99 Days of Something – #3 or Society of Legal Scholars Day 1
There was no writing as such do be done today so again the blog is the only writing in my string of writing I am going to do today. Together with the brilliant Dr Kat Langley I convene the Legal Education Subject Section at the Society of Legal Scholars. We had two really good sessions today so here are some of my initial very brief reflections on the contributions.
We started the conference with a brilliant panel of Nick Cartwright, Rita D’Alton-Harrison and Simisayo Olawore on Studying Black in Law School: The intersections of Black Student Life. There was so much in that panel presentation that I am not sure where to start really. We have so much to unpack, think about, challenge if we genuinely want to create inclusive legal education. Hearing from Simisayo about her lived experience as a black female student highlighted really clearly that even when we are trying to be inclusive, our efforts might not be landing how we intend them to. I was thinking about how we get round this issue that presents itself whenever we as experts in a particular field or as educators think that we know what is best or how we can get ideas across. We will always get caught up in the power dynamics of teacher/student that risk silencing some voices, re-enforcing stereotypes or misrepresenting experiences – even with the best of intentions. I think if we genuinely want to tackle this we need to relinquish much more power in the classroom. We need to genuinely listen, co-create, tear down and rebuild our discipline in a way which treats all of our experiences of law as valid and useful starting points for analysis.
In our second session we shifted focus and started with a paper which made me think about how we can use visuals to help us understand and explain complex legal concepts by Tristan Webb. It prompted me to think about how I make sense of complexity. I don’t think I really do visuals. Everything I do is text based in some way. So even my diagrams are text based – more mind map or flow chart than picture. I think in words not in pictures. But that is not helpful for anyone who thinks in pictures rather than in words. So how can I adapt some of my teaching, representations, slides and other materials to help students develop the things, whether its diagrams, pictures, memes, cartoons, objects, whatever it is to help them make sense of the things we are talking about. And seamlessly that linked me to the next presentation about using Lego to help students grapple with contract law doctrine and develop a more nuanced understanding. Marton Ribary and Antony Starza-Allen outlined how they used Lego and a structured series of builds to really get students thinking about the complexities of contract law.
Questions that came up on both of those papers were around how we measure success. How do we know if these things have a tangible impact on student performance. I don’t know the answer to that but I wondered whether we should maybe just stop obsessing about measuring. I wondered if we could just celebrate the fact that students maybe just had fun, that the noise levels in the classroom rose that little bit, that there was more conversation, more laughter, maybe even giggles. Can we just accept that it doesn’t matter if students on average did X% better if they did the thing or used the gimmick or whatever, maybe the increase in the grade is irrelevant. What if what matters is simply that they enjoyed the learning, that they talked to others, collaborated and had fun.
The final paper was a presentation by Dawn Watkins on a game about law for school children and I have more to say on that and no capacity now. It’s time for bed to let me brain do its thing on all of this – more tomorrow
100 Days of Wonder – #15
Yesterday I talked about fun. When I was at university in Leicester I would frequently visit my then girlfriend who was doing a degree in PE teaching in Chichester. The way my timetable fell I could often stay for a chunk during the week. I’d take work with me and while she was out in lectures and then playing cricket or rugby, I would wade through contract law cases and work out why, as a 19 year old, I should care about Administrative Law. I distinctly remember declining to join a game of rounders and not even joining the spectators sitting in the sun sipping something pink and alcoholic. Instead I opted for a book. My girlfriend’s comment was: Well you’re no fun. It was a theme that came up repeatedly and at the time I remember being defensive about it. I was fun. Of course I was fun. But was I?
I don’t know. I think it took me a long time to work out ‘fun’. I was bookish and serious and independent and ‘grown up’ as a kid. I continue to be fiercely independent but those moments of silliness and laughing so much that you (nearly -hm) pee yourself that I had always treated as rare and very private moments are now moments I embrace and I’m proud of. I no longer take myself or anything particularly seriously. Fun for me has never been about parties, big groups, playing sports or pranking each other which is I think what Rachel was referring to when she put me in the ‘not fun’ box. Fun for me has been about stories, about shared moments that touch the soul, about seeing others light up and mostly about seeing the ridiculousness of most things in life. Sometimes teaching and researching in law doesn’t lend itself to being fun. I bump up against inequality at best and atrocities at worst all the time in my work, some student stories a re heartbreaking and law is, after all a serious business… but finding your brand of silliness and fun seems to me to be crucial to making sure we look after ourselves when we’re doing work that can be emotional and hard. So if you think I’m mad as a hatter and a bit juvenile – you’d be right, I just don’t think that’s a bad thing.
