Dr Rachel Dunn

How we interpret and understand the historical contexts of legal education has profoundly affected how we understand contemporary educational cultures and practices. This book, the result of a Modern Law Review seminar, both celebrates and critiques the lasting impact of Peter Birks’ influential edited collection, Pressing Problems in the Law: Volume 2: What is the Law School for? Published in 1996, his book addresses many critical issues that are hauntingly present in the 21st century, amongst them the impact of globalisation; technological disruption; and the tension inherent in law schools as they seek to balance the competing interest of teaching, research and administration. Yet Birks’ collection misses key issues, too. The role of wellbeing, of emotion or affect, the relation of legal education to education, the status of legal education in what, since his volume, have become the devolved jurisdictions of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland – these and others are absent from the research agenda of the book. 　 Today, legal educators face new challenges. We are still recovering from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on our universities. In 1996 Birks was keen to stress the importance of comparative research within Europe. Today, legal researchers are dismayed at the possibility of losing valuable EU research funding when the UK leaves the EU, and at the many other negative effects of Brexit on legal education. The proposed Solicitors Qualifying Examination takes legal education regulation and professional learning into uncharted waters. This book discusses these and related impacts on our legal educations. 　 As law schools approach an existential crossroads post-Covid-19, it seems timely to revisit Birks’ fundamental question: what are law schools for?

It is imperative that those who are involved in Youth Justice are given a voice. This includes stakeholders involved in the youth justice system and child services and the young people themselves. Not only is there a moral responsibility to include the voice of the child, but the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child provides for children to have their views heard and taken into account during decision-making. To reach underrepresented and vulnerable groups, such as those within the youth justice system, and stakeholders invested in their care, it is necessary to engage in interdisciplinary research, adopting novel methodologies which are bespoke to those at the heart of the research. Impact in these areas cannot be achieved without flexibility in methodological approach and continuous reflexivity. The authors of this chapter are founders of the Children’s Residential Care Research Network (CRCRN), who conduct interdisciplinary research into Secure Children’s Homes (SCHs). Our research has focused on several aspects of SCHs, including design and build, workforce issues, health and well-being, education and stepdown provisions for transitions back to the community. Adopting the Methodology for Interdisciplinary Research (MIR) framework, we explore the roles and opinions of different stakeholders associated with SCHs. The multi-disciplinary research team have adopted methods from a variety of fields to collect and analyse data in this regard. This has been done through stakeholder events, involving those working in SCHs, policy-makers, third-sector organisations, education, youth justice, social care and academics. The aim of the chapter is to illustrate the importance and practice of using innovative methodological approaches to engage with adult stakeholders of secure care which can then be adapted to enable co-creation with children. This chapter prompts consideration about what co-production means in youth justice and child welfare settings, which includes involving and empowering professionals in the research process to improve collaboration with children through a range of creative methodologies. The chapter demonstrates why the methods adopted were ideal for the research and how they successfully fostered the co-production of data.

This chapter looks at clinics in the constituent parts of mainland UK, or Great Britain as it is technically known and those in Ireland, both the Republic and Northern Ireland. Clinics, in their various guises, have increasingly become an integral part of law school offerings across the vast majority of law schools in the UK and Ireland. Many aspects of clinic and related educational development have also been exported and proven helpful elsewhere, especially through training and other support projects. In this chapter we set out the key developmental issues that appear to have shaped clinical provision in these jurisdictions, including the overall aim of clinics – be those educationally and/or social justice-oriented - regulatory changes and educational developments, and the implications all of this has had and may well have in the future. We briefly recall the history of clinical legal education (CLE) in general and law clinics in particular, in the UK and Ireland. We differentiate between the situation in England and Wales, then we consider Scotland, followed by some specific comments on the Welsh clinical scene and finally CLE on the island of Ireland – that is both in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland.

