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Panacea or Poison

Associate Professor Dr Umair Ghori

We should exercise caution when using videos to teach law: funky ideas don’t always work.

The use of videos and blended learning techniques offer new ways of content delivery and student engagement. In the digital age, the practice, training, and education of law can be bundled into series of short and slick videos that the new generation law student can watch over mobile devices or their laptops.

Summarising an important judgment or convoluted legal concepts into a brief video not only saves time for the students but also provides them with a critical information driving a topic in a neat, little package. The use of colours, graphics, and visuals to go with the words further enhances the appeal. Law teachers who do it are “cool”, those who don’t are “old school” and “not so cool”.

There is little doubt that students and the faculties prefer “cool” over “old school”.

Besides, what can possibly go wrong?

Frank confession: I have had a mixed relationship with the use of videos in my teaching and they don’t always work as intended.

I was initially sceptical of blended learning, until a rude awakening in 2018 compelled me to discard my illusions of an experienced law educator. I re-assessed the new type of law student in my classroom and concluded that the students were overloaded and fatigued with the flow of information to the point of frustration. I took inspiration from the video games I indulged in and decided to experiment with videos embedded in my tutorials.

They loved it! I was “cool” again. They told me; we want more…more!

The faculty and the OLT were very happy – My efforts were acknowledged by a teaching award. Yay!

The first three videos I produced took roughly 8 hours of work (summarising the legal content into a script, peer-reviews from generous colleagues, production, editing etc.). The Lightboard was the funkiest of mediums to produce a law video but also the most time-intensive. The hand-written, bright, neon text added a genuine, human component to the video. The students were captivated by the novelty of how I was able to write text and it didn’t appear inverted. After producing three Lightboard videos, I took stock of the situation: the idea was great, but it was taking too long to produce the videos. There must be a better way.

After discussions with the super-helpful OLT staff, I opted for a video making approach where I pinpointed key concepts to the OLT production gurus who promptly inserted the concept as captions in bold text within the videos. The text was brief, not more than 2-3 lines, interspersed throughout the videos. The production process was efficient and quick. I immediately produced nine more videos.

Another advantage was that captioned-driven videos could be updated and edited quickly in case new content was to be inserted or if editing was warranted in case of a mistake or inaccuracy.

The assumption behind the idea of brief captions was to flash important concepts on the screen that could penetrate the already overloaded student minds. I thought to myself, even if students don’t understand the whole video, at least they can grasp the key concepts.

The videos covered a variety of topics: summarising important cases such as Amadio or We Buy Houses, explaining complex legal concepts, summarising statutory remedies or various statutory interpretation approaches. Topics I anticipated might cause problems for the student.

By summarising the rules in the video, I again assumed, would encourage the students to further read the underlying concepts. That’s where I went wrong. The assumptions were unrealistic and too optimistic, and the students were tempted to base their understandings on the video alone while bypassing the required readings.

Houston, we have a problem!

Without reading the bare legislation, there can be no understanding of the legal foundation of a statute. Without reading case extracts, the detailed reasoning of the judges cannot be grasped. Without reading the textbook, the students are simply getting a “sugar hit” by watching the video and making short notes.

Yet, it is the detailed readings that are cause of student worry. The solution I came up with created another problem, rather than solving the original problem. Now, the students are simply not reading what they’re supposed to read.

Taking a step back, I have conducted an honest appraisal about videos based on my own observations over the last three years. Videos in the modern day teaching of law are only a tool to further student understanding. Videos are not the panacea law academics are looking for. There is no substitute for readings, commentaries and developing understanding of statute or precedents. If videos are not balanced with rigorous coverage of the law embedded in the course content and the assessment, the panacea becomes the poison!

Through this blogpost, I would caution my academic colleagues on the overzealous use of videos. The videos or recordings of content can quickly become a poison that will stunt the growth of the new generation of law students under our care, unless we marry the video resources with good “old fashioned” coverage of statute and precedent.

Even if it means that we become “uncool” again!

Introducing the Legal Research Hub

Holli Edwards and Tarisa Yasin

The Legal Research Hub, like many legal enterprises, began as a hallway conversation between colleagues, Tarisa and Holli. The idea: a platform for academics and legal professionals to discuss topical legal issues and share their respective insights, and offering opportunities to showcase current legal research. The format: a peer-reviewed online publication, and a podcast series with legal experts. From these aspirations, the Legal Research Hub was born. 

Reflecting on their experience as academics and legal practitioners, Tarisa and Holli wanted to create a platform that traverses these legal disciplines and offers a collaborative space for discussing the latest legal news and research. Holli and Tarisa are both currently Higher Degree Research candidates and Assistant Teaching Fellows at Bond University’s Law Faculty. Holli’s research focuses on Access to Justice initiatives and the Rule of Law, and Tarisa’s research area is in International Humanitarian Law, particularly looking at the challenges autonomous weapon systems brings to IHL (International Humanitarian Law). Prior to commencing their research, Tarisa and Holli gained practical experience as lawyers. Holli worked as a Judge’s Associate at the Supreme Court of Queensland and, after admission to legal practice, became a criminal defence lawyer at Legal Aid Queensland. Tarisa was a PLT trainee at QCAT and was admitted into legal practice while she worked as graduate lawyer at Kerr Lawyers.  

