Critical legal reading: The elements, strategies and dispositions needed to master this essential skill

Alex Steel, Kate Galloway, Mary Heath, Natalie Skead, Mark Israel, Anne Hewit

Running to well-being: A comparative study on the impact of exercise on the physical and mental health of law and psychology students

Research indicates that, in comparison to other university students, law students are at greater risk of experiencing high levels of psychological distress. There is also a large body of literature supporting a general negative association between exercise and stress, anxiety and depression. However, we are not aware of any studies exploring the impact of exercise on the mental health of law students specifically. This article reports evidence of a negative association between exercise and psychological distress in 206 law and psychology students. Compared to psychology students, the law students not only reported greater psychological distress, but, in addition, there was a stronger association between their levels of distress and their levels of exercise. Based on the results of this study, we suggest a simple yet effective way law schools might support the mental health of their students

Working the Nexus: Teaching students to think, read and problem-solve like a lawyer

Despite a clear case for thinking skills in legal education, the approach to teaching these skills often appears to be implied in law curricula rather than identified explicitly. Thinking skills could be taught as part of reading law and legal problem solving. However, learning the full suite of thinking skills requires active teaching strategies which go beyond exposing students to the text of the law, and training them in its application by solving problem scenarios. The challenge for law teachers is to articulate how to learn legal thinking skills, and to do so at each level of the degree. This article outlines how the nexus between three component skills: critical legal thinking, reading law, and legal problem solving, can be put to work to provide a cohesive and scaffolded approach to the teaching of legal thinking. Although the approach in this article arises from the Smart Casual project, producing discipline-specific professional development resources directed at sessional teachers in law, we suggest that its application is relevant to all law teachers

Fostering “Quiet Inclusion”: Interaction and Diversity in the Australian Law Classroom

Law schools and the legal profession in Australia have long been associated with social reproduction of the elite.1 Scholars have been inclined to reflect on the structural arrangements that sustain this association, which form one important dimension of its persistence. However, the ways people interact with one another can also entrench privilege, by indicating that the values, attributes, and views of some people are either accepted and wanted or are unaccepted and unwanted—quietly including or excluding. This sorting also happens in law schools and in legal practice, partly because of behavior modeled in law schools

Perceptions of LGBTQI+ diversity in the legal profession: It\u27s happening slow, but it\u27s certainly happening

This article reports on a qualitative study aimed at understanding how LGBTQI+ law students and recent graduates perceive and experience the legal profession. While we found that several participants self-censor in interactions with the profession, others considered their LGBTQI+ identity as advantageous, enabling them to benefit from ‘diversity hiring’. Despite this, many participants regarded the legal profession as ‘conservative’ and influenced by the ‘old guard’, which remains unaccepting of LGBTQI+ identities. Participants also considered the profession to be more accepting of some LGBTQI+ identities than others. We conclude by suggesting strategies to improve perceptions and experiences of the profession

Teaching property law in Australia in the twenty-first century: what we do now, what should we do in the future?

[Extract] The contemporary law degree is changing. Globally, law schools have faced the twin challenges of: the introduction of standards-based quality assurance;2 and the sustained critique of the content-heavy focus of the traditional law degree.3 The profession, academia and the judiciary are calling for graduates who are proficient in a range of professional skills as well as being well versed in the law and its context.4 In terms of property law, new frontiers for the property law teacher to grapple with include the relatively recent creation of new property rights involving land; more sophisticated forms of community title; the increasing importance of environmental considerations; the concept of sustainability in what has otherwise been a market-based field as well as recent significant developments in personal property law. Given the central role ascribed to the teaching of property law, as highlighted in Gray's quote, it is entirely appropriate, and indeed timely, that property teachers take stock and reflect not only on the current and proposed future content of property law units but also on how this content is being taught and assessed. During 2011 the authors invited property law teachers from all Australian law schools to participate in a comprehensive survey regarding the teaching of the compulsory property law unit.5 The survey covered various aspects of teaching property law including content; teaching format; the extent to which skills are taught in property law; learning outcomes; the methods of assessment; the developing areas of property law; and the challenges faced by property law teachers in the twenty-first century. The survey findings provide an in depth insight into the views of Australian property teachers on the current and future teaching of property law

Teaching skills and outcomes in Australian property law units: a survey of current approaches

Globally, higher education and legal education have embraced the development of skills as an integral part of student learning. It is no longer enough that graduates enter the workplace armed only with a body of disembodied discipline knowledge. It is expected that graduates have complementary skills – both generic and professional. These skills do not appear 'magically'; rather it is the role of the law teacher to facilitate students' development of these skills during their studies. The imperative to design curricula that embed skills development has become more urgent with the advent of discipline standards and the new quality regime in Australia. This paper reports on a survey of Australian property law teachers undertaken in late 2011. The paper analyses teaching methods, skills and outcomes in the teaching of property law. In particular, the paper considers how property teachers deal with the development of skills in the property law curriculum, testing Gray's suggestion that '[i]t is in Property Law that consciously or unconsciously the student learns a basic competence in a number of skills which are of immense importance in later life.'(1) If this is true, this paper asks, how and to what extent do Australian property law curricula embrace the teaching of skills