It is imperative that those who are involved in Youth Justice are given a voice. This includes stakeholders involved in the youth justice system and child services and the young people themselves. Not only is there a moral responsibility to include the voice of the child, but the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child provides for children to have their views heard and taken into account during decision-making. To reach underrepresented and vulnerable groups, such as those within the youth justice system, and stakeholders invested in their care, it is necessary to engage in interdisciplinary research, adopting novel methodologies which are bespoke to those at the heart of the research. Impact in these areas cannot be achieved without flexibility in methodological approach and continuous reflexivity. The authors of this chapter are founders of the Children’s Residential Care Research Network (CRCRN), who conduct interdisciplinary research into Secure Children’s Homes (SCHs). Our research has focused on several aspects of SCHs, including design and build, workforce issues, health and well-being, education and stepdown provisions for transitions back to the community. Adopting the Methodology for Interdisciplinary Research (MIR) framework, we explore the roles and opinions of different stakeholders associated with SCHs. The multi-disciplinary research team have adopted methods from a variety of fields to collect and analyse data in this regard. This has been done through stakeholder events, involving those working in SCHs, policy-makers, third-sector organisations, education, youth justice, social care and academics. The aim of the chapter is to illustrate the importance and practice of using innovative methodological approaches to engage with adult stakeholders of secure care which can then be adapted to enable co-creation with children. This chapter prompts consideration about what co-production means in youth justice and child welfare settings, which includes involving and empowering professionals in the research process to improve collaboration with children through a range of creative methodologies. The chapter demonstrates why the methods adopted were ideal for the research and how they successfully fostered the co-production of data.

Welcome to this special edition on policy clinics. This edition was inspired by our work creating and developing the Policy Clinic at Northumbria University Law School and ourconversations with law school academics supervising policy work elsewhere. Policy clinics enable law students to engage in a different type of clinical legal education where, instead of providing legal advice to clients, they carry out research that aims to influence policy and/or law reform. Policy work allows students to develop a range of academic and professional skills through conducting desk-based and empirical research for their clients who may be charities, non-governmental organisations or academics. This type of work encourages students to be curious about the law and to challenge how it operatesthrough their research. As this edition demonstrates, the type of research projects that students can participate in are very wide-ranging. In the Policy Clinic at Northumbria Law School, students’ research projects have involved domestic abuse, environmental law, animal law, child-friendly justice in mental health settings and primary school legal education outreach.

Animal Law is an emerging field of law both in university teaching and in legal practice. However, it is still relatively unknown in UK universities with only a small percentage offering a course in the subject. Given the growing interest in environmental protection and animal welfare, it is hoped that more universities will develop modules in Animal Law. This article aims to assist in this by answering the why, how and what of Animal Law teaching in UK universities: Why teach animal law? How can it be taught within law programmes and what is currently happening? Animal law is ideal for exploring the interconnectedness of law and ethics and engages students in applying philosophical theories to some of the real-life dilemmas they face. It is also an excellent subject for developing key transferable skills for law students such as critical analysis, research and mooting. The results from a small survey are presented, outlining how Animal Law is currently taught in UK universities and discussing the potential risks Animal Law modules may face due to the imminent changes in legal education. From this analysis, conclusions are drawn on the future of Animal Law teaching in the UK.

This article examines the benefits and challenges of the policy clinic model of clinical legal education and enhances our understanding of the value of this teaching model. In policy clinics, students undertake policy work, conducting a research project for a client with a specific research need. This article presents the findings of the first detailed empirical study into policy clinics, capturing the perceptions of those supervising and undertaking policy work in the policy clinic at Northumbria University Law School. We found that policy work provided clear pedagogical benefits to students as they saw development of both their skills and their employability. Notably, there was a transformative shift for many students from an initial individualistic motivation for what policy work would bring to them personally, to an acknowledgment of the impact of their work on the wider community. Supervisors also benefited from policy work because it enhanced their skills and facilitated their research interests. However, there were challenges with this teaching model, including workload issues, fitting research projects into the academic year and ensuring true student-supervisor collaboration existed within a research project. The study will be of interest to academics undertaking, or intending to undertake, policy work both in Europe and beyond.

