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Programs

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Lawyers, Legal Services and Legal Education Research Program

Co-Directors:
Members:

The Lawyers, Legal Services and Legal Education Research Program hosts the:

Members of this program are actively researching aspects of lawyering, and issues in legal education relating to the teaching of generic and legally specific skills and interdisciplinarity. Their expertise includes ADR, client-centred legal practice and lawyer-client relations, interviewing skills, and the provision of legal services.

Reading Group:

The Curriculum Teaching and Learning Reading Group is hosted by the Lawyers, Legal Services and Legal Education Research Program.

Current Research:

One of the research projects that members were involved with was a project entitled Learning Outcomes and Curriculum Development in Major Development in Law which has been commissioned by the Australian Universities Teaching Committee.

Learning Outcomes and Curriculum Development in Major Development in Law

Commissioned by the Australian Universities Teaching Committee

The joint Project Managers of the project are Professors Paul Redmond (UNSW) and Richard Johnstone (Griffith). They will be assisted by Ms Suzanne Crowley, the Senior Research Officer, who will be based at UNSW. A consortium of Law Deans, from the Law Schools at the University of Western Australia, Murdoch University, Flinders University, Northern Territory University, James Cook University, Southern Cross University and the College of Law will operate as a research management committee. Professor Paul Ramsden, PVC (Teaching and Learning) is also a member of the consortium.

The project will identify, describe and evaluate:

  1. the ways in which the processes of curriculum development and review have been varied and enhanced to take account of the changing circumstances facing law schools;
  2. the extent to which the methods of teaching and assessment have been reviewed and revised in response to changing circumstances;
  3. examples of best practice in teaching and learning in law, and will recommend ways of ensuring that these practices are disseminated to ensure that, where appropriate, they are adopted and adapted by other law teachers;
  4. the degree of awareness by students of expected learning outcomes and intended graduate attributes and links between these and the curriculum and teaching and learning methods adopted in individual courses;
  5. the impact of globalisation and the new communication and information technologies on teaching and learning;
  6. the role of professional experience and its management within the curriculum;
  7. graduate employability and employer/industry satisfaction; and
  8. the impact of the growth in double and combined degrees and the changing balance of postgraduate to undergraduate programs.

The project will:

  1. provide an overall assessment of the quality of teaching and learning across the discipline of law.
  2. examine the success or failure of CAUT and CUTSD funded teaching and learning projects in law?

The methods utilised in the project include a literature review, a survey of all Deans of Law Schools in order to catalogue teaching programs, curriculum developments and teaching practices at all Australian Law Schools: a survey of a sample of law students, a survey of a sample of teachers, and a survey of employers of law graduates to ascertain industry's views of legal education.

The project began in August 2001 and will be completed by the end of July 2002.