Society of Legal Scholars Day 2
As I outlined briefly yesterday, Day 2 started with me not running and having a slow morning gathering my thoughts and enjoying not plunging straight into my emails and not dealing with the day to day. I walked up to the uni in a gap in the showers and found the room in which my PhD student was presenting. The audience was almost non existent when I got there although a few more people arrived. There were three papers in the session and I struggled to focus on them. The first was probably interesting but was almost entirely read out which meant I lost interest within about a minute. The second was better but not something I knew anything about. The third paper was of course fabulous. It s a different sort of nervousness watching your students or mentees give papers. I really wanted the experience to be a positive one. I’m certainly biased but I thought her presentation was by far the best of the three and I was very proud of her.
Then I went back to Legal Education having missed a couple of papers I had marked – by people I know though so I can catch up with them later. This session was a bit problematic for me. The first paper was interesting and had lots of good stuff in about personalisation of teaching and feedback and also about student expectations etc but I have concerns about the approach, heavily reliant on Myers-Briggs personality type teasing but without being trained in Myers Briggs. It did make me think about how we can talk to students about where they are in their journey, their skills and knowledge to understand more what they need from us. And of course that’s different for each student. The second paper shouldn’t have been there and was just a bit of a car crash.
That made me think too though… what’s the responsibility of conveyors in ensuring the appropriateness of papers? Can they be checked more without filtering out non obvious gems? What’s the role of Chairs in putting both speaker and audience out of their misery? And how do you manage that sensitively because you never know what’s going on for the speakers in the background! Anyway, then we had lunch and then I found a quiet spot to catch up with some other stuff before the plenary session. As I sat there it suddenly felt unbearably noisy, and in spite of hiding away in a corner there were people everywhere… before I really thought about it I packed my stuff up and left. I checked my heart rate (whoa!) and breathing as I walked down towards the hotel. I thought about what to do. I had time to walk a little and then go back to the plenary but in the end I decided I needed time out.
I had a little rest, maybe even dozed off for ten minutes or so. Then I got my running gear on to head out. It wasn’t entirely successful as my legs are so tight. My ankles started niggling almost immediately but I managed a mile, then I stopped and stretched and then did another mile run/walk, stopped to stretch again and then mostly walked another mile with a few jogs thrown in. It helped. I felt well enough to go to Dinner. Dinner was just dinner with a quiz I had no interest in, a pretty good speech and good conversation on my table. By the end I was really tired but otherwise ok.
I slept well. I woke up just before 6 and lazily snuggled back into bed for a little while before deciding to go out and run. As I walked around the room though my Achilles niggled and my calves felt tight so I instead I did some yoga, had breakfast, did some more yoga and then slowly walked up to the uni ready to start the Day 3 with the AGM.
Society of Legal Scholars Day 1
I am trying the conference thing again. It’s probably better than spending the next week or so in the office with everyone around me trying to absorb the pressures of the start of term. Still I am conscious that depression has kept me on the sofa much more than I would like and that anxiety levels have been generally high. I am working on the re-set but it’s not easy. So when I set off yesterday it didn’t seem like a great idea to be heading into people and give a paper based mostly on personal experience and reflection.
Travel was a bit irritating because the trains into Bradford and then back out to Preston didn’t match at all. I sat at Bradford interchange for 40 minutes watching the world go by…. that’s another story! Then I got on my little train and pootled towards Lancashire through the familiar northern landscape. It suddenly felt important to be staying in the north. Safer, less pressured, more familiar. I watched the hills and fields come and go and longed to be out there breathing the fresh air. I went over my paper. I stared into space and then a few blokes with dogs got on the the dogs were scary and I hoped they would get off at Preston so I didn’t have to go past. I was also suddenly very aware of my own privilege, of what having a job and a secure income at a level where worrying about money isn’t a thing really means; how rare that is in these northern towns I was passing through. I felt both lucky and powerless.
Preston. I walked from the station to the hotel to leave my bags and realised that some time out before people would be good. I found a Costa coffee and had a peppermint tea and bar of dark chocolate. I like Preston. It’s real. It’s a bit of a dump of course, there’s the university and there’s poverty and not much else but the people are real, they are friendly and welcoming and I couldn’t help smiling all the time. I belong in towns like Preston (or Keighley), it feels right. I slowly walked up to the university passing huge building sites and lost in my thoughts. I registered, I bought books, I chatted to one or two people and then it was time for session 1 and my paper.
