Experimental Legal Education In A Globalized World

Legal education is currently undergoing a paradigm shift. Traditional law instruction, lecturing and memorizing have become a fading fashion, with legal clinics increasingly cropping up. These allow law students to practice while studying and to contribute to social justice as part of the educational process. Students no longer accept one-way interaction from their professors, and demand interaction with their peers in various corners of the globe. The Middle East is no exception here. Legal clinics can be found in most countries of the region, though there is scant literature on legal education in the area, particularly with regards to clinical legal education. This book fills this gap, and offers comparative cases that will benefit legal educators and justice practitioners in the Middle East and beyond. The region needs reform in all dimensions, including the political, economic, social, religious, legal, and educational. Legal education lies at the heart of securing such long awaited reforms. The book examines legal education within selected locations in the region, underscoring successful pedagogical models from various parts of the world. This peer-reviewed book focuses on practical legal education, where learning is student-centered, particularly clinical legal education, field work, street law, pro bono service, legal advice, simulations, placements/internships, moot courts and mock trials, problem-based learning, case analysis, group work, role-play, and brainstorming. The book brings together 28 chapters written by leading legal scholars from across the globe, all concerned with the advancement of legal education, with making it more interactive, and contributing to bridging the gap between powerful and powerless communities.

"Legal academics and practitioners in recent decades increasingly emphasize the so-called "globalization" of legal education. The diffusion of the Juris Doctor (JD) degree to Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea, as well as the advent of a very similar Juris Master (JM) degree in China and a shift in the late 1980s and beyond to a new, US-influenced format in India, exemplify shifts toward US legal education practices (Flood 2014). The global and Americanizing trend is evident on the web sites of law schools around the globe, with many law schools competing to be the most "global" in terms of their faculty, curricula, teaching methods, and students. Less pronounced but related to the literature on legal globalization is that on "transnationalization" and transnational processes, which is a strong component of the move toward globalization in legal education. As this book shows, if we look to see what is celebrated as part of globalized law schools and faculties, we see increased cross-border flows of professors and students, teaching of transnational legal subjects, development of particular forms of teaching practice such as legal clinics, explicit focus on transnational rankings, and transnationalized scholarly communities sharing teaching and research methods and approaches across domains of law"--

Clinical legal education has revolutionized legal education, from its deepest origins in the nineteenth century to its now-global reach.

This book discusses the opportunities and challenges facing legal education in the era of globalization. It identifies the knowledge and skills that law students will require in order to prepare for the practice of tomorrow, and explores pedagogical shifts legal education needs to make inside and outside of the classroom. With contributions from leading experts on legal education from various jurisdictions across the globe, the work combines theoretical depth with practical insights. Seeking to understand the changing landscape of legal education in the era of globalization, the contributions find that law schools can, and must, adopt educational strategies that at least present students with different understandings of what studying and practicing law is meant to be about. They find that law schools need to offer their students choices, a vision of practice that is not driven entirely by the demands of the marketplace or the needs of major international law firms. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, this book makes a significant contribution to the impact of globalization on legal education, and how students and law schools need to adapt for the future. It will be of great interest to academics and students of comparative legal studies and legal education, as well as policy-makers and practitioners.

The world's legal professions have undergone dramatic changes in the 30 years since publication of the landmark three-volume Lawyers in Society, which launched comparative sociological studies of lawyers. This is the first of two volumes in which scholars from a wide range of disciplines, countries and cultures document and analyse those changes. The present volume presents reports on 46 countries, with broad coverage of North America, Western Europe, Latin America, Asia, Australia, North Africa and the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and former communist countries. These national reports address: the impact of globalisation and neoliberalism on national legal professions (the relationship of lawyers and their professional associations to the state and tensions between state and citizenship); changes in lawyer demography (rapidly growing numbers and the profession's efforts to retain control, the entry of women and obstacles to full gender equality, ethnic diversity); legal education (the proliferation of institutions and pedagogic innovation); the regulation of lawyers; structures of production (especially the growth of large firms and the impact of technology and paraprofessionals); the distribution of lawyers across roles; and access to justice (state-funded legal aid and pro-bono services). The juxtaposition of the reports reveals the dramatic transformations of professional rationales, labour markets, and working practices and the multiple contingencies of the role of lawyers in societies experiencing increasing juridification within a new geopolitical order.