The recently launched Legal Research Hub aims to bring together academia and the legal profession to discuss and share knowledge about the future of law. It is a forum to spark curiosity and enhance knowledge about current legal topics for everyone from law students to seasoned academics and professionals. The Legal Research Hub provides the latest in legal research developments and topical discussions in law. The motto for the Hub is Lex ferenda enitor ad rem – loosely translated from Latin to: boldly striving towards the future of law. 

Thus far, several diverse articles have been published (with more currently under review) including: 

• Youth Bail Laws in Queensland: Why Youths Should Not Expect Bail in Queensland 
• Houthi Drone Strike Aimed at Saudi Arabian Oil Giant: A Violation of International Humanitarian Law? 
• The Law of Nature: (Mis)Management of Kakadu National Park 
• Merging the Family Court and Federal Court: A Happy Marriage? 
• Surviving the Silence: Reforms to Gag-Laws Allow Survivors of Abuse to Speak 
• The Art of Truth: Professional Actors as Witnesses in Legal Proceedings 
• Climate Change and the Courts: A Focus on Sharma v The Minister for Environment 
• Accessory Sentenced for a Crime Not Proven?: The Case of R v Doudar 

The first episode of the Lex Ferenda Podcast series is also now available, for free, online. Tarisa and Holli interview Clair Duffy, an esteemed public international lawyer and teacher, in an insightful discussion about the Brereton Report regarding war crimes alleged to have been committed by Australian Defence Force (‘ADF’) personnel in Afghanistan. The interview delves into the International Criminal Laws and the Laws of Armed Conflict applicable, questions of legal ethics, and explores the impacts of the Report’s findings for the future practices and policies of the ADF. 

The support receive for the Legal Research Hub, since it was launched in January 2021, has been fantastic. In addition to the encouragement and promotion of the Hub by Bond’s Dean of Law, Nick James, and other professors  and students, legal professionals – including senior practitioners and barristers – have subscribed to the Hub’s website.  One reader commented on an article: “It’s a complex situation, so thank you for breaking down the legal framework so effectively.” 

Tarisa and Holli have big plans to continue expanding the Legal Research Hub. In addition to initiatives to expand the contributors and audience, the co-Founders are investigating options to integrate CPD-relevant materials into the resources offered by the Hub. 

If you would like to contribute, the Legal Research Hub accepts submissions for articles on any legal topic on a rolling-basis. In contrast to some journals, the review and response time is also only a few weeks, so you can get your work in front of readers more quickly. The Legal Research Hub also allows authors to retain full copyright over their work and its use. 

If you would like to find out more, please check out the website: www.legalresearchhub.wixsite.com/home. A copy of the submission guidelines and copyright policies are available on the website, in addition to the articles already published and the Lex Ferenda Podcast series.  

Climate change: How can law teachers help?

Professor Nick James

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1998. The objective of the IPCC is to provide governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies.

Since 1990, the IPCC has delivered five Assessment Reports, described as ‘the most comprehensive scientific reports about climate change produced worldwide’. According to the IPCC’s most recent report:

• Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history.
• The continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.
• In urban areas, climate change is projected to increase risks for people, economies and ecosystems, including risks from heat stress, storms and extreme precipitation, inland and coastal flooding, water scarcity, sea-level rise, and storm surges.
• Rural areas are expected to experience major impacts on water availability and supply, food security, infrastructure, and agricultural incomes.
• By the end of the 21st century, it is very likely that more than 95% of the ocean area worldwide will experience sea level rise.

Anthropogenic climate change is the great challenge of our time, and possibly the greatest challenge we have ever faced.

It has fallen upon the contemporary global community to work together to understand climate change, to address climate change, and to mitigate its consequences.

It is an overwhelming responsibility. It comes as no surprise that so many organisations and individuals are so overwhelmed by that responsibility, that they seek desperately for ways to avoid it – by denying that climate change is anthropogenic or is even occurring, by ignoring or responding with nihilistic nonchalance, by focussing on short term profit and personal gain, or by focussing on distractions … from Playstations and pizzas to pandemics and politics.

Those of us genuinely concerned to respond appropriately to anthropogenic climate change face not only the physical challenge of dealing with climate change and its effects, but also the psychological, emotional, ethical and social challenges of persuading and motivating our governments, corporations, family members and friends to join us.

Fortunately we have at our disposal an extraordinary set of tools. We have rationality. We have science. We have perseverance and resilience. We have a generation of energetic young activists determined to do whatever they can to help. And one of the most powerful tools we have is the law.

It isn’t always obvious how lawyers can contribute to addressing climate change. But it is the law that ensures that the science-based solutions to climate change are implemented and adhered to. Used appropriately it is the law that will help to ensure the global community is united in its response to climate change … and it is global unity that is so desperately needed. (Of course, the law can also be used as a barrier to an effective response.)