The session started with Caroline Strevens (Portsmouth) ‘Challenging Assumptions:revisiting the Law Curriculum’ and her paper was packed full of fabulous ideas centred around self determination, motivation, mindsets and teamwork being the answer. I do think self determination theory is useful and it can tell us something about how universities get things wrong by undermining academics and their intrinsic motivation and how we get this wrong with our students too and basically force them to focus on extrinsic motivating factors… I am not sure about teamwork being the answer. I don’t know enough but as an introvert and someone who quite likes working alone and did as a student I wonder…
Then it was me. My paper reflects on two of my publications from 2008 and 2009 both written in the 2007/08 academic year and suggests that I was perhaps rather naive then and got some things wrong, not least arguing for a time turner to make the academic job doable. Instead, I suggest in this paper, we should make better use of an invisibility cloak and marauderers’ map (I do indeed solemnly swear that I am up to no good) to help us do things our way and defend against the dark arts (of neoliberalism, managerialism , marketisation, metrics, ranking, the glorification of busyness…) I am actually really looking forward to properly writing this one up.
The third paper in the session was be Steven Vaughan (UCL) and was, as always, a treat. I love the way Steven presents, it appears easy and effortless and pulls you in. The paper was one I had heard before but that didn’t matter. Steven told us about his work on the structure of LLB programmes and in particular the core subjects. I have often asked why the core is the core. In fact I ask my students and part of me loves the fact that we don’t really know, that it seems to be a historical accident and one which we can’t rally justify on pedagogical or legal grounds. The core is the core because it’s what was predominantly being taught when the core was decided but there were other subjects in contention too. What I find utterly fascinating though is that colleagues often find it impossible to imagine something else. That when you ask them to design a law degree starting with a blank page they start with what they now understand to be the core but they can’t articulate why.
I can write about what I would put in a law degree another time but for now let’s just say I’m not wedded to the core, I wouldn’t teach in the current modular silos and I am not sure I would make anything compulsory other than a sort of legal skills, methods etc course. I see logistical argument for first year compulsory modules but I am struggling for pedagogical and legal ones. But I digress.
I had coffee, there were too many people, I briefly considered going back to the hotel but then just went to the next legal education session instead. It wasn’t a great choice. The papers were just not really my thing. The first was by Roland Fletcher (OU) about apprenticeships and I think I was tired and stopped listening properly. The second was a panel on workplace focused law degrees and while what they were doing seemed quite interesting there is something about the focus of law programmes on providing legal experience to the exclusion of all others that annoys me. It perpetuates the myth that what we do is about our students becoming lawyers and that a degree is/should be about employability. Of course I am being unfair here, they might be doing all sorts and just sharing this particular aspect. I would have liked more on the literature and context though rather than just a ‘here’s what we are doing’ sort of thing.
I went back to the hotel, dumped my bag and checked in and then went back for drinks and dinner. They were fine, conversation was easy because I was with people I knew and people I was content to just listen to. The entertainment folk singing went on for a few songs longer than I felt happy with and I was glad for some air and me time on the walk back. I slept badly. I woke early. I wondered about going for a run but it was raining cats and dogs and the bed was comfy and I felt achey. I didn’t want a battle in my head, I wanted a slow morning. And that’s what I’ve had. Nearly time for SLS Day 2 now!
SLS Day 4
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SLS Day 4. Day 4! I have been conferencing for 4 days (as I write this I am waiting for the final plenary to begin) and I feel fine. I have probably overdone the caffeine so far today so if anyone sees me with coffee take it off me. I slept quite well until 4.45am and then I was absolutely, totally and annoyingly awake. Ideas about my paper, yes more ideas but sadly not more coherent ideas, were swirling in my head and I thought I’d get up and do some work on it. I sat up and and felt decidedly creaky. I stood up and just stood for a while and then turned my head to look out of the window and realised I was essentially doing yoga. I kept going for a bit doing as much stretching as was possible in the space. Then I decided I should run. I didn’t really feel like it but I wanted to have a last little trot out before the Great North Run on Sunday. I didn’t go far but it was nice to be out in the early morning sunshine. By 7am I was showered dressed and tucking into scrambled eggs on toast while scribbling notes based on where my brain had got to with my paper.
