The place of emotion in legal education is rarely discussed or analysed, and we do not have to seek far for the reasons. The difficulty of interdisciplinary research, the technicisation of legal education itself, the view that affect is irrational and antithetical to core western ideals of rationality - all this has made the subject of emotion in legal education invisible. Yet the educational literature on emotion proves how essential it is to student learning and to the professional lives of teachers. This text, the first full-length book study of the subject, seeks to make emotion a central topic of research for legal educators, and restore the power of emotion in our teaching and learning. Part 1 focuses on the contribution that neuroscience can make to legal learning, a theme that is carried through other chapters in the book. Part 2 explores the role of emotion in the working lives of academics and clinical staff, while Part 3 analyses the ways in which emotion can be used in learning and teaching. The book, interdisciplinary and wide-ranging in its reference, breaks new ground in its analysis of the educational lifeworld of situations, communities, actors and interactions in legal education.

The place of emotion in legal education is rarely discussed or analysed, and we do not have to seek far for the reasons. The difficulty of interdisciplinary research, the technicisation of legal education itself, the view that affect is irrational and antithetical to core western ideals of rationality - all this has made the subject of emotion in legal education invisible. Yet the educational literature on emotion proves how essential it is to student learning and to the professional lives of teachers. This text, the first full-length book study of the subject, seeks to make emotion a central topic of research for legal educators, and restore the power of emotion in our teaching and learning. Part 1 focuses on the contribution that neuroscience can make to legal learning, a theme that is carried through other chapters in the book. Part 2 explores the role of emotion in the working lives of academics and clinical staff, while Part 3 analyses the ways in which emotion can be used in learning and teaching. The book, interdisciplinary and wide-ranging in its reference, breaks new ground in its analysis of the educational lifeworld of situations, communities, actors and interactions in legal education.

There is a myth that lingers around legal education in many democracies. That myth would have us believe that law students are admitted and then succeed based on raw merit, and that law schools are neutral settings in which professors (also selected and promoted based on merit) use their expertise to train those students to become lawyers. Based on original, empirical research, this book investigates this myth from myriad perspectives, diverse settings, and in different nations, revealing that hierarchies of power and cultural norms shape and maintain inequities in legal education. Embedded within law school cultures are assumptions that also stymie efforts at reform. The book examines hidden pedagogical messages, showing how presumptions about theory’s relation to practice are refracted through the obfuscating lens of curricula. The contributors also tackle questions of class and market as they affect law training. Finally, this collection examines how structural barriers replicate injustice even within institutions representing themselves as democratic and open, revealing common dynamics across cultural and institutional forms. The chapters speak to similar issues and to one another about the influence of context, images of law and lawyers, the political economy of legal education, and the agency of students and faculty.

How we interpret and understand the historical contexts of legal education has profoundly affected how we understand contemporary educational cultures and practices. This book, the result of a Modern Law Review seminar, both celebrates and critiques the lasting impact of Peter Birks’ influential edited collection, Pressing Problems in the Law: Volume 2: What is the Law School for? Published in 1996, his book addresses many critical issues that are hauntingly present in the 21st century, amongst them the impact of globalisation; technological disruption; and the tension inherent in law schools as they seek to balance the competing interest of teaching, research and administration. Yet Birks’ collection misses key issues, too. The role of wellbeing, of emotion or affect, the relation of legal education to education, the status of legal education in what, since his volume, have become the devolved jurisdictions of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland – these and others are absent from the research agenda of the book. Today, legal educators face new challenges. We are still recovering from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on our universities. In 1996 Birks was keen to stress the importance of comparative research within Europe. Today, legal researchers are dismayed at the possibility of losing valuable EU research funding when the UK leaves the EU, and at the many other negative effects of Brexit on legal education. The proposed Solicitors Qualifying Examination takes legal education regulation and professional learning into uncharted waters. This book discusses these and related impacts on our legal educations. As law schools approach an existential crossroads post-Covid-19, it seems timely to revisit Birks’ fundamental question: what are law schools for?

Building on Best Practices is a follow-up to Best Practices for Legal Education, a project of the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA), authored primarily by Roy Stuckey. With contributions from more than 50 legal educators, this new volume is not a second edition, but is intended to be used in conjunction with the original volume, as the core content of Best Practices remains just as useful as when it was originally published. In the wake of new ABA Accreditation Standards, the MacCrate Report, and other changes, legal education is called upon today to respond to a broader view of what lawyers must be trained to do. Building on Best Practices identifies ten such areas and provides guidance on what and how to teach them. The demand to teach a broader range of knowledge, skills, and values presents difficult trade-offs, however, that are also considered. "To demonstrate that law schools can still add value to careers and society, legal educators must grapple with structural changes that affect every aspect of teaching, learning and researching. Building on Best Practices provides diverse expertise and useful guidance on approaching these challenges and on improving and expanding the enterprise of legal education." - Jeffrey R. Baker, Journal of Legal Education

Law schools are failing both their staff and students by requiring them to prize reason and rationality and to suppress or ignore emotions. Despite innovations in terms of both content and teaching techniques, there is little evidence that emotions are effectively acknowledged or utilised within legal education. Instead law schools are clinging to an out-dated and erroneous perception of emotions as at best, irrational, and at worst dangerous. In contrast to this, educational and scientific developments have demonstrated that emotions are a fundamental, inescapable part of learning, teaching and skills development. Harnessing these emotions will therefore have a transformative effect on legal education and enable it to adapt to the needs and demands of the twenty-first century. This book provides a theoretical overview of the role played by emotions in all aspects of the life of the law school. It explores the relationship emotions have with key traditional and contemporary approaches to legal education, the ways in which emotions can be conceptualised, their interaction with the politics and policies of legal education and their role within teaching and learning. The book also considers the importance of emotional wellbeing for both law students and legal academics Overall, this book argues for a more holistic form of legal education in which emotions play a valuable (and valued) role. This requires a new vision for law schools, in which emotions are acknowledged and embedded at all levels, institutional and personal.