scholarly journals Appraisal as an effective means of assessing student performance in Clinical Legal Education at the University of Portsmouth

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 196
Author(s):  
Pat Heather Feast

<p>The aim of this paper is to advance the notion that using the workplace model of appraisal is an effective method of assessing students who undertake clinical legal education (CLE). It is the belief of the team working in the law clinics at the University of Portsmouth that appraisal provides students with both praise and constructive criticism and the necessary information to enable them to improve their performance while working in the University of Portsmouth clinics. Giving feedback on a regular basis via the appraisal system motivates the students to strive for improvement and helps them to meet the challenges of achieving excellence. At the University of Portsmouth, staff, students and, in some cases, the representatives of our partner organisations work together in our appraisal system to tackle any barriers to student success within our CLE progammes.</p>

Author(s):  
John V. Orth

This chapter focuses on Sir William Blackstone (1723–1780), the author of the most important book in the history of the common law. The four-volume Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769) and the series of lectures Blackstone delivered at Oxford from 1753, changed the way lawyers thought about the law. Blackstone’s Commentaries were read by more people, non-lawyers as well as lawyers, than any other English law book. Their influence is difficult to overstate, and extends into the twenty-first century. Almost as momentous was Blackstone’s influence on legal education. While gradual, the transfer of legal education from the law office and the courts to the university, which Blackstone pioneered, had an enormous impact on legal development, as law professors contributed to the formation of generations of lawyers and themselves came to play a significant role in legal development.


Author(s):  
R. St. J. MacDonald

From 1872 until 1913 legal education in Manitoba was dependent almost entirely on apprenticeship, supplemented by private study. In 1913 the Law Society of Manitoba organized an improved programme of lectures for intending members of the bar and in 1914 the society entered into an agreement with the University of Manitoba to create and operate jointly the Manitoba Law School. The school's expenses were to be shared equally by the two parent bodies and its operations were to be supervised by a board of trustees consisting of two appointees chosen by each body and a chairman elected by the appointees. The school was modelled on the Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto and offered a three-year lecture course leading to both the LL.B. degree and admission to practice. As at Osgoode Hall, enrolment at the law school was not regarded as a substitute for service under articles. Classes were held in the morning and late afternoon and students were expected to carry out office duties during the remainder of the day.


Author(s):  
John W Cairns

This chapter examines the development of teaching from the chair of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations at the University of Edinburgh during the Scottish Enlightenment, with particular emphasis on the intellectual content of the classes and the politics of professorial appointments. For the first half-century, law teaching from the chair was intermittent. However, this does not mean that the holder was incapable or unlearned. When the holder of the chair did teach, the class was based on Hugo Grotius' De iure belli ac pacis libri tres. The chapter first provides an overview of legal education in Scottish universities before profiling the law professors who were appointed to the new chair between 1707 and 1831, including Charles Areskine, William Kirkpatrick, George Abercromby, Robert Bruce, James Balfour, Allan Maconochie, and Robert Hamilton. Robert Bruce was the last holder of the chair to teach Grotius' natural law.


2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-578
Author(s):  
Bruce A. Kimball

Between 1915 and 1925, Harvard University conducted the first national public fund-raising campaign in higher education in the United States. At the same time, Harvard Law School attempted the first such effort in legal education. The law school organized its effort independently, in conjunction with its centennial in 1917. The university campaign succeeded magnificently by all accounts; the law school failed miserably. Though perfectly positioned for this new venture, Harvard Law School raised scarcely a quarter of its goal from merely 2 percent of its alumni. This essay presents the first account of this campaign and argues that its failure was rooted in longstanding cultural and professional objections that many of the school's alumni shared: law students and law schools neither need nor deserve benefactions, and such gifts worsen the overcrowding of the bar. Due to these objections, lethargy, apathy, and pessimism suffused the campaign. These factors weakened the leadership of the alumni association, the dean, and the president, leading to inept management, wasted time, and an unlikely strategy that was pursued ineffectively. All this doomed the campaign, particularly given the tragic interruptions of the dean's suicide and World War I, along with competition from the well-run campaigns for the University and for disaster relief due to the war.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 15-27
Author(s):  
Ioannis Lignos

Students who do not engage enough with their studies could place themselves at risk of underperforming or failing. Such a risk may be higher for students who are assessed in one or more mathematics modules and lack the appropriate background knowledge, or do not engage enough with related teaching activities. It has been shown for students who engage with mathematics support, there is a significant impact on student performance and progression in the relevant modules. Thus, improving the mechanisms of engagement with mathematics support should be a priority for any student success strategy.We discuss the monitoring of attendance and performance data of first-year engineering students, as it becomes available, in order to inform interventions which suit the observed student behaviour best. Specifically, the method described was used with first-year engineering students at the University of East London (UEL) during the 2017-8 academic year. We find that when monitoring processes are applied to an already tailored support package, they can often help maintain engagement levels, understand why some students do not engage, and prompt us to differentiate support further.


Author(s):  
John W Cairns

This chapter examines the establishment of legal education in the University of Glasgow in 1714 and its development over the next five decades. The University of Glasgow established a chair in Civil Law in 1713, gaining funding through an allocation by the Crown from ‘King William's Gift’. Although the University was allowed to appoint the first professor, the chair was thus a Regius Chair, with appointments thereafter made by the Crown. This was to cause problems for the law professors when they tried to ensure the appointment of candidates whom they favoured. The chapter considers why the University of Glasgow founded a chair in Law; how the first professor, William Forbes, came to be appointed and why he desired the position; his tenure of the chair; and the appointment and tenure of his two immediate successors, William Crosse and Hercules Lindesay.


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