This article explores existing learning gaps concerning optimal ways to support children within and beyond secure care in England and Wales, with a specific focus on Secure Children’s Homes (SCHs). Insights from key stakeholders working in SCHs are often omitted from research despite being fundamental to understanding both challenges and best-practice initiatives. The Children’s Residential Care Research Network, which is a collaboration between the authors, aims to develop novel research with stakeholders working across the secure children’s estate and expand the extant literature to inform the design and build of future Secure Children’s Homes (SCH) through a Child-First lens. The research presented here involves a mixed-methods approach gathering rich qualitative data from participants across the sector. Fifty-three participants engaged in participatory methodologies, focus groups, and interviews, which led to a large data set. Thematic analysis identified three key themes to inform the design and build of new SCHs. SCHs should (i) be close to home to enable family involvement and continuity of care, (ii) feel like a home, and (iii) be flexible and adaptive to changing needs. These findings are feeding into the design of two new homes in England as well as the refurbishment of existing provision and can also influence future expansion of the secure estate. The research also contributes to knowledge about how the Child-First tenets can be engaged to improve outcomes for children deprived of their liberty, both in and outside the youth justice system.

This chapter looks at CLE in the mainland United Kingdom as well as in Ireland – both the Republic and Northern Ireland. Legal clinics are increasingly integrated into law school programs in these jurisdictions. The chapter outlines the history of CLE and sets out the major issues that have shaped clinic development and that are likely to be important into the future.

The Qualifying Law Degree (QLD) resulted in law degrees tending to be similar in design with compulsory foundation modules at their core. The Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) represents a significant change to solicitor qualification and potentially frees universities from the constraints of the foundations. There was also speculation that some universities would feel pressure to align undergraduate curricula to the SQE. This article makes a contribution to knowledge by undertaking the first content analysis of LLB webpages since the SQE’s implementation. The data reveals (1) law schools still overwhelmingly require mandatory study of all the foundations; (2) there has been an incremental shift towards vocationalism; (3) a small minority of webpages may be overstating the extent their LLB prepares students for SQE; and (4) a significant proportion of webpages contain factually inaccurate or confusing information about programmes or routes to qualification. It confirms an inherent irony: the deregulation of undergraduate solicitor education in England and Wales had led to more vocational alignment than experienced under the previous system but has not resulted in a significant shift away from the foundations. We present a novel explanation as to why this is the case based on institutional theory and organisational strategic theory.

Animal Law is an examination of the law relating to animals, in the UK and with consideration to European and international law, from the perspective of policy, society, philosophy, history and economics. Animal Law leads us through the development of animals in society and how they have featured in the law from a historical perspective to illustrate the passage of animal’s status up to the present. As well as setting animal law in context, the book looks at specific practical instances of animals in law – animals in rented property, dangerous dogs, puppy farming, animal testing, and animals in zoo. A global picture is examined by looking at the law relating to international trade, illegal animal trading, environmental protections and habitat loss. Animal law students and practitioners, as well as animal welfarists and ethicists will find this book a valuable resource.

Northumbria Law School’s Student Law Office (SLO) has been providing pro-bono legal advice for over 20 years. Work in the SLO provides an opportunity for students to develop practical legal skills alongside their theoretical legal education. Recently, the SLO has incorporated a policy clinic into its curriculum. In the policy clinic, students conduct empirical legal research for external organisations, with the ultimate aim of influencing law reform. This innovative teaching method aims to engage students with impactful research and develop valuable skills together with a social justice ethos. Instructions are received from a variety of organisations, some of which represent vulnerable groups of people, such as police working with victims of domestic abuse. The work focuses on areas of the law in need of reform and is designed to influence debates. Students, under supervision, submit research ethics applications, interview participants, analyse data, and then write reports to be submitted to the instructing organisations as well as relevant official bodies. During this process, students are exposed to current legal issues of concern and gain an appreciation of how to influence and help develop policies encouraging positive changes in society. The policy clinic was incorporated into the already-established SLO at Northumbria. However, law schools that do not have a clinic may find a policy clinic an ideal teaching approach to provide students with practical experience and an awareness of current legal issues, without needing to employ professionally qualified staff. Those who teach in the policy clinic do not need to be solicitors or barristers but will have experience in academic research, thus affording an opportunity for all members of staff in a law school to supervise students in a clinic. This chapter will outline how the Northumbria policy clinic operates and discuss the benefits to students, the law school, staff, and the wider community. This chapter outlines how the Northumbria policy clinic operates and discuss the benefits to students, the law school, staff, and the wider community. It outlines how the PC operates within the SLO at Northumbria University. The chapter discusses the benefits and challenges of students engaging in this type of work whilst also providing a guide for others considering setting up a PC. It outlines the practical advantages and difficulties faced during the first year of running the PC. Law schools should have more than skills training in mind when designing clinical programs. Empirical research can be unpredictable, mainly when recruiting participants and waiting for internal and external ethical approval to be granted. The Student Law Office (SLO) at Northumbria enjoys a reputation for high-quality work within the local community. The knowledge gained from law reform and policy work is useful when going into practice.

