The third and final day of the U of A Faculty of Law's centenary conference drew a large crowd to the TELUS Centre auditorium, eager and ready for the speakers to start, and anticipating the passionate discussions that would be had later.
"For the last couple of years I have been following the conversations on the future law school, the future of law practice, the future of the profession and the future of legal information," said Kim Nayyer, law librarian at the University of Victoria. "So I have been interested in seeing this discussion focused in a local context as up until now much of it has been focused in the US, and so I wanted to hear what people are talking about here."
Panel: Challenges!
The third panel dealt with 'Challenges', and looked at the changing nature of legal practice and how those transformations should shape legal education.
'Challenges' panellists: Hugh Verrier (Chairman, White & Case LLP), Prof. Alice Woolley (University of Calgary, Faculty of Law), and Douglas Ferguson (President, Association for Canadian Clinical Legal Education & Director Community Legal Service, University of Western Ontario, Faculty of Law).
 Prof. Alice Woolley |
 Douglas Ferguson |
The panel presented the following main points to the audience:
-
The problems currently faced by law schools and the legal profession are complex but the solutions may be found in balance, rather than absolutes.
-
Needs to be more cross pollination between adjuncts and academia.
-
The importance of good legal writing! Teach students to write in a powerful and concise way.
-
Prepare students better for "what it really means to be a practicing lawyer".
-
Educate through hands-on experience. Law schools implementing clinics, and student internships organized by law firms, etc.
-
Promote a team based culture, through activities such as the Jessup Moot Court competition and other avenues that bring law students and lawyers outside of their own areas.
-
"Law schools are more than ever embracing a problem solving curriculum rather than a doctrinal one, but doctrinal, case-based pedagogy remains the norm in most law school classrooms from which other approaches are framed as an "alternative". When will the tipping point come and how can we make it come sooner?" (Quote source: Dean Lorne Sossin)
Panel: Practices!
The fourth panel dealt with 'Practices', and looked at how teaching content and practices should look to best prepare law students for the future.
Prof. Gerry Hess
'Practices' panellists: Dean Lorne Sossin (Osgoode Hall Law School), Prof. Gerry Hess (Gonzaga University School of Law), Prof. Stephen Henderson & Prof. Joseph Thai (University of Oklahoma College of Law), and Prof. Peter Sankoff (University of Alberta, Faculty of Law)
 Dean Lorne Sossin |
 Prof. Peter Sankoff |
The panel presented the following main points to the audience:
-
Crowdsourcing and Social Networking formats are the future for legal texts - with cases, statutes or academic commentary layered with commentary and annotations, hyperlinks and multimedia, all in a state of continual, dynamic growth.
-
Teaching Capsules (forms of "Blended Learning") help students connect with and process information. Visually stimulating, use to prep for classes, and access repeatedly at whatever times best suit students.
-
Embrace experiential education as it reinforces the "knowledge community" of law school and enhances opportunities for research and scholarly inquiry. Research intensification creates more experiential opportunities for students. "As examples, Dean Sossin spoke of PLTCs in the UK and in Australia. He also referenced the Law Society of Upper Canada's Legal Practice Program pilot and the emerging need to rationalize current law school curricula, experiential learning, and the trends towards forms of practical legal training as part of credentialing." (Quote source: LESA's Senior Advisor Paul Wood Q.C.)
-
No matter what new forms e-learning formats are embraced by law schools, interaction and feedback are still important for students from their professors.
-
Law students do not learn in the same way as past students. Evolve teaching methods to help today's students become better thinkers and lawyers.
-
"The disruptive transformations rocking the delivery of legal services (i.e. the impact of new technology, intensifying globalization, fragmentation, etc.) will eventually rock law school. Whether this ushers in a golden era of innovation or spells the end of the law school as we know it - will be up to us!" (Quote source: Dean Lorne Sossin, Osgoode Hall Law School)
(l-r) Prof. Stephen Henderson & Joseph Thai).
"I think a lot of people were compelled by the talks by the final panel which emphasised experiential learning and the positive results that they have really seen from their students," said Scott Meyer, law student (2L), U of A Faculty of Law. "On a larger scale to it was encouraging to see so many different law institutions and organizations gathered in one auditorium and all discussing how we best develop our legal education system and whether or not the developing of the legal education system is synonymous with how the legal profession itself is developing. I think the future of law schools are inextricably linked to the future of the legal profession."
Prof. William Henderson
On Saturday afternoon, keynote speaker Professor William Henderson (Indiana University, Maurer School of Law) closed the U of A Faculty of Law's Future of Law School conference with the message that the future of law schools involves "balancing the desires of the market against the needs of the collective public good; we ignore one or the other at our peril, even if this does mean that we must cope with indeterminacy. As he explained, we can't sustain changes in the delivery of legal education if the market (students and the profession) doesn't buy in; on the other hand, if we use only market barometers, we neglect our role in serving the broader public.
In many ways, the idea of balance is already inherent in much of what we do. Professors balance theory and practice, and theory and doctrine in the content of their courses. As new technologies transform the classroom, professors balance innovation and tradition. Law school curricula attempt to strike a balance between substantive and procedural courses, and between large lecture-based courses and smaller seminars and experiential learning opportunities.
Even more fundamentally, law schools balance two seemingly competing identities: academic institution and professional school. Much of the hand-wringing over the future of law school seems to centre on which of these identities we ought to embrace and which we should abandon. But it seems to me that the best way forward is to heed Professor Henderson's call for balance, and to embrace our split personality and the indeterminacy that comes with it. It may be that balancing these two seemingly contrasting identities is in fact what will allow law schools to adapt to the "unknown unknowns" down the road. Here's to the future!" (Quote source: Professor Gail Henderson, U of A Faculty of Law)
"I was really happy to hear some discussions on legal writing, I was happy to hear conversations about student engagement in the classroom and incorporation of technology, but I was also happy to hear discussions about the foundational things," said Kim Nayyer (Law Librarian, University of Victoria). "For the first two days of the conference the speakers seemed to focus a lot of the professional and educational dichotomy, and then today, on the last day of the conference, the speakers were saying it was a false dichotomy and I thought that that was very interesting and I also found it interesting to hear the discussions around the idea of engaging students with doctrinal law will help them in the practical sense much more than hammering skills home in law school. It gives me a lot to think about and to bring back to the faculty as we look at our curriculum. I was also very excited to see what people were doing in relation to experiential learning and to see that connect back to the law school as a knowledge community, I think that was the key point."
The Future of Law School conference brought the University of Alberta Faculty of Law's Centenary celebrations to a fitting close, through the kindling of a passionate public and professional debate concerning what's wrong and what must be righted in professional legal education and with that, the profession of law. A debate that will live on long after the conference has ended.
The Future of Law school conference final reception.
The University of Alberta Faculty of Law would like to thank the organizers of the 'Future of Law School' conference Professor Eric Adams, Professor Ted DeCoste, and Daphna Kaplinsky (Centenary Coordinator) for their many months of hard work and dedication on this project; Katherine Thompson (Communications Coordinator) for covering the conference; Tim Young (Web Developer) for IT support; and the law student volunteers who helped out over the two and half days of the conference. Finally, the Faculty of Law would like to thank all those who spoke at the conference and all those who attended, for making this event a truly inspiring way to bring the law school's centenary celebrations to an end.