And so it falls upon us as lawyers, legal scholars, legal practitioners, members of the judiciary and law students to work together to identify the ways in which the law can and should be used to respond to climate change, including

•  ensuring domestic laws align with our international obligations

•  regulating industry in a manner consistent with reducing emissions

•  addressing the human right implications of climate change

•  ensuring our community’s responses to climate change are equitable and fair

• ensuring lessons learned from Indigenous members of our global community are applied appropriately and effectively

As the Dean of a law school, my own interest is in identifying ways in which legal education itself can contribute to addressing climate change, by leveraging partnerships between scholars, practitioners and students to facilitate climate change justice initiatives, and by embedding climate change and climate change law in the curriculum to support the creation of a generation of young lawyers who have the knowledge and the skills to help shape the law in a climate friendly manner.

All of these issues and more were touched upon at the recent the 2021 Climate Change, Law and Legal Education Conference, jointly hosted by the Bond University Global and Comparative Law and Policy Network and the Centre for Professional Legal Education. I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at the Conference, and hearing from an extraordinary range of speakers about the importance of teaching climate change law to law students, and the many challenges we face in doing so. A book collecting some of the papers presented at the conference is being organised, so look forward to further updates soon about that worthy project.

The Digital Law: Law Student Visions For The Delivery of Legal Services

Professor Nick James and Matt Roach

In 2015, Matt Roach approached the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Law at Bond University, Professor Nick James, with a proposal. He would draw upon his education at Stanford studying the impact of emergent technologies upon legal practice and his experience as a legal practitioner at a large law firm to develop a subject that focussed upon contemporary and future legal practice in Australia and internationally, with a focus upon ‘digital disruption’.

Nick had recently identified a need to expand the law curriculum at Bond to include just such a subject, and Matt’s proposal was accepted. The new subject, ‘Technology and Legal Practice’ was taught for the first time in 2016. The subject description was as follows:

This subject examines change in the legal services industry and explores a diverse range of ideas about how technology can be deployed in legal practice. The business model of the traditional law firm is under threat by new, technology-driven market entrants. Work traditionally completed by lawyers can be done faster, cheaper and better by increasingly capable smart machines employing techniques such as machine learning, data analytics and natural language processing. Some lawyers and law practices will become less useful, relevant and profitable because of these changes. Others will leverage technology to find new and creative ways to deliver legal services and deliver value, delight their clients and gain a competitive advantage. During this subject, students will develop a technology based prototype to address customers’ legal needs.

Matt and the new subject both received extremely positive feedback from the students who enrolled in the subject.

Since then, Matt has delivered the subject every year to a growing cohort of students. The name of the subject was changed to ‘The Digital Lawyer’ a couple of years ago, and the content has been updated annually to acknowledge the rapid changes taking place within the legal services sector, but the emphasis upon a topical, practical and provocative investigation into the present and likely future impact – both positive and negative – of technology upon what lawyers do has continued to resonate with students.

The approach taken by Matt to the assessment tasks in the subject has likewise remained practical, authentic and engaging. Matt initially asked students to prepare prototypes of a technology-based solution to delivering legal services. However, the students showed an interest not just in adopting new technologies but also in reforming the business model of law firms from the ground up. Accordingly, in 2020, students designed their perfect ‘law firm’ for the next five years, incorporating a mix of new technologies and progressive practices encompassing all aspects of legal service delivery.

The quality of the work done by the students in response to this task was so impressive, we decided to draw upon the resources of the Centre for Professional Legal Education to make the five best student projects publicly available.

• Assistmatch-me by Dawid Ferensowicz and Julietta Oyediran – A global platform that connects people with personalised professional assistance for all their immigration needs.
• Virtual Family Law firm for LGBTQ Adoption by Qiaoyu (Penny) Peng – A virtual family law firm to help LGBTQ couples have a child and build families by adoption.
• CSRguide by Tahlia Dimech – An online legal service that makes it easy for small to medium enterprises to start implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives.
• Producers’ Cut by Pierce Wilding – An online service that provides production companies with the tools to streamline their contract management
• Thrive by James Bartlett – A service to help to simplify the intricate and complex requirements of the NDIS and create a fairer and more accessible NDIS marketplace

Click here to read the report. We hope that you find the papers published in the report as insightful and interesting as we did. And if there is anything in this report about which you would like to learn more, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at cple@bond.edu.au.

2020 Professional Legal Education Conference Recordings Now Available

Professor Nick James

On 1-3 October 2020, the Centre for Professional Legal Education proudly hosted the very first Professional Legal Education conference. The plenary presentations and individual Livestream presentations were delivered entirely online and watched live by an audience of 200+ attendees from across Australia and around the world. The goal of the conference was to take steps toward harmonising legal education by bringing together law teachers, legal scholars, legal practitioners, law societies, regulators, and others to engage in discussions about how law is taught in Australia and elsewhere, and in that regard the conference was a success. All of the feedback we have received has been extremely positive, and we are delighted by the level of collegial engagement with the conference from across both the academy and the profession in Australia and internationally.

We are very pleased to announce that recordings of the plenary presentations and most of the individual Livestream presentations are now freely available via the CPLE website.