European legal teaching - historically formalistic, doctrinal, hierarchical, and passive - is coming under increasing pressure to reimagine itself as pragmatic, policy-aware, and action-oriented. Out of this context, a bottom-up movement of university law clinics appears to be emerging in Europe. Although intellectually indebted to the US model, the European variant reflects legal education and practice in Europe, specifically the multi-layered and multi-genetic legal landscape resulting from the Europeanization and internationalization of national legal systems, the globalization of European legal markets, and the growing demand for civic engagement in view of increasingly powerful supra-national institutions. Through the prism of clinical legal education, Reinventing Legal Education is the first attempt to gather scholarly and systematic reflections on the developments taking place in European legal teaching and practice. This groundbreaking book should be read by anyone interested in how clinical legal education is reinventing legal education in Europe.

Globally, the methodologies of legal education have not changed in any fundamental way, some methods dating back hundreds of years. Law schools have relied, for too long, on passive learning methods such as lectures or cases. Clinical legal education provides an alternative that is more than just another pedagogical method. It provides a way for students to experience their emerging professional selves, while providing services or projects with poor and underrepresented clients. This book documents both the historical origins of clinical experiments in the earliest days of US university legal education, and the now-global reach of clinical pedagogy as a proven tool for effective training of legal professionals.

Whilst educational theory has developed significantly in recent years, much of the law curriculum remains content-driven and delivered traditionally, predominantly through lecture format. Students are, in the main, treated as empty vessels to be filled by the eminent academics of the day. Re-thinking Legal Education under the Common and Civil Law draws on the experience of teachers, practitioners and students across the world who are committed to developing a more effective learning process. Little attention has, historically, been paid to the importance of the application of theory, the role of reflective learning, the understanding and acquisition of lawyering skills and the development of professional responsibility and wider ethical values. With contributions from across the global north and south, this book examines the history of educating our lawyers, the influences and constraints that may shape the curriculum, the means of delivering it and the models that could be used to tackle current shortcomings. The whole is intended to represent what might be desirable and possible if we are to produce lawyers that are fit for purpose in the 21st century, be that in either in civil or common law jurisdictions. This book will be of direct assistance to those who wish to understand the theory and practice of legal pedagogy in an experiential context. It will be essential reading for academics, researchers and teachers in the fields of law and education, particularly those concerned with curriculum design and developing interactive teaching methods. It is likely to be of interest to law students too – particularly those who value a more direct engagement in their learning.

Published in 1999, this volume contributes to the debate on convergence and differences in the role of law and legal institutions throughout the world. Globalization and technology may allow convergence of lawyers training, practices and values. However, local conditions may create resistances and barriers which must be acknowledged and studied. The book focuses on social values in legal education and practice in four regions: East Asia, South Asia, South-East Asia and Latin America.

This book discusses legal services clinics and various other access-to-justice initiatives that are established to protect and represent the rights and interests of children and youth in several countries across the globe. These could include legal services or access-to-justice clinics run by government or universities or community. The book has contributions from academicians, lawyers, researchers and legal professionals from several counties including India, UK, USA, Brazil, Australia, Indonesia, Poland, and Spain, which discuss how they represent children and youth in their countries. The book looks at how these access-to-justice initiatives currently provide assistance, what are the child friendly justice procedures they use, and best practices that can be replicable in other jurisdictions. The chapters contain findings of field research studies, some case studies, and models related to these topics. There are recommendations on ways to strengthen access-to-justice and legal services for empowering children and youth. The main goal is to create a resource for readers who want to expand child advocacy opportunities in their own universities and communities. The reader may also learn how to conduct legislative advocacy and case law advocacy to improve laws in other jurisdictions; and take-away best and replicable initiatives. The practices could be adaptable by other clinics and countries. The book will be useful to child rights advocates and defenders, students of law, legal researchers, civil society organizations, legal services authorities, legal aid institutions, educational institutions, school authorities, juvenile justice authorities, clinical legal educators, justice educators, justice practitioners and law and policy makers.