scholarly journals Legal Education Reform Pursuits in Ethiopia: Attainments and Challenges (2006-2019)

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-283
Author(s):  
Elias N. Stebek
Keyword(s):  
Education Reform ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Quality Standards ◽  
Law School ◽  
Course Delivery ◽  
Exit Exam ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
School Autonomy ◽  
Reform Programme ◽  
Key Terms

This article examines attainments and challenges in the pursuits of legal education reform launched in 2006. Achievements and challenges in LL.B programmes are examined based on the standards of the legal education reform programme relating to admission of students to law schools, staff profile, standards of reform relating to curriculum, course delivery, assessment, law school autonomy, research, publications, quality assessment and the requisite resources thereof. There are commendable achievements such as raising the duration of legal education from four to five years, the introduction of LL.B exit exam, and the preparation of a significant number of teaching materials. However, the data, documents and literature discussed and analyzed in this article indicate that the level of quality and standards in Ethiopia’s legal education stand below most of the thresholds that were envisaged in the 2006 Legal Education Reform Programme. Key terms Legal education reform · Quality · Standards · LL.B programmes · Ethiopia

scholarly journals Ethiopia’s 2006 Legal Education Reform Programme: Aspirations and Standards

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-232
Author(s):  
Elias N. Stebek
Keyword(s):  
Education Reform ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Self Assessment ◽  
School Based ◽  
Reform Programme ◽  
Core Elements ◽  
Key Terms

Ethiopia’s Legal Education Reform Programme (launched in 2006) was based on series of studies which identified the problems in Ethiopia’s legal education, the causes and consequences of the problems and the standards that are required to be attained by law schools. After more than a decade, however, the level of compliance with the standards is still an issue of concern. This calls for self-assessment by each law school based on check-list regarding (i) the level of awareness about the standards for Ethiopian law schools, (ii) standards that are partly achieved and should be enhanced, (iii) what has not been achieved and should be pursued, and (iv) the problems that have been aggravated. Such self-assessment requires closer examination into the entry point (i.e., student admission and academic staff employment), inputs, processes, student-learning environment, and outputs. This article discusses the factors that necessitated the 2006 legal education reform programme and examines the core elements of the reform without, however, dealing with the details on achievements and challenges. Key terms Legal education · Quality · Standards · LL.B programmes · Reform · Ethiopia

scholarly journals Legal Education Reform and the Good Lawyer

2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 801 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Woolley
Keyword(s):  
Education Reform ◽  
Professional Identity ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law School ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Cautionary Note ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
Large Lecture ◽  
Essential Function

The critics agree: law schools do it wrong. Stuck in early twentieth century practices that emphasize instruction in legal doctrine in large lecture halls, law schools fail to provide their students with the skills necessary to be practicing lawyers and to be marketable to prospective employers. They fail to instill in their students the “professional identity” necessary to achieve ethical legal practice. This article sounds a cautionary note with respect to those proposals for reform that reject the traditional emphasis on doctrinal teaching. In particular, and in contrast to the critics who view doctrinal learning as inconsistent with, or unrelated to, the creation of ethical lawyers, this article suggests that the emphasis on law in law school serves an essential function in creating ethical legal practice.

Affirmative Action and Aboriginal Government: The Case for Legal Education in Nunavut

1999 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Gallagher-Mackay
Keyword(s):  
Justice System ◽  
Critical Mass ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Disadvantaged Communities ◽  
The Public ◽  
Education Gap ◽  
The University ◽  
And Training

AbstractThe Nunavut Land Claim Agreement commits federal and territorial governments to the recruitment and training of Inuit for positions throughout government. In the justice sector, there is currently a major shortage of Inuit lawyers or future judges. However, there also appears to be a fundamental mismatch between what existing law schools offer and what Inuit students are prepared to accept. A northern-based law school might remedy some of these problems. However, support for a law school requires un-thinking certain key tenets of legal education as we know it in Canada. In particular, it may require a step outside the university-based law school system. Universities appear to be accepted as the exclusive guardian of the concept of academic standards. Admission standards, in particular, serve as both a positivist technology of exclusion, and a political rationale for the persistence of majoritarian institutions as the major means of training members of disadvantaged communities. Distinctive institutions – eventually working with university-based law schools – have the potential to help bridge the education gap between Inuit and other Canadians. In so doing, they have the potential to train a critical mass of Inuit to meaningfully adapt the justice system to become a pillar of the public government in the Inuit homeland of Nunavut.

scholarly journals A Medical/Legal Teaching and Assessment Collaboration on Domestic Violence: Assessment Using Standardized Patients/Standardized Clients

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoinette Sedillo Lopez ◽  
Cameron Crandall ◽  
Gabriel Campos ◽  
Diane Rimple ◽  
Mary Neidhart ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Standardized Patients ◽  
Law School ◽  
Learning Objectives ◽  
Carnegie Foundation ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Knowledge And Skills ◽  
Education Association ◽  
Standardized Clients

<p>Assessment of skills is an important, emerging topic in law school education. Two recent and influential books, Educating Lawyers published by the Carnegie Foundation and Best Practices in Legal Education, published by the Clinical Legal Education Association have both suggested dramatic reform of legal education. Among other reforms, these studies urge law schools to use “outcome-based” assessments, i.e., using learning objectives  and assessing knowledge and skills in standardized situations based on specific criteria, rather than simply comparing students’ performances to each other. </p>

scholarly journals Law School as Social Innovation

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 225
Author(s):  
Lorne Sossin
Keyword(s):  
Student Learning ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Law School ◽  
Legal Knowledge ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
The Face

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) 2016 Conference in Wellington on 8 July 2016.