Whether or not you were able to attend the Conference, you can now access recordings of a wide array of accomplished legal educators, experienced legal practitioners and esteemed legal scholars speaking on a variety of engaging topics.

Highlights include:

• The Plenary Lecture by Dr Colin James on ‘Trauma, Stigma and Compassionate Engagement: The Need for Reform in Legal Education, Training and Practice’
• The Plenary Debate about the topic ‘‘You had one job!’: Law schools are failing at preparing graduates for practice’ with Luke Murphy (President, QLS), Ann-Maree David (Executive Director, College of Law) and Matthew Roach (Director, Parampara) for the affirmative and Assistant Professor Tanya Atwill (Director, Bond GDLP Program), Professor Sally Kift (President, Australian Learning and Teaching Fellows) and Michael Lavarch (former Dean of Law, QUT) for the negative.
• The Plenary Panel discussion of the topic ‘Is legal education in Australia over-regulated or under-regulated?’ by Emeritus Professor Sandford Clark (Former Chair, LACC),    Professor Lesley Hitchens (Chair, CALD), Professor Alex Steel (Director Teaching Strategy, UNSW), Associate Professor Kate Galloway (Editor-in-Chief, Legal Education Review) and Professor Caroline Strevens (Academy Chair, Association of Law Teachers (UK))
• The Plenary Public lecture by Dr Rajesh K Reddy on ‘The Rise of Animal Law Education: A Discipline Whose Time Is Now’.

You can also access 40 individual presentations on:

• Being a Law Teacher
• Inclusion, Feelings and Hope
• Law and Art
• Mentoring
• Past, Present and Future
• Teaching in the Digital Era
• Teaching New Law Students
• Teaching Professionalism
• Teaching Responsibility
• Teaching Skills
• The Big Picture
• Wellbeing

We encourage you to take the time to visit the CPLE website and take a look at what is available.

The success of the Conference would not have been possible without the support of our partners (the Bond University Faculty of Law, Voiceless, the Law Wellness Network, and the Australasian Law Academic Association (ALAA)), the chairs, the attendees, our colleagues, and the presenters, and for that we are extremely grateful. We are also grateful for the support of our IT partner Encore Event Technologies who provided such an innovative and engaging online conference environment.

The second Professional Legal Education Conference will take place at Bond University in 2022. We look forward to seeing you then.

Professor Nick James and Professor Rachael Field

CPLE Directors

Impact of Covid – Perceptions of wellbeing in Law Teachers in the UK and Australia

Reader Caroline Strevens, Dr Colin James and Professor Rachael Field

An interim discussion of our survey – October 2020

There is now a significant amount of empirical evidence that establishes that tertiary students generally, and law students in particular, experience elevated levels of psychological distress (Stallman 2010; Larcombe et al, 2015-17)

Teaching staff at Law Schools are increasingly being called on to design curriculum and pedagogy that will support student wellbeing.  Indeed, Caroline and Rachael have argued that there is an ethical imperative to do this in our recent article co-authored with Professor Nigel Duncan published in Legal Ethics entitled ‘Ethical Imperatives for Legal Educators to Promote Law Student Wellbeing’.

However, university staff themselves are facing workplace pressures as a result of constant change, uncertainty, the impact of neoliberalism – and now Covid-19. The recent literature exploring the ‘neoliberal university’ has recognised the factors impacting all academic staff over the past few years as comprising: increased student numbers, consumer-driven approaches, enhanced scrutiny of research and teaching, a greater focus on commercial activity and the need to generate income and of doing more with less (Wray & Kinman, 2020).

Since 2015 our research team has been exploring the issue of the wellbeing of law teachers in the UK and Australia. Our thesis is that if Law School teaching staff are to have the capacity to work to support student wellbeing then their own wellbeing needs to be supported by their Law School and their University. However, this is only part of the story and we should in any event be concerned with law academic wellbeing as an end-in-itself.

Our 2017 data pools of about 150 participants for each iteration of the survey both in Australia and the UK have been analysed and the discussion disseminated in a number of recent outputs.

1. Clare Wilson and Caroline Strevens, ‘Perceptions of Psychological Well-Being in UK Law Academics’ (2018) 52(3) The Law Teacher 335-349.

2. Colin James, Caroline Strevens, Rachael Field and Clare Wilson, ‘Fit your Own Oxygen Mask First: The Contemporary Neoliberal University and the Well-Being of Legal Academics’ in Judith M Marychurch and Adiva Sifris (eds), Wellness for Law: Making Wellness Core Business (LexisNexis, 2019) Ch 7.

3. Colin James, Rachael Field and Caroline Strevens, ‘Student Wellbeing Through Teacher Wellbeing: A Study with Law Teachers in the UK and Australia’ (2019) 10(3) Student Success 76-83.

4. Colin James, Caroline Strevens, Rachael Field and Clare Wilson, ‘The Changing World of Legal Education and Law Teachers’ Quality of Working Life in Australia and the UK: What Do Law Schools Need to Change?’ in J Chan, M Legg and P Vines, The Impact of Technology and Innovation on the Well-Being of the Legal Profession (Intersentia, 2020).

