Law Commons^™

Modular Legal Learning: Revitalizing The Law Classroom, David Sandomierski, Stephanie Ben-Ishai

Articles & Book Chapters

The targeted and strategic use of asynchronous learning materials can free up important space for classroom teaching, and can unlock the spirit of experimentation, innovation, and engagement that animates in-person learning. This article sets out five principles that should guide future efforts to integrate asynchronous modules into legal education. Modules should be designed to supplement, not substitute, the live classroom; they should deliver content but also stimulate reflection, critique, and contextualization; they should be varied with respect to their subject matter; theoretical underpinnings, and pedagogical approach; professors should be able to easily customize their selections; and they should encourage collaboration …

American Influences, Canadian Realities : How "American" Is Canadian Legal Education?, Philip Girard

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Teaching Civil Obligations (Or What I Learned About Law, Legal Thinking And Teaching), Allan C. Hutchinson

Articles & Book Chapters

In most of my decades-long teaching and professorial career, I primarily taught Torts, but never Contracts. However, last year, I agreed to teach jointly a postgraduate class of 35 students on “Civil Obligations.” It was a decision that conformed to one of the more unsettling tropes of my life— “act in haste, repent at leisure.” My role in this arrangement was, after a general opening about the nature of civil obligations and the interface of Contract and Tort, to assume responsibility for the Contracts component of the course. This presented itself as a considerable task, but I thought that it …

Law School As Social Innovation, Lorne Sossin

Articles & Book Chapters

Legal education is in the midst of a range of challenges and disruptions. This address outlines these dynamics, and explores the potential of social innovation as a model for law schools which both responds to current challenges and enhances resilience in the face of disruption. By reframing legal education as facing outward, and advancing its public interest mandate through partnerships, collaboration and academic initiatives designed to solve social problems, law schools can enhance the student learning experience, generate new forms of legal knowledge and thrive at a time of rapid change. Address delivered at the Australian Law Teachers Association (ALTA) …

The Internet As A Site Of Legal Education And Collaboration Across Continents And Time Zones: Using Online Dispute Resolution As A Tool For Student Learning, Martha Simmons, Darin Thompson

Articles & Book Chapters

Increasingly, digital technologies are influencing and impacting dispute resolution, particularly in the emerging field of online dispute resolution (ODR). ODR holds the potential to increase access to justice by engaging disputants in dramatically new ways. As a relatively new subject, ODR is unlikely to form part of the traditional curriculum at law schools. Aside from the question of whether it will become a mainstream part of tomorrow’s legal or dispute resolution landscape, ODR does show us that a familiarity with technology is becoming more important for tomorrow’s lawyers. As educators, how can we expose law students to these new forces …

A Flex-Time Jd In Canada: New Approaches To The Accessibility Of Legal Education, Darcel Bullen, Lorne Sossin

Articles & Book Chapters

This article examines accessibility and inclusion in legal education. Responding to the Canadian Bar Association’s call for accessible and innovative legal education in the Futures Report, this study explores the possibilities (and limits) of a Flex Time Juris Doctor (“JD”) program and how such a program might foster further diverse and inclusive learning community for law students.The article situates the debate around more flexible forms of legal education in historical context, highlighting the role part-time legal studies has played in facilitating the entry of outsider groups into the legal profession. While there is not a mid-sized city in the US …

Addressing Access To Justice Through New Legal Service Providers: Opportunities And Challenges, Alice Woolley, Trevor C. W. Farrow

Articles & Book Chapters

Most informed observers of the Canadian and American legal systems accept the existence of a significant crisis in access to justice. One possible solution is to permit paralegals, notaries or other licensed individuals with training more limited than that enjoyed by a licensed attorney to practice in certain areas of law. This paper supports these developments, arguing for a regulated and incremental introduction of new legal service providers into the legal services market. It considers the appropriate training and scope of practice for new legal service providers, and some of the associated opportunities and challenges.

