UNIVERSITY NEWS LAST UPDATED : 16 NOVEMBER 2022
Dr Jessica Guth, Head of BCU School of Law, and Dr Doug Morrison from Leeds Beckett University, have contributed a co-authored book chapter to the Routledge book entitled, ‘What is Legal Education for? Reassessing the Purpose of Early Twenty-First Century Learning and Law School.’ The book was published in September, 2022.
The book is a reflection on a collection edited by Peter Birks ‘Pressing Problems in the Law: What is the Law School for?’, which was published in 1996. Birks’ collection addresses the impact of globalisation; technological disruption; and the tension inherent in law schools as they seek to balance the competing interests of teaching, research and administration. Birks’ collection misses key agendas such as the role of wellbeing, emotion or affect, the relation of legal education to education, and the status of legal education in what, since his volume, has become the devolved jurisdictions of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland and others.
Diversity in Law Schools
Dr Guth and Dr Morrison’s chapter — What are Law Schools for: A Story of class and gender’ — offers considerations, based on their own biographies, on what has changed and whether Law Schools are now more diverse places. The authors approach these questions from gender and class perspectives, and argue that whilst there have been changes, recent events, such as the introduction of the Solicitors Qualifying Examination, BREXIT and COVID-19, highlight just how little progress has been made since Peter Birks’ 1996 edited collection. The same arguments and issues that were highlighted in the collection are still being debated now.
Dr Guth said:
This edited collection was edited by Rachel Dunn, Paul Maharg and Victoria Roper. It is available to purchase here.