mediation clinic to be based in a UK University will be provided

Mediation and your business

This presentation, delivered to the regional business community at the Kent 20/20 event in April 2012, will provide an overview of the Mediation Clinic project at Canterbury Christ Church University, the first of its kind to be established in a UK University. The aims of the project will be outlined, namely to provide mediation services to the local and wider community, to enhance teaching and learning across curricula and to encourage research in the area of dispute resolution. In the context of the business world and the perceived value which the mediation provision offered by the Mediation Clinic can have for small to medium sized businesses, a case will be made to help business managers understand that mediation can have real and tangible advantages for their organisations. Successfully resolving internal disputes through mediation can assist with internal focus of an organisation in order to improve staff harmony and wellbeing, which in turn translates into profitability. Mediation can also assist with the external focus of the organisation by preservation of business relationships and maintaining reputation. The use of mediation as a dispute resolution process can have a really beneficial and positive effect on business savings in terms of time, money and reduced disruption

How can we SQEeze it all In? some challenges facing law schools in England and Wales

The Qualifying Law Degree in England and Wales has required law students wishing to qualify as solicitors to demonstrate competence in the seven foundational subjects (through a range of variously flexible assessment methods) and Law schools have arguably been allowed a certain amount of latitude in the way the law degree is taught. There has been space for a liberal education approach and the dissemination of the idea that the goal of a liberal law curriculum is not to ensure that students have acquired particular factual information, but rather, to allow them to understand the structures and values that pervade and underpin law as seen by Bradney (2003). Some law degrees have also included elements of socio-legalism, which arguably promotes the inclusion of a requirement to think critically, the facilitation of contextual knowledge acquisition, and the learning of what law ‘is all about’ and not just ‘what law is’. Other, perhaps more traditional law schools, have taught the law degree doctrinally, requiring law students to learn what the stated law is or, in other words, the black letter law and to understand the substantive law and associated legal principles. Educators in these institutions have often adopted the case law deconstruction and analysis method, which has often been delivered didactically. This doctrinal approach has most commonly required law to be learnt by rote and is best exemplified by Graduate Diploma In Law (GDL) teaching. In some more enlightened law schools, a place has been found for a more practical or experiential legal education approach at undergraduate level, and sometimes for academic credit. Within these institutions not only has the acquisition of practical legal skills (including research methodology), been incorporated into the curriculum, but opportunities are provided for students to learn how to perform practical legal tasks such as drafting letters and documents, negotiating and interviewing. In some instances, such law schools have facilitated this knowledge acquisition process through students’ exposure to the world of ‘real law’ through clinical legal experience. We now enter a ‘brave new world’ of training regulation for students seeking admission as solicitors. The current Solicitors Regulation Authority’s (SRA) proposals, now looking increasingly more like reality than not, present the academy with challenges as to how the undergraduate law degree will be delivered; what to teach, how to teach it and if the Solicitors Qualifying Examination Assessment Specification syllabus as currently presented is to be adopted, how to include it all

Widening participation in higher education: The legacy for legal education

New Labour’s first administration pledge to enable 50% of the adult population to pass through higher education by 2010 was predicated on the notion that an educated nation is beneficial and as such is linked to its long-term economic well-being. The dilemma confronting successive Neo-liberal Labour governments was that the creation of a more educated nation, was being proposed at the expense of the accusation that widening participation has caused a ‘dumbing down’ or devaluation of the degree qualification, law included. This article, among other things, analyses the various strategies which have attempted to achieve the policy, it will examine the effect that this has had on universities going into the 21st century with an emphasis on legal education. The author will attempt to show that widening participation has not fully achieved its intentions in that the effects have not been wholly beneficial; there are not the job opportunities available to offer the growing pool of graduates, including those with a law degree wishing to enter either branch of the legal profession. The author will also briefly explore the accusation that the law graduates are not attaining the kind of employment traditionally considered as being of graduate status. Sustainability of the policy has left the Conservative-led coalition government with no option but to introduce the promised rise in tuition fees initially implemented under Blair. As such, the future of higher education and indeed legal education is far from certain and this will be contextualised in a brief examination of the current state of UK legal education in anticipation of the eagerly awaited LETR review

Alternative dispute resolution and civil justice: a relationship resolved?

The rule of law is predicated on the rights of citizens to choose their dispute resolution forum and if they so desire, seek rights enforcement solutions through readily available forums of access to justice or through a more pluralistic range of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) processes, should the nature of the dispute be suitable for it. One of the philosophical tenets of dispute resolution is the idea that a legal dispute can broadly speaking be resolved in one of two ways. Through either the parties, whether or not lawyer assisted, negotiating settlements (including those resulting from mediation) or having a third party decide the outcome be that an Arbitrator, Early Neutral Evaluator or Judge imposing a decision. This paper reflects on the development of ADR’s relationship to civil justice and has been inspired by the academic discourse presented in a special issue of the Modern Law Review published in May 1993. That particular special issue focused on civil justice and ADR, the majority of which had its origin (with one exception) in papers prepared for the 1992 annual W.G. Hart Workshop at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in London. It is the late Simon Roberts’ article appearing in that special issue, written at a time when there was an acknowledged perception of crisis in the civil justice system in which he claimed had led judges to view ADR as a way to ease the burden of judicial business, which particularly attracted attention. It is not intended that this paper be a response to Roberts, but some twenty-five or so years on, in light of subsequent civil justice and ADR reviews, the timing is perhaps appropriate to reassess the relationship between ADR and civil justice and also to consider if a civil justice crisis perception persists

The value of community engagement (some ideas for UK law schools from the US).

This paper will consider the current importance of the graduate skills agenda in relation to a UK Law Degree. The value of including more socio-legal opportunities will be considered together with comparative consideration of what is happening in this regard in North America and the fact that the ABA recommends that law schools make pro bono opportunities available to their law students. To illustrate the value of community engagement, the paper will draw from a small-scale research study undertaken at the University of Pennsylvania's Law School (Penn Law) involving students enrolled on a clinical (active learning) course. The paper will reveal how those students engage with their local community to assist the administration of justice and identify the valuable skills they acquire when placed in a practical learning environment. The paper will make observations as to what useful lessons can be learned from the American law school approach in terms of embedding socio and clinical learning opportunities within the curriculum so as to enable UK Law students to learn more actively in their law schools. The current access to justice crisis in UK civil courts will provide a framework for this paper and some suggestions will be presented as to how law students can help the growing number of UK citizens who are unable to access legal services whilst at the same time enhancing their own practical legal skills and competencies