The survey in the UK was open throughout July 2020 just as the number of covid cases fell to its lowest after the initial wave and as restrictions eased. At this time, competition between Universities for students increased. Student number controls were removed to assist Universities who would struggle financially due to the lack of international students. This context has clearly impacted the data.

The 2020 Covid-19 survey of law teachers in the UK and Australia asked questions about demographics and three open questions:

• Please explain what you think your University could do to address any concerns you have about personal finances
• Please explain what you think your University could do to improve staff quality of working life
• Is there anything arising out of the Covid-19 pandemic and responses to it that your university should implement or change to improve staff quality of working life in the long-term?
• In the demographic questions we asked about caring responsibilities.

UK results: There were 117 responses and of those who disclosed gender 70% female (n72) and 30% (n32) male. The substantial majority worked full-time in public Universities.  59 female respondents disclosed a caring responsibility as opposed to 21 male respondents. A substantial number did not answer the finance related question. Unsurprisingly, due to the month that the survey was open there were few concerns expressed about personal safety.

We have been able to conduct a preliminary and interim analysis of the following open question:  Is there anything arising out of the Covid-19 pandemic and responses to it that your university should implement or change to improve staff quality of working life in the long-term?

• 28% welcomed the opportunity for flexible working from home. Some commented on how this was positive for carers and also resulted in more engagement in virtual meetings. Loneliness/reduced collegiality were raised as an issue, and more was being asked of Universities to promote staff to staff and staff to student engagement.
• 13% mentioned overwork resulting from Covid-19 and the move to blended learning.
• 11% asked for more trust in staff who had demonstrated they work well remotely.
• Very few mentioned the need for more safety measures, but the survey ran in July when plans for return to campus were in their infancy.

Unlike our 2017 survey there were substantially more positive comments from respondents.  Some of these indicated that a few institutions were taking steps to address academic staff overload whilst others praised clear and regular communication.

In our recent presentation to the Centre for Professional Legal Education online conference, and at the Advancing Wellness in Law webinar, in October we enjoyed a discussion around some of our interim thoughts using SDT factors of autonomy, competence and relatedness to explore what can we learn from these results?

• Positive learnings: management support has been forthcoming and is recognising the need for flexibility and good communication. Our results indicate that to be even more effective these approaches should address the needs of different groups, for example, carers.
• Less positive learnings: perceptions of trust in staff working from home need to be strengthened; there needs to be a clearer balance in terms of making demands (to changes to teaching to support students) with job autonomy and control (staff know how to teach). We ask whether students are being supported at the expense of staff?
• We have also learned that for the less technologically proficient, online teaching may impact their sense of competence and be a source of stress and anxiety.

The Australian Survey currently remains open:

• It was distributed via the Australasian Law Academics Association, the Wellness Network for Law and the ADR Research Network in September 2020.
• To date we have 42 responses.
• The survey is still open and we would be very grateful if Australian Law Teachers who have not yet responded would take time to participate.
• The link to the survey and participant information is here: https://bond.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bsb9QQDcnUrfQd7 (Please don’t hesitate to to contact Rachael Field directly at rfield@bond.edu.au if you experience any issues with the link).

This preliminary and tentative analysis of our small scale survey indicates that now, more than ever, academic staff in Law Schools in the UK and Australia need structural, cultural and management initiatives in their Universities to support their work in curriculum and pedagogy design that in turn supports student wellbeing. 

Law Students: We Need You to be Heroic Lawyers

Professor Nick James

If you are a law student, and you have recently graduated or are about to graduate: congratulations, you are extraordinary. Not only have you completed or are you about to complete a program in one of the most academically rigorous disciplines, that of law, you have managed to do so as your university, the nation and the world are struggling to come to grips with what has turned out to be the great crisis of our time. But now, we are going to ask more of you.

Whenever I welcome a new cohort of law students to law school, I deliver an address where I compare the journey through law school with the hero’s journey. The hero’s journey is the narrative structure that lies beneath nearly every great myth and legend, as well as many works of fiction and pretty much any Hollywood blockbuster, from the Wizard of Oz to Lord of the Rings to Star Wars to Harry Potter to Moana and Mulan. It is also a narrative structure that is very helpful in making sense of the journey through law school.

The story of the hero’s journey begins with the hero at home living a ‘normal’ life in Kansas or the Shire or Motunui … just as you were living an ordinary life – for many of you, a long way from law school – when you made the decision to study law.

There is a call to adventure, something that gives the hero a purpose or a mission … just as you were inspired to come to law school by a family member, an experience with the law, a much loved novel, or popular culture.

There is the mission itself: destroy the ring, defeat Voldemort, restore the heart of Te Fiti … or complete the law degree.

The journey to complete the mission is not a straight line from start to finish. There are twists and turns and unexpected plot developments and things never, ever go according to plan … just like your journey through law school.

The hero meets friends and allies and mentors: Glenda the Good Witch and Yoda and Galadriel and Hagrid and Li Shang … your peers, your professors and your tutors.

The hero also makes enemies; there is always a Draco Malfoy in there somewhere, and no doubt you have had your own Draco or two at law school.

