It's All Academic: Reflections on Teaching Method in the Development of Intelligent Lawyers
RIS ID
133645
Link to publisher version (URL)
Abstract
When students commence legal education, they have not yet adopted all the norms that underpin the legal system and they have very little experience of the law. Students enter a world that is strangely familiar, yet at the same time, quite different to that which they have experienced before. This article posits that law school is the foreground for the students' active engagement in the construction of their legal identity - identity that reflects self-awareness and emotional intelligence. In the first section, we argue that law teachers are in a unique place to influence the transformation having undertaken the journey themselves as law students past, and we consider teaching method as one aspect of the student experience that is critical to transformation. In the second section, the article seeks to explore the extent to which law school has a role to play in student construction of 'emotional intelligence' and suggests that law schools should make use of current curriculum mapping and redesign opportunities, afforded by the Australian Threshold Learning Outcomes (TLOs), to harness this unique transformative process.
Publication Details
C. Sharp & K. Murray, 'It's All Academic: Reflections on Teaching Method in the Development of Intelligent Lawyers' (2018) (9 October) Hedgehogs and Foxes