The UK has long been hailed as one of the world leaders in animal welfare. Within the UK, animals used in experiments are provided some protection under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 (ASPA). This Act was impacted by European Union (EU) Directive 2010/63/EU, and subsequently the ASPA was updated to reflect any changes required. While the Directive is very similar to the protection the UK already afforded to animals used in experiments, there were some advances that the Directive provided that were not present in the ASPA. On paper, the changes introduced were promising but may not have been achieved in practice. In 2016, the British public voted to leave the EU, which presented concerns over animal welfare protection and legislation provided by EU law. With the completion of Brexit, there may be an opportunity to diverge from the Directive to advance protection for animals used in experiments. This article explores the influence that the EU has had on animal experimentation in the UK, the potential implications of Brexit on the welfare of animals used in experiments and suggests ways in which this protection can be progressed, with potentially more freedom to amend or introduce legislation to do so.

The recent judgment in Casamitjana Costa v The League Against Cruel Sports in England and Wales held that ethical veganism was a protected philosophical belief under employment law. In contrast, vegetarianism was found not to be a protected philosophical belief in Conisbee v Crossley Farms Limited and others. The authors argue that the Employment Tribunal misunderstood the notion of vegetarianism when deciding that it was a 'life-style choice'. There are different kinds of vegans and vegetarians, each with their own way of practising the philosophy which influences how they live their life. Not all people who follow a meat-free diet should be afforded this protection, and it depends on whether their belief is one which is determined by certain factors, such as animal welfare and environmentalism, rather than for health purposes. The authors explore the arguments and analysis in the above employment cases, coming to the conclusion that the tribunals oversimplified what it means to hold values such as veganism and vegetarianism, failing to understand the differences between different classifications and sub-groups when coming to a decision. The different kinds of vegans and vegetarians and their characteristics are outlined, before determining whether this should constitute protection under employment law, protecting individuals from discrimination. The situation in the USA and Canada regarding this issue is very different, and there are parallels drawn with attempting to establish veganism or vegetarianism as a religion, and where they could benefit from the recent decision in England and Wales. Finally, this paper concludes that ethical and environmental veganism and vegetarianism should both qualify as protected philosophical beliefs, but other kinds may fall short of what is required to satisfy the requirements under law.

Animals are protected under national animal welfare legislation, against intentional acts of cruelty and a failure to act, resulting in neglect and causing an animal to suffer. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) bears the responsibility of investigating and prosecuting the majority of animal welfare offences in England and Wales. In recent years, how they operate has been criticised, and it has been debated whether they should be able to bring private prosecutions, and what their role should actually be. This criticism calls for a change in the way in which the RSPCA approach cases of animal welfare, to strengthen their continuing role in ensuring positive animal welfare is achieved and, where not, prosecuted. This paper outlines the need for a new approach and how it can be managed. Honess and Wolfensohn (Altern Lab Anim 38:205, 2010) have developed an Extended Welfare Assessment Grid (EWAG), a visualisation mapping tool of welfare impact, which has been useful for assessing the welfare of animals used in laboratories. This tool has proven so useful, veterinarians are now using it in veterinary hospitals to help assess whether an animal is likely to further deteriorate, due to disease and illness, and to show any short-term welfare impact on the animal (Williams in UFAW conference, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2018). This paper will explore the potential for the EWAG to be adapted to assess the welfare of animals when owners are not meeting the welfare needs of their companion animals. RSPCA can use it to support their assessments of the current welfare of an animal under a person’s ownership and whether the animal’s welfare will deteriorate should they remain under that ownership. The EWAG will be a useful tool for those working in animal welfare, such as the RSPCA, to help organisations to intervene earlier, work in partnership with an owner, and support their claims of a risk to animal welfare.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) is proposing radical changes to solicitor education and training. The Solicitors Qualification Examination (SQE) has been extensively debated, but less attention has been paid to the proposed changes relating to qualifying work experience (QWE). In future, a much broader range of work experience, including that gained through clinical legal education, will potentially be able to count as QWE. This article addresses the key questions arising from the proposals, as yet unchartered in any depth in journals and scholarly writing. The background and detail of the SRA’s plans are analysed, before consideration is given to the arguments both for and against clinical legal education counting as QWE. The practical challenges are then deconstructed. Who will be able to supervise and sign off clinical legal education as QWE? What type of clinical legal education could count? How much time should students be credited for? What policies will law schools need to put in place? Practical advice is offered based on the authors’ experience and knowledge. The discussion is intended to stimulate further debate and the development of consensus on best practice.