There are obstacles to be overcome along the way, and there are tests and challenges that the hero must overcome.

And then …  Well, think about the last movie you watched or the last novel you read.

There is a good chance that at some point just before the end of the story, something really bad happened. Something that seemed so awful it looked like the bad guys were going to win or the hero was going to fail or give up or even die. Something that made you think: ‘Oh no! is this it? Is this how it’s going to end? That’s terrible’.

But just when it seemed all hope was lost, the hero managed to tap into some well of fortitude, by remembering or being reminded of what they had forgotten or drawing upon their new power, and as the music swelled and the audience cheered, the hero stood up, and renewed the battle, and ultimately won.

That’s you. Just as it looked like you were done with your studies and the finish line was in sight, 2020 arrived with its pandemics and bushfires and drone strikes and police brutality.

But you didn’t give up. In the face of extraordinary, unprecedented adversity, you have persevered and prevailed and slain the dragon, destroyed the ring, restored the heart of Te Fiti … and finished that law degree.

That’s the hero’s journey. The hero always prevails, and by the end of the journey, after all their struggles, they have been transformed into a different person, a better person, who finally returns home – sometimes metaphorically, sometimes literally – having achieved their mission and committed to using their newfound skills and gifts to help others and heal the community. Just as I hope you are committed to using the extraordinary qualification you have been or are about to be awarded, and the knowledge and skills you have earned through your hard work over the last few semesters, to serve justice, to do what is good and right, and to help others.

And make no mistake, the world needs heroic lawyers right now. Your studies will give you a qualification that leads to more than the possibility of a lucrative and rewarding career. The reason why such a disproportionately large number of leaders and reformists, Prime Ministers and Premiers and Governors and Presidents are law graduates is because legal training provides the skills, the abilities, the confidence and the resilience that informs great leadership.

When you leave law school with your legal qualification it is almost inevitable that you will rise to a position of leadership within your firm, organisation or community. And what the world needs now, and is going to need in the months and years to come, are leaders who have the vision and the confidence to make difficult decisions informed by credible, reliable data, by scholarly research, by disciplined reasoning and critical thinking, and by a commitment to ethics, fairness and the public good.

We need heroic lawyers and we need heroic leaders.

We need you to be heroic.

(This is a revised version of a speech delivered by the author at the Bond University Faculty of Law graduation ceremony on 12 August 2020. For further detail about the journey through law school as the hero’s journey, read this and watch this.]

COVID-19: An Authentic Learning Opportunity

Kylie Fletcher, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Bond University

It has been over three months since the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. It is now apparent that the effects of COVID-19, and the related restrictions, trigger a myriad of legal issues. Like many of my colleagues, I am endeavouring to acknowledge and integrate COVID-19 into my teaching of a doctrinal law subject. I am attempting to do this in a way that enhances authenticity. This post outlines my journey to date.

I teach contract law. In this discipline, much of the discussion surrounding COVD-19 has focused on COVID-19 related force majeure and frustration triggers. In an effort to maintain a contemporary subject, I included these topics in my previous semester of teaching. As COVID-19 had not reached pandemic proportions until part way through the semester, these were unplanned inclusions. Consequently, they did not form part of the formal assessment program. Instead, I included them as discussion points in the weekly tutorial program. The students responded very well and appeared to enjoy the topical dialog. They seemed to connect with the idea that, once in practice, these types of matters might occupy their time.

I have been planning my next semester of teaching. While doing so, I wondered how I might continue teaching the same topics in a more engaging way. Given the encouraging impact on student engagement, I was drawn towards designing a more authentic learning experience (Hart, Hammer, Collins & Chardon, 2011). This could be done by incorporating real-life professional experiences and competencies (Hart, Hammer, Collins & Chardon, 2011; McNamara, 2017). Outlined below are the steps that I followed in designing such a learning experience.

1. Conducted research

While well versed on the law in these areas, I was not sufficiently familiar with its application in this particular context. In order to bridge this gap, I conducted the usual legal research. In addition to the typical search tools, I referred to Melbourne Law School Covid‐19 Research Network’s Annotated Bibliography of Covid‐19 Legal Literature (Melbourne Law School Academic Research Service, 2020). I also consulted legal practice bulletins and law firm publications so as to better understand the practitioner’s perspective.

2. Consulted authenticity framework

Dr Kelley Burton provides a framework that enabled me to assess the authenticity of last semester’s learning experience (Burton, 2011, 2015). This framework is based on the scholarship in the field, including the work of Herrington and Herrington (Herrington & Herrington, 1998, 2006). Burton’s Authenticity Framework poses questions that enable educators to survey their assessments for the typical traits of authenticity. Upon my doing so, it was evident that there was limited authenticity in hosting a guided tutorial discussion about COVID-19-related force majeure and frustration. The exercise provided students with an opportunity to collaborate with each other and use some limited thinking skills in the context of a real-life topic.

Burton makes the point that authenticity is scaffolded across a whole program (Burton, 2011). For this reason, an educator is not expected to include all traits within an individual learning experience or subject. With this in mind, I focused on identifying and enhancing the traits that aligned with my subject curriculum.