scholarly journals A NEW MINORITY? International JD Students in US Law Schools

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (03) ◽  
pp. 647-678 ◽  
Author(s):  
Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen ◽  
Carole Silver
Keyword(s):  
International Students ◽  
Minority Students ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
School Environments ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
International Status

This Article reveals the significance of a new and growing minority group within US law schools—international students in the Juris Doctor (JD) program. While international students have received some attention in legal education scholarship, it mostly has been focused on their participation in the context of programs specially designed for this demographic (e.g. postgraduate programs like the LLM and SJD). Drawing from interview data with fifty-eight international JD students across seventeen graduating US law schools, our research reveals the rising importance of international students as actors within a more mainstream institutional context. In examining the ways these students navigate their law school environments, we find that although international status often impacts identity and participation, not all students encounter its impact similarly. Particularly, while some students use the identity to their advantage, others cannot escape negative implications, even with effort. This is consistent with other scholarship on minority students, and adds to a growing literature that uses their socialization experiences to better understand professional stratification. To unpack these different ways of “being international,” we borrow from Goffman’s theorization of stigma to suggest illustrative variations in the ways international students experience their environments. In doing so, we offer an introductory landscape to better understand this growing population and hope this enables new insights to theorize about other kinds of minority experience.

Problems of Legal Education Reform in Ukraine

2020 ◽  
Vol 82 ◽  
pp. 70-77
Author(s):  
Maria Bilak
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
Education System ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Approaches To Teaching ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
New Model ◽  
Main Ideas

The paper attempts to study the current situation of legal education reform in Ukraine. The main ideas of the new model of legal education in Ukraine were analyzed. The author made a comparison of Ukrainian legal education system with legal educations practices in United States, Poland and Germany. The main problems negatively influencing the quality of legal education such as corruption, disproportionally high number of law schools and outdated approaches to teaching were described.

Innovation and Disruption: Exploring the Potential of Clinical Legal Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-32
Author(s):  
Mary Anne Noone
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technology ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Law School ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Government Decision ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Clinical Program ◽  
Real Challenge

It’s a great privilege to deliver this year’s Susan Campbell Oration. I, like many others, had the pleasure of working with Sue on a range of activities. In 2007, Sue conducted a review of the La Trobe Law School Clinical program which was instrumental in helping ensure the program remained an integral aspect of the La Trobe University law course. I hope what I have to say honours Sue’s memory and her contributions to legal education and clinical legal education in particular2.  My focus in this presentation is on how Australian clinical legal education responds to the various innovations and disruptions occurring in the legal arena. The scope and breadth of innovations is mindboggling. There are many predictions about what the future holds for the legal profession, from gloom and doom to utopia, and there is a growing body of literature discussing the implications for the legal profession and legal education. In reality, it is impossible to envisage what the legal world will look like in ten years let alone thirty and that poses a real challenge for those involved in legal education, including clinical legal education. How best to prepare today’s students for the unknown future?  Given that I have no expertise in digital technology and am certainly not a futurologist my comments relate to those areas about which I have some background: access to justice, social security and clinical legal education.  I briefly outline the variety and scope of innovations occurring in the legal world, discuss two related aspects namely access to justice and government decision making, using the example of Robodebt, and then examine the potential for clinical legal education in these disruptive times. I argue that clinical legal education is well placed to take a more central role in Australian law schools and the training of 21st century legal workers. 

The Proliferation of Case Method Teaching in American Law Schools: Mr. Langdell's Emblematic “Abomination,” 1890-1915

2006 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce A. Kimball
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Professional Education ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law School ◽  
Case Method ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
American Higher Education ◽  
American Law ◽  
Law Professors

Case method teaching was first introduced into American higher education in 1870 by Christopher C. Langdell (1826-1906) of Harvard Law School (HLS), where it became closely associated with—and emblematic of—a set of academic meritocratic reforms. Though regnant today, “the ultimate triumph of [Langdell's] system was not apparent” for many years. The vast majority of students, alumni, and law professors initially derided it as an “abomination,” and for two decades case method and the associated reforms were largely confined to Harvard. During the subsequent twenty-five years between 1890 and 1915, a national controversy ensued as to whether case method teaching—and the concomitant meritocratic reforms—would predominate in legal education and, ultimately, professional education in the United States.

scholarly journals LEGAL EDUCATION IN INDIA: PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
B. C. Nirmal
Keyword(s):  
Education Reform ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Learning Needs ◽  
Legal Service ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Service Market ◽  
Education In India ◽  
Induced Changes

This article makes some observations about legal education in India by locating it within a wider context of legal education reform that is taking place in Law Schools across the world in the wake of globalizationled and globalization-induced changes in the nature and needs of legal profession. For being both intellectually challenging and professionally relevant, legal education should be more responsible than ever before to the legal needs of the community national as well as international , and the learning needs of students to become professionally competent to play their role in an increasingly transnationalized legal service market. Any effort to restructure and reorient legal education to attain these goals will be an uphill task for any school. This article begins with exploring the implications of globalization for legal education and then turns to nature, aims and objectives of legal education. The article then looks at the possible changes required to be made in the existing curriculum for undergraduate law students in order to make the legal education more relevant and meaningful for its consumers. The focus then shifts to issues concerning methods of teaching, clinical experience and assessment of students. This article then considers issues arising from the proposal of the Bar Council of India to reduce the period of Masters programme and then builds a strong case for strengthening a research tradition in Law Schools. The focus then shifts to measures that are necessary to attract and retain better faculty and also to the regulatory role of the Bar Council of India in the field of legal education. The article concludes with some reflections on the promise of a different vision of legal education.

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