Workshops 2 - Session A
Building Law Students’ Future Employability and Wellbeing: A Mapping Exercise Lucy Floyd, Shirley Shipman, and Gayle McKemey, Oxford Brookes University
University Law Schools are conscious of difficulties which may be faced by graduates as they seek a career in law, and subsequently work in the legal profession. It is well-established in the literature that these include barriers to entry faced by students from non-traditional backgrounds (Francis, 2015; Sommerlad, 2008), issues around wellbeing in the profession (Strevens and Field, 2020) and attrition from the profession when women find its internal structures difficult to negotiate (Kay et al 2016; Webley and Duff, 2007).
Members of the Pedagogy, Legal Education and Professions research group at Oxford Brookes University have separately worked on studies and projects which seek to address some of these issues, including:
•An assessment toolkit which supports academic colleagues to design assessments to reduce disadvantage and/or to help students develop skills for employability; •Providing experiential learning opportunities for Law students through participation in the CLOCK project; and •A study of legal professional identity formation and the need to ensure that reflection on and positive work on this is built into the undergraduate curriculum. In order to use this body of work to equip our students to address the issues identified above, the research group will undertake a mapping exercise to establish a) ways in which the work is currently being used; b) where opportunities to use the work are being missed or where there are gaps in our provision; and c) going forward, a programme-wide plan to make use of and showcase our work in a way that seeks to ensure, firstly, that our students are equipped to live a good legal life and, secondly, that they appreciate the practical value of the research carried out by academic staff.
The paper will explain the group’s plans in detail with a view to encouraging criticism and suggestions in plenary discussion.
Statement about themes/sub-themes:
The paper discusses ways in which the undergraduate legal curriculum may, drawing on research by academic staff, seek to prepare students for entry to the legal profession and the challenges inherent in doing this work. It thus fits into the conference theme of Opportunities and Challenges in Legal Education.
The paper also addresses sub-themes of skills & employability, redesigning the curriculum, wellbeing, and training future lawyers.
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