3. Ensured curriculum alignment

Having regard to the Burton’s Authenticity Framework, I decided to enhance authenticity by, among other things, integrating the need to use higher-order thinking skills, creating the potential for ‘a novel or diverse responses’ and requiring students to ‘produce a valuable, polished product’ (Burton, 2011, p.25). I decided to focus on incorporating these particular traits as they assist students to realize the subject learning outcomes. Further, with the scaffolding of the entire law program in mind, these traits are an appropriate fit for contract law.

In order to incorporate these traits, I was naturally inclined to ask students to research and advise on a hypothetical legal problem based on these COVID-19-releated topics. However, in an otherwise busy subject, this might be overly burdensome. In an effort to balance student workload, my preference was to integrate these topics into an already scheduled assessment task.

The Bachelor of Laws at Bond University incorporates an integrated skills and professionalism program. As part of this program, core legal skills are scaffolded throughout the law degree. Dispute resolution and collaboration is taught and assessed at an intermediate level in my subject. Among other things, I typically focus on the negotiation of contract law related problems. Using the assessment structure that was already in place, I decided to incorporate an authenticity-enriched negotiation problem based on COVID-19-related frustration. I also decided to include an exercise that requires students to work with force majeure clauses.

4. Designed for authenticity

I drafted the assessment (and its accompanying rubric) to include the traits that I had selected from Burton’s Authenticity Framework. In devising the negotiation scenario, I was able to draw on my experience as a practicing lawyer advising on frustration issues and force majeure clauses. I was also able to derive inspiration from the resources accessed when I undertook the research (described above).

The negotiation scenario is set between two parties who regularly contract together via a standard form contract. The parties are disputing the frustration of the contracts that were due to be performed in the first half of this year. One party is claiming that the contractual obligations under these contracts have been discharged by frustration through COVID-19-related delay. The scenario has been drafted to accommodate the potential for creative solutions, so students have the opportunity to present ‘a novel or diverse responses’. The scenario also requires students to draft, propose and negotiate a force majeure clause for inclusion in the standard form contract for future use. Students will also be required to submit a negotiation planner. In order to further promote authenticity, this planner is modelled on the Administrative Appeals Tribunal’s Conciliation Preparation Toolkit (Administrative Appeals Tribunal). In drafting a clause and preparing a planner, students will ‘produce a valuable, polished product’.

5. Was mindful of potential for distress

It has been reported that telephone calls to Lifeline have increased by 25% (Willis, 2020). It is fairly clear that a range of COVID-19-related topics have the potential to cause distress. For these reasons, I carefully considered the appropriateness of all COVID-19-related inclusions. Before presenting the assessment to students, I will also consider the other matters that educators ought to consider when introducing potentially distressing content (Baik et al, 2017, p.26). While the need may not arise in my subject, it is also worth my mentioning that trigger warnings may be appropriate in certain circumstances.

If not already, I am sure that most legal educators are planning to incorporate COVID-19-related topics into their subjects at some stage. In doing so, many will be seeking to create authentic learning opportunities. I look forward to hearing from my colleagues about the various ways in which this is achieved. 

References

I would like to thank Professor Nick James for his comments and editorial suggestions.

Administrative Appeals Tribunal. Conciliation Preparation Toolkit. https://www.aat.gov.au/AAT/media/AAT/Files/ADR/Conciliation-Preparation-Toolkit.pdf

Baik, C., Larcombe, W., Brooker A., Wyn, J., Allen, L., Brett, M., Field, R., & James., R. (2017). Enhancing student mental wellbeing: a handbook for academic educators. https://melbourne-cshe.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/2408604/MCSHE-Student-Wellbeing-Handbook-FINAL.pdf  

Burton, K. (2011). A framework for determining the authenticity of assessment tasks: Applied to an example in law. Journal of Learning Design, 4(2), 20–28.

Burton, K. (2015). Measuring and enhancing the authenticity of an examination and other assessment tasks. Journal of the Australasian Law Teachers Association, 8(1), 25–33. http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/JlALawTA/2015/4.pdf

Hart, C., Hammer, S., Collins, P., & Chardon, T. (2011). The real deal: using authentic assessment to promote student engagement in the first and second years of a regional law program. Legal Education Review, 21(1), 97–121.

Herrington, J., & Herrington, A. (1998). Authentic assessment and multimedia: How university students respond to a model of authentic assessment. Higher Education Research & Development, 17(3), 305-22.

Herrington, J., & Herrington, A. (2006). Authentic conditions for authentic assessment: Aligning task and Assessment. Research and Development in Higher Education: Critical Visions Thinking, Learning and Researching in Higher Education, 29, 146-151.

McNamara, N. (2017). Authentic assessment in contract law: legal drafting. The Law Teacher, 51(4), 486–498.