The Law Teacher: The International Journal of Legal Education
Last month, Professor Chris Ashford and I stepped down as General Editors of The Law Teacher and handed over the journal to Dr Emma Jones. Honestly, it’s a funny feeling. The Law Teacher has given me so much over the course of my career, working with Chris has been such a joy and such a rich learning experience and in one way or the other I have always somehow worked on something related to the Law Teacher. I wasn’t going to write anything beyond a quick tweet to mark the occasion but since then, my time linked to the Law Teacher keeps popping into my head.
I published my first book review in the Law Teacher in Issue 1 of 2008, just a few months after starting my first lectureship. I published my first article in the Law Teacher in 2009 (Issue 2) – A Case for Timeturners. I look back on that paper now it and it is somehow completely naive and yet hopeful at the same time. I should maybe write an update. The Editorial of Issue 1 of 2010 welcomes me (and others) to the board and I had forgotten that Chris and I joined at the same time. Over the next few years I had a go at editing book reviews as well as the Policy and Educational Developments sections. Then in 2014, Chris took over as General Editor of the journal and I joined as his Deputy. I remember thinking that I really wasn’t quite sure how I had found myself in that position and hoped that nobody would notice that I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing. in 2018 I got the chance to edit my first special issue (a reflection on the Legal Education and Training Review and a great change to critique the thinking on the SQE as it was then).
We found our feet fairly quickly, we did battle with Editorial Manager, our new online submission system (and if it is possible for a system to actively dislike a person, EM hated me) and we sort of dealt with stuff that came up. We bounced ideas off each other, stepped in to support each other, sense checked each other and reminded each other that we’d also need other voices because we are too similar in our approach to most things. We expanded the editorial board, we established a peer review college, we drove up the quality of work submitted and published and we actively tried to support the legal education community through workshops and being available for conversations. We introduced social media editors to raise the profile of the journal…We did a lot. It’s hard to know now where the ideas came from, I would probably say Chris but actually maybe it was the combination that worked and we had a fantastic team who made the magic happen (and still do).
I think we’ve always care about our authors as much as our readers (because often they are the same!). We read submissions with care and encouraged our reviewers to do the same and respond with constructive kindness. Reading work submitted to a journal is a huge privilege, the author is trusting you with it, probably feels anxious about how it will be received, wants you to like it and in return you get to shape it a little, help make it better, sometimes encourage the re-think it needs to be amazing. We did all of this, mostly without major glitches and mostly just getting on with it – although we definitely had our moments… and then Covid hit.
Lots happened in that time that showcased the nasty side of academia but also the kindness of colleagues, friends and strangers and to cut a long, horrible and for most other people rather boring story short, I wasn’t well. I tried to keep functioning but I wasn’t. As is so often the case in situations like that, I tried to first resign from all the nice things, the things that actually made it possible for me to survive in academia. Chris and the Law Teacher Team encouraged me to stay on, just step back and take the time I needed. When I returned I returned as Co-General Editor alongside Chris with a strengthened and fabulous Editor Team. And now, 10 years after working on the first issue as General and Deputy Editor, we have delivered our final issue as Co-Editors. 10 years just flew by and now there is a Law Teacher shaped hole appearing in my working life – appearing slowly because I haven’t vanished from the journal. For a start both Chris and I stay on as Consultant Editors but I am also seeing through the articles that happened to still be assigned to me and I am also co-editing a Special Issue (more on that another time – it’s shaping up to be fabulous though). The journal is in safe hands with a brilliant team of editors now led by Emma so I am excited to see what the future holds for the Law Teacher and what it feels like to view it as just another academic interested in legal education.
My Conversations 