Critical Legal Approaches: Possibilities within a Marketised Academy Gareth Bramley, University of Sheffield
This paper seeks to prompt a discussion of the potentiality for designing programmes, within a contemporary law school, that promote a critical legal approach.
The paper discusses both theoretical, and practical, examples for design and redesign of curricula. Examples include: developing modules or entire programmes of critical jurisprudence, moving beyond the case law method and strict legal sources within module design, and exposure for students to notions of a wider range of ontologies and methodology rather than perpetuation of dominant paradigms such as legal positivism and doctrine.
This paper further highlights some of the key challenges of implementation of such an approach. In particular external drivers from the SRA and the Ofs, which arguably create conflicts for a critical approach.
This paper also explores the continued influence of a neoliberal ideology within HE, noting the marketised, metricised, consumerist, corporate values that arguably have become hegemonic within the academy and law schools. The paper posits that neoliberal norms present the largest challenge to law schools, given the ever-present backlash presented; namely of an impossibility of practical alternatives. From this, the paper seeks an open discussion amongst participants of possibilities for resistance both within, and beyond, the formal HE academy, against the deleterious impact of marketisation.
Assessing Routes to Legal Qualification Dr. Kat Langley, University of Sunderland
The research aims to address challenges and barriers in routes for legal qualification and, in doing so, benefit legal education providers and regulators. The paper discusses some of the research premises in law as a traditional, elitist, predominantly white profession. It assesses the basis on which these demographics have evolved in law students and legal professionals. The project will collect data on skills and barriers as students progress throughout their law degree and into legal practice. This project will require the cooperation of local firms and chambers and will address some deep-rooted prejudices regarding legal qualifications. This project is timely as the landscape of legal education, widening participation, and levelling up is changing. This paper discusses the early stage of this project, which will consider those newly qualified to enter the legal profession as solicitors, barristers and legal executives from higher education. It will collect data about their studies by mapping the courses they have undertaken and understanding their experiences at these institutions. It will also identify whether students have personal or professional barriers that may have impacted their ability to enter the legal profession. This project ultimately aims to assess these issues on a wider scale and have an impact on legal education stakeholders of many levels.
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