Melbourne Law School Academic Research Service. (2020). Annotated Bibliography of COVID‐19 Legal Literature. https://law.unimelb.edu.au/centres/hlen/covid-19/scholarship 

Willis, O. (2020, April 30). Mental health toll of coronavirus to create ‘second wave’ of pandemic, experts warn. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2020-04-30/coronavirus-mental-health-second-wave-impacts-of-pandemic/12197930

Preparing to Teach Remotely (Part 4): Setting up the Website

Professor Nick James

In my last few blog posts I have been sharing the details of my preparation for remote teaching this semester. I thought carefully about my learning outcomes. I asked myself whether the assessment I will be administering in my subject is appropriate, rigorous and constructively aligned. I reflected on my learning activities, and what I will be doing with my students to help them to achieve the subject learning outcomes and complete the subject assessment tasks.

In the week leading up to my first online class, my focus has been upon my subject website and ensuring it will be ready to be made available to students. In this post I will share my views about this experience. I am mindful of the fact that some of my comments will be specific to Bond University or to its particular Learning Management System, Blackboard, but I hope there is enough here of general relevance.

For a generation of students that expects classroom learning and online learning to form a seamless whole, the subject website has shifted from being a helpful additional learning resource to the foundation of the student learning experience. If a subject website is designed well, it will guide the students along their learning journey and form the framework for all of their learning activities and assessment tasks. I have always put a lot of time and effort into building my subject websites, and now that my subject will be delivered entirely remotely, the subject site has become more important than ever. An additional challenge I faced in preparing for teaching this semester is the fact that all subject sites at Bond University have been moved to a new version of Backboard, called Blackboard ULTRA. I have had to build my new site from scratch, and teach myself how to use ULTRA. That experience has been an interesting one, with several challenges along the way.

The temptation at this point is to vent my frustration about the process of building a new site on a new platform, but I would prefer to remain upbeat and positive, so here are the things I like about ULTRA:

1. I like how easy it is to edit content on the site. Click edit, change the text, click save. Done. No fiddling about with formatting or upload files.
2. I have usually enjoyed being able to customise my sites in the past, with lots of colour and images. With the new version I am significantly constrained, and limited to a very simple, black and white ‘look and feel’. But this will ensure students have a more consistent experience from subject to subject, and to be honest it gives me one less thing to worry about.
3. The standard list of student tools on the left seems to include the most important ones, and again the inability to customise gives me one less thing to worry about.
4. I particularly like the ‘Attendance’ tool. It looks like a helpful way to easily keep a record of who shows up to the online classes.
5. I like how the front page clearly shows my personal details and the date, time and location of the next important event in the subject.
6. The horizontal menu at the top right of the page has some useful tools, including the subject Calendar which automatically includes all of my assessment due dates. I’ve added the days and times of my classes. Apparently the students’ Calendars aggregate their subject Calendars so they see all their class dates and times and all their assessment due dates in one place.

It was a steep learning curve but I’m now quite comfortable with most of the features on the site and – to be honest – I like it. I can see that the students are going to find it much easier to navigate than the old sites.

I decided to have only three folders on the front page: WELCOME, TOPICS and ASSESSMENT.

In my WELCOME folder I added:

• A short welcome video. I usually have one professionally created but this time I recorded it myself using my phone, posted it to YouTube, and inserted the link.
• A link to my Subject Outline.
• A link to a page where they can purchase the prescribed textbook.

In my TOPICS folder I created 12 sub-folders, one for each of the 12 Topics in the subject. In each Topic sub-folder I added:

• The PowerPoint presentation for the week’s lecture, just in case the streaming of the lecture is too slow and students can’t follow along as the slides change.
• A document explaining what ‘independent study’ I want them to do after each lecture, including the readings.

In my ASSESSMENT folder I created four sub-folders, one for each item of assessment.

• In the ‘Tutorial Preparation and Participation’ sub-folder I added a document explaining how students are expected to attempt the tutorial problems for each week, and I then created an Assessment – Essay task for each week’s tutorial questions. By specifying the due date for each task as the date of the relevant tutorial it inserted it into the subject Calendar. And the students can actually type their answers into the box on the website and submit it so I can check to make sure they have done it. I like that.
•  In the ‘Online Test’ sub-folder I again created a document that explains the assessment task, and then I built 12 online tests, one for each Topic. The publisher of my prescribed textbook has provided very large banks of multiple choice questions (100 per chapter) that I have used to set up the online tests in such a way that each student will be given a different test with different questions. (A relatively tight time limit of 15 minutes to answer 5 questions should ensure the students prepare for the tests and don’t try to simply Google each of the answers.)
• In the ‘Practice Problems’ folder I will add the instructions for the task and allow online submission. This will be done closer to the due date in Week 8.

·         In the ‘Final Exam’ folder I will upload the take home exam and allow online submission.

I have set up two forums in the ‘Discussions’ part of the site: one called ‘Topics’ where the students can ask content-related questions, and one called ‘Assessments’ where they can ask questions about the assessment. Neither are assessed.  I will use the ‘Announcements’ tool to post an announcement at the start of each week introducing the students to that week’s Topic and reminding them about assessment tasks. And to keep them interesting I’m planning on using the Parampara tool to create an interactive announcement each week.

And that’s my site. I have sent a message to the students telling them to meet me in the subject room (accessed via the left hand menu on the front page) at 2.00pm next Tuesday. I am ready to teach remotely!