As my PhD research is European focused, looking at knowledge, skills and attributes development in live client clinics, I wanted to find all the European literature relating to clinical legal education. The aim of this research was to find all of the European literature surrounding clinical legal education available to me, to explore the kind of research published and to identify any gaps in knowledge. With an explosion of literature within the field, and more research undertaken every year, finding the literature which related to my research was challenging. To help aid this work I embarked on a systematic review, building on work by Tribe Mkwebu, systematically searching for peer reviewed articles. This research was initially presented at the European Network of Clinical Legal Education’s Spring Workshop, 2015, Northumbria University. This article highlights the journey through this literature. Firstly, it explains what a systematic review is and how it can be used within mixed methods research. It then goes on to outline the methodology used and the number of articles sourced, excluded and synthesised. The analysis shows the amount of papers published before 2015 and their basic content. Finally, I discuss my reflection on the systematic review, what I thought went well and what didn’t, explaining how it was received at the Workshop.

The Student Law Office (SLO) at Northumbria University has recently incorporated a Policy Clinic (PC) into its existing, and well established, clinical legal education (CLE) programme. This innovative PC model was introduced in order to broaden the reach of the CLE programme, appealing to those students who want to focus on law reform and/or who are unsure about whether they wish to enter the legal profession. This teaching method aims to deepen a student’s understanding of the law as they learn not just about the legal framework but also how laws are actually made and influenced.

This article explores an innovative and visual data collection tool: The Diamond. The Diamond allows for participants to rank specified items or statements and place them onto a Diamond shape. It can measure various descriptors, such as importance, with the most important item at the top and the least at the bottom. This allows for the researcher to see the overarching relationships between the different items of statements. Participants are asked to discuss the reasoning behind the placements, which provides a qualitative element to a quantitative data set. This article is intended to be a practical guide as how to use the Diamond and analyse the results, discussing the practicalities of it and other potential uses. The examples used throughout are from researched which used the Diamond, namely in clinical legal education and youth justice studies.

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Northumbria Law School’s Student Law Office (SLO) has been providing pro-bono legal advice for over 20 years. Work in the SLO provides an opportunity for students to develop practical legal skills alongside their theoretical legal education. Recently, the SLO has incorporated a policy clinic into its curriculum. In the policy clinic, students conduct empirical legal research for external organisations, with the ultimate aim of influencing law reform. This innovative teaching method aims to engage students with impactful research and develop valuable skills together with a social justice ethos. Instructions are received from a variety of organisations, some of which represent vulnerable groups of people, such as police working with victims of domestic abuse. The work focuses on areas of the law in need of reform and is designed to influence debates. Students, under supervision, submit research ethics applications, interview participants, analyse data, and then write reports to be submitted to the instructing organisations as well as relevant official bodies. During this process, students are exposed to current legal issues of concern and gain an appreciation of how to influence and help develop policies encouraging positive changes in society. The policy clinic was incorporated into the already-established SLO at Northumbria. However, law schools that do not have a clinic may find a policy clinic an ideal teaching approach to provide students with practical experience and an awareness of current legal issues, without needing to employ professionally qualified staff. Those who teach in the policy clinic do not need to be solicitors or barristers but will have experience in academic research, thus affording an opportunity for all members of staff in a law school to supervise students in a clinic. This chapter will outline how the Northumbria policy clinic operates and discuss the benefits to students, the law school, staff, and the wider community.