Experience The Future Of Legal Education, Lorne Sossin

Articles & Book Chapters

This article examines the shift towards experiential legal education and its implications. While others have focused on experiential education as a means of training better lawyers, the author advances the argument for experiential education because it is rooted in substantive problem-solving, access to justice, engagement with communities, and greater opportunities for reflective and critical thinking about law and justice. Drawing on examples from Osgoode Hall Law School, which adopted an experiential curricular requirement in 2012, the article explores the ways in which experiential education may change law school and law students. The article also canvasses the implications of the experiential …

The Future Of Legal Education: Three Visions And A Prediction, Harry W. Arthurs

Articles & Book Chapters

In this article, the author examines three visions of the future of law schools. The first vision is that they should focus on producing "practice ready lawyers" to meet the immediate needs of today's legal profession. The second is that law schools should focus on training "tomorrow's lawyers, "graduates who are able to adapt to a rapidly-changing world. The third insists that law schools are knowledge communities whose many functions include, but are not limited to, providing students with a large and liberal understanding of law that will prepare them for a variety of legal and non-legal careers and for …

Dispute Resolution, Access To Civil Justice And Legal Education, Trevor C. W. Farrow

Articles & Book Chapters

This article examines current dispute resolution teaching and research programs in the context of improving access to justice through recent civil justice reform initiatives. Animated by extensive domestic and international literature, online and survey-based research, the article explores the landscape of alternative dispute resolution education (primarily at law schools), comments on the need for continued thinking and reform and acts as a leading resource to assist in the ongoing, collaborative development of dispute resolution initiatives in legal education in Canada and abroad.

Dispute Resolution And Legal Education: A Bibliography, Trevor C. W. Farrow

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Madly Off In One Direction: Mcgill’S New Integrated, Poly-Jural, Trans-Systemic Law Program, Harry W. Arthurs

Articles & Book Chapters

In 1994, the McGill Faculty of Law organized a two-day faculty retreat, seeking to lay the foundations of a new curriculum. This desire was in part a response to the contradictions inherent to the faculty, but also stemmed from a deep-seated preoccupation with ‘polyjurality’, non-state normativity, transnational legal systems, and legal theory—a preoccupation that dates back to its origins, over 150 years ago. The author, while praising McGill's efforts at reinventing itself, laments a certain reserve toward interdisciplinarity. He conjectures that at least some understand the teaching of polyjurality and transsystemic law as a project that is largely concerned with …

A Core Curriculum For The Transnational Legal Education Of Jd And Llb Students: Surveying The Approach Of The International, Comparative And Transnational Law Program At Osgoode Hall Law School, Craig Scott

Articles & Book Chapters

My task is simple enough: to approach the question whether there is a core JD or LLB curriculum for transnational lawyers by briefly narrating Osgoode Hall Law School's experiment with the International Comparative and Transnational (ICT) Law Program that began four years ago.' By way of a preface, I hasten to make two points. The first point to note is that Osgoode's ICT Program is, to date, not mandatory for all our LL.B. students but, rather, an optional specialization; currently, about one-quarter of each year's entering class of around 280 students choose to take enter the program by taking the …

Globalizing Approaches To Legal Education And Training: Canada To Japan, Trevor C. W. Farrow

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Legal Education As A Strategy For Change In The Legal Profession, Mary Jane Mossman

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Legal Knowledge For Our Times: Rethinking Legal Knowledge And Legal Education, Ruth Buchanan, Marilyn Maccrimmon, Wes Pue

Articles & Book Chapters

The essays gathered for this symposium reflect a number of overlapping concerns about contemporary legal knowledge and education.

Though they are considerably diverse in focus and subject-matter, ranging from admissions to films to "marketing" of law faculties, each of these articles addresses aspects of legal education, the construction of legal knowledge and the character of what Ian Duncanson calls "the law discipline." Educational practice, knowledge and disciplinarity are thoroughly inter-related. The contributors to this volume are all acutely aware that, as educators and researchers, we both:

participate in the construction of legal knowledge (for the readers of learned journals, for …

Clinical Legal Education And Legal Aid - The Canadian Experience, Frederick H. Zemans, Lester Brickman

Articles & Book Chapters

Last fall CLEPR sponsored the first workshop of Canadian law schools devoted exclusively to the subject of clinical law training in Canada. The seminar was co-hosted by the McGill University and Osgoode Hall Law Schools and CLEPR, and was held at the Law School of McGill in Montreal, on November 29th and 30th, 1973. The workshop was organized and co-chaired by Professor Frederick H. Zemans of Osgoode Hall Law School and Professor Lester Brickman of the University of Toledo Law School, who are responsible for this report of the proceedings. A list of those attending is included at the conclusion …