Then I packed my bag, checked out and headed to the Legal Education Stream room. My two papers were first. My first paper was a paper on Excellence – it’s a version of the paper I talked about here. It has grown in complexity, breadth and depth and as a result is completely unwieldy. The comments and questions were really helpful but possibly added to the complexity. Tony Bradney however asked whether the question actually ![IMG_2252[1]](https://jessguth.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/img_22521.jpg?w=225&h=300)
becomes if excellence is an intellectually useful concept to think about and try and ‘find’. I think maybe this is the question around which the paper can be structured
The second paper was really Caroline’s and she did a fabulous job, this was her first conference paper. We reported on a project about critical thinking in law schools. I won’t say too much on this now because we’re still gathering data but basically it seems law teachers agree it’s important, struggle to define it, can talk about the barriers to teaching critical thinking well and run out of ideas when pressed on how we do it better. If you are an undergraduate law teacher and fancy an hour or so chat about critical thinking, get in touch and we’ll set something up.
The final paper in that session was about Law Students, Lawyers, Wellbeing and Vulnerability by Graham Ferris. It addressed many of the issues I struggle with in the wellness debate. It tackled the victim blaming inherent in the resilience discourse (you can’t cope so it is your fault). Drawing on Martha Fineman Graham suggested that thinking about vulnerability as universal yet particular to each person and resilience as the other side of the same coin helps us avoid those conceptual traps the wellness discourse so often falls into. Good paper and a nice reminder that I have a pile of Martha Fineman literature to read.
The second session kicked off with Hélène Tyrrell and Josh Jowitt who gave an updated ![IMG_2256[1]](https://jessguth.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/img_22561.jpg?w=300&h=225)
version of the paper which won the Stan Marsh best paper prize at the ALT conference this year. They are using cases in teaching in a way that puts them front and centre and encourages students to see them rather than the textbooks as the key reading. They are having great successes with their approach and it is great to see it being used beyond their summer school and in the Judicial Review section of their first year public law teaching. Some of my public law re-write for this coming term is based on some of the techniques and the thinking behind them. They also had the best concluding slide ever! Hélène and Josh were followed by Rachel Nir and Tina McKee who shared their research on attendance which tried to grapple with the why students don’t attend question. They have some really interesting data but I think probably need to link it more to the existing literature which might give some context to what they have found. There is lots in the literature about transition to HE which I think would help and this is my reminder to email them.
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The final paper was, I think, about teaching ethics in New Zealand law schools. I was tired and I stopped listening. Sorry. I was really starting to get to overload and I was tempted to duck out but I was well and truly boxed in in the middle of a row. So I sat it out and then headed for lunch. I had to work quite hard to not freak out, it seemed noisy and busy. I sat in a relatively quiet corner next to Peter Alldridge, current (outgoing) president of the SLS who then asked me to draw the prize for a voucher and books from the completed publisher bingo cards. Great, potential spot light, just what I needed. Anyway, somehow I felt better after that. Then I went to talk to Emma Tyce at Routledge and she gave my some fliers for mine and Sanna Elfving’s book and we chatted about ideas for future work. It was lovely and it is really nice and reassuring to have a supportive publisher.
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Finally I went to the panel on Brexit. A rather depressing way to end a conference I suppose but there we are. First we heard from Catherine Barnard on the future – it was pretty much doom and gloom but that’s because it is! I have been vaguely thinking about the Brexit transition period and how it will work but Catherine is right, the transition period is not as much of a problem as what happens after because it seems clear that a trade deal of any description will take longer than the transition period to negotiate. So what happens in between? Catherine notes that legally there is only a very weak base for 
transition in the first place and none for extending it. I have seen Barnier’s steps of doom before but having Catherine’s clear explanation of the reasoning behind suggesting the Canadian type relationship is the only viable option.
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Daniel Wincott then spoke about devolution which I also very much enjoyed but realised I don’t know enough about and then Sionaidh Douglas-Scott took a look back to show how the Brexit issues are actually issues that have mostly come up before. I enjoyed that paper and once again thought that doing some historical work would be really nice. I always meant to do something joint with my colleague Fran and we often said we’d do it sometime but for her ‘sometime’ didn’t come so maybe I just need to get on with it.
So that’s me done and now on the train home editing and doing the links on a painfully slow wifi connection. It has been a good conference, a really good conference. I was pleased to see so much interest in the Legal Education Stream and on the whole really good quality papers presented in every session I attended. I will leave you with a slide from Fiona Cownie’s presentation on Day 3 and the clear sense that we have moved beyond the sentiment expressed within it:
My Conversations 