About the book

This book is a critical inquiry into the identity and possibilities of legal education, and an exploration of transformational alternatives to our current theories and practices of teaching and learning the law.  It argues that bodies of interdisciplinary theory and a knowledge of the history of legal education are important to all stages of legal education, and that new learning designs such as transactional learning need to be developed to help students, educators and lawyers deal with the transitions and challenges facing them now and in the foreseeable future. 

Throughout, discussions of theory are spliced with case studies of academic and professional legal learning, particularly in the field of technology-enhanced learning.  Amongst much else you’ll read about:

• the relevance of John Dewey for contemporary educational thinking in our law schools
• forms of thinking promoted by problem-based learning
• the relevance of ‘trading zones’ to legal education
• how poetry and music can influence our learning designs and inspire our educational practice
• the relevance of early twentieth-century realism, eighteenth-century ethical discourse and medieval glossators to our forms of twenty-first century education
• the use of technology in legal education, particularly multi-user virtual environments
• practical examples of diverse and effective strategies such as:
• simulation learning
• problem-based learning
• transactional learning
• resource-based learning.

Above all, the book is an invitation to readers to write about yourexperience of legal education, and your vision of future legal learning.  To this end, the content of the book will be updated in a community of practice wiki, which will also allow readers to comment and expand on the book’s final chapter.