For a low grade to be a breach of contract, there must first be a contract, and courts are slow to find the existence of such a contract, in part because they are reluctant to get involved in grading disputes. Thus, for example, in Keefe v New York Law School (17 November 2009) (hat tips: ContractsProf Blog | Adjunct Law Prof Blog) York J held that general statements of policy in a school’s bulletins, circulars, catalogues, handbooks and website are not sufficient to create a contract between a student and law school; rather, only specific promises that are material to the student’s relationship with the school can establish the existence of a contract. (Compare and contrast the decision of Murphy J in Tansey v College of Occupational Therapists Ltd [1986] IEHC 2, [1995] 2 ILRM 601 (27 August 1986)). York J provided an important policy justification for this approach:

As a general rule, judicial review of grading disputes would inappropriately involve the courts in the very core of academic and educational decision making. Moreover, to so involve the courts in assessing the propriety of particular grades would promote litigation by countless unsuccessful students and thus undermine the credibility of the academic determinations of educational institutions. We conclude, therefore, that, in the absence of demonstrated bad faith, arbitrariness, capriciousness, irrationality or a constitutional or statutory violation, a student’s challenge to a particular grade or other academic determination relating to a genuine substantive evaluation of the student’s academic capabilities is beyond the scope of judicial review. …

The title of this post comes from the headline in an interesting and provocative article by Larry Donnelly of NUI Galway (pictured left) in Monday’s Irish Times. His core argument is that the preparation of students for law practice should play a greater role in legal education in Ireland:

Historically, law study at third-level institutions in Ireland and in other common law jurisdictions was theory-based and took place exclusively in lecture halls. Law, however, is both an academic and a vocational discipline. Accordingly, law schools in every other common law jurisdiction have embraced the role of practice in legal education, but Irish law schools still lag far behind.

I entirely agree. Clinical and experiential learning centers on providing students with hands-on opportunities to understand how the law works in the real world. Along with the legal skills traditionally taught by law schools (legal research, legal analysis, and sometimes the ability to engage with policy and theoretical literature), the modern law degree should also seek to inculcate written and oral communication skills, interview skills, team-work, legal drafting, negotiation, advocacy, case management and practice management. 2007 saw the foundation of two very exciting Law Schools committed to this appraoch. The School of Law in the University of York began life with a bang, offering a completely progressive, clinical and experiential undergraduate curriculum, with problem-based learning modules centred on what they call the student law firm. The curriculum at School of Law at the University of California, Irvine self-consciously focuses on preparation for practice in the 21st century. Other successful start-ups, such as Bond in Australia and Northumbria in the UK, have built their programmes around legal skills as well as legal doctrine. Indeed, many established law schools the world over are in the process of adding important clinical elements to their curricula: the market leader in the US is the new third year program in the School of Law in the University of Washington and Lee in Virginia (even staid Harvard has made some moves in this direction). Moreover, the importance of this kind of development has already been appreciated in Ireland: NUI Galway has a Director of Clinical Legal Education, UCC established a degree in clinical legal education in 2004, whilst UCD has just announced a similar degree. Unsurprisingly, therefore, at the recent Legal Education Symposium, the most exciting plenary was on the topic of Law Schools and Clinical Legal Education, whilst the session on Experiential Learning was well attended and provoked lively debate. Read the rest of this entry »

And so to the University of Keele, for the centenary conference of the Society of Legal Scholars in the United Kingdom and Ireland (SLS). The SLS is a leading learned society for those who teach law in a university or similar institution or who are otherwise engaged in legal scholarship, and many of the events at this year’s conference are centred around the celebration of its centenary. Over four days this week, there are several plenary sessions and nearly 30 subject sessions with several papers each, so I won’t be live-blogging the whole thing, but I hope over the next few posts to give a flavour of some of the papers and presentations I attend. It’s usually a great conference, and I hope that it’s not hubris to hope that the SLS is around for the next 100 years as well.

Update (10 September 2009): the centenary was a theme in many of the set-piece presentations at the conference. Two in particular stand out. First, on Tuesday 8 September, Prof David Sugarman reflected on key moments in legal scholarship and education in the UK in the last 100 years – what struck me was just how much like 1950s UK law schools Irish law schools currently are. Second, on Wednesday 9 September, Prof Ray Cocks and Prof Fiona Cownie (this year’s President of the Society) spoke in a largely light-hearted way about the highs and lows of the Society’s history. They drew upon their book A Great and Noble Occupation! The History of the Society of Legal Scholars (Hart, 2009) which was launched at the conference. Founded in 1909, the Society was lucky to survive two world wars, the low esteem in which university law schools were held both in the academy and by the professions, and self-inflicted wounds in the refusal to admit women until the late 1940s or law teachers outside universities until much later in the century. Nevertheless, it survived, and in the last third of the twentieth century, it began to prosper – it is now a learned society promoting research scholarship, a central point for policy debate within the legal academic community, and the means by which that community can engage with the professions and wider society.

The Australian Research Council has recently completed its consultation process to develop ranking tables for journals. Controversy led to the Humanities and Creative Arts list being unavailable for a time after publication, but it seems to be available now. The ranking is in four divisions: A*, A, B and C (and there is a nice explanation here). However unfortunate such a development may be, given the way in which university life is developing internationally, it is inevitable that such tables will be developed and will have an impact.

The law journals have been extracted from the humanities list by the ever-industrious Simon Fodden on Slaw. Read the rest of this entry »

The theme of the afternoon plenary session of the third Legal Education Symposium was on

International and European Perspectives in Legal Education

As if she didn’t have enough to do as one of the organisers, this session was chaired by Prof Blanaid Clarke, and the session examined the ongoing the Bologna Process, which aims to create a common European Higher Education Area (to which her co-organiser referred in the first plenary session this morning).

The first speaker was Dr Attracta Halpin, Registrar of the National University of Ireland on the topic of European Higher Education post-Bologna 1999: Napoleonic tendencies?, discussing how much standardisation is likely to be achieved by 2020 and how much could be considered desirable. She gave a whistle-stop tour of what the Bologna process is all about, where it came from, where it is now, and where it is going. It was built on the concept of student and teacher mobility, and comparability of degree programmes. The second speaker was Prof Frans Vanistendael of the Centre for a Common Law of Europe at the Katholieje Universiteit Leuven on the topic of Ten Years of Bachelor – Master Reform in Legal Education, and in effect, he looked at Bologna in practice in law schools. Read the rest of this entry »

As with the first set of parallel sessions, the second set of parallel sessions in the third Legal Education Symposium also covered a diverse range of interesting topics, including experiential learning, web 2.0 and teaching law in a global context. Read the rest of this entry »

The first set of parallel sessions in the third Legal Education Symposium covered a wide range of fascinating topics, including experiential learning, assessment, and interdisciplinary law degrees. Read the rest of this entry »

The theme of the morning plenary session of the third Legal Education Symposium was

Teaching experiences in legal education

It was chaired by UCD School of Law’s new Dean, Prof John Jackson, and the session examined the various ways in which the traditional legal curriculum could develop, including the integration of clinical education and interdisciplinary perspectives. Read the rest of this entry »