This paper investigates the knowledge of the general public on the legislative framework relating to wildlife conservation in England, with a specific focus on the Bern Convention and the public’s awareness of the treaty, as well as the domestic legislation transposing it. By creating a publicly available survey, the study determined the environmental attitudes of the public and their knowledge of the legislative regime relating to wildlife conservation. Whilst the majority of the public displayed pro-environmental attitudes and support for greater efforts towards the conservation of flora and fauna, the overall awareness of the legislation was worryingly low, with only 5.6% of respondents recognising the Bern Convention. Accordingly, the study investigated how awareness of environmental legislation may be increased. Ultimately, the paper concludes that formal environmental education, including legislation, must be optimised, and the domestic legislative framework should be consolidated further.

This article examines the current legal position of fur trade in the UK and the issues faced by consumers and the Government. Whilst some view Brexit as a detrimental position for the UK, including the author, there are some potential benefits for animal welfare. Free Movement of Goods within the EU makes it harder for the UK to ban imports of fur. Further, consumers are facing issues of not knowing whether the “faux fur” they are buying is real or not, with many high street retailers facing accusations over transparency of products. This article will consider what the UK can do to stop imports of fur products, both as a Member State of the EU and not. The animal welfare issues of fur farming will be discussed and why it is important that the UK does not financially support such trade, whether knowingly or not. It is proposed that the UK do ban imports of fur products

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (‘SRA’) is intending to introduce a new qualification regime for solicitors. During the relevant consultation process, there was strong support for retaining the requirement for solicitors to undertake a period of legal work experience before qualification. The SRA has, accordingly, decided to keep a two-year work experience requirement which will in future be known as qualifying work experience (‘QWE’). At the time of writing, it is anticipated that QWE will replace the current ‘period of recognised training system’ in September 2021. When the new system is introduced, a broader range of work experience will potentially be able to qualify as QWE. There will also be more flexibility about when such QWE can be undertaken and there will be scope to satisfy the requirement within up to four different firms, educational institutions or other organisations. This means that, in future, clinical legal education (‘CLE’) work undertaken by students at university/within a student law clinic could ‘count’ towards QWE. Universities and law clinics will not be mandated to offer QWE, but may choose to do so if they wish. The SRA hopes that the changes will promote access to and diversity within the profession.The background and detail of the SRA’s plans will be discussed in this section and the practical considerations clinicians will need to take into account should they decide to confirm CLE as QWE will be analysed. The arguments for and against offering CLE as QWE, and how employers might perceive solicitors with such experience, are outside the scope of this section, but such issues are explored in the authors’ 2018 Law Teacher article, ‘Clinical legal education as qualifying work experience for solicitors’.

The article adopts a mixed method approach to evaluating sports and arts-based interventions within Secure Children’s Homes in England and Wales; an under-researched area of the criminal justice system. The research adopts the innovative Diamond9 model and semi-structured interviews to evaluate the study. This is the first time the model has been adopted within a Secure Children’s Home. The results provide an original insight into the voice of this currently underrepresented demographic of the Secure Estate, and highlight future approaches to evaluating rehabilitative models for this hard to reach group.</p><p>Keywords: Dance interventions; Diamond9; Secure Children’s Homes; Sports interventions; Young People.

As clinical legal education (CLE) is becoming an increasingly popular form of teaching in law schools across the globe,2 it is important for institutions to consider the realities and risks of each kind of model. Certain kinds of CLE may be a very realistic portrayal or simulative of practice, but carry more risks to those involved. This article explores the realities and risks3 of all kinds of CLE by using an ordinal scale to measure them. This scale was tested at the 8th Worldwide GAJE Conference in Turkey. Those who attended the session became the scale themselves, moving and discussing the kinds of CLE to where they believed they were in terms of reality and risk. This article analyzes the results of that session, exploring what some clinicians from across the globe think of the realities and risks of CLE, and whether we can balance them together to provide students with a sound educational experience. As clinicians, we aim to expose our students to the realities of practice whilst keeping the risks involved to an absolute minimum so that they gain a practical legal education without any adverse effects.

How we interpret and understand the historical contexts of legal education has profoundly affected how we understand contemporary educational cultures and practices. This book, the result of a Modern Law Review seminar, both celebrates and critiques the lasting impact of Peter Birks’ influential edited collection, Pressing Problems in the Law: Volume 2: What is the Law School for? Published in 1996, his book addresses many critical issues that are hauntingly present in the 21st century, amongst them the impact of globalisation; technological disruption; and the tension inherent in law schools as they seek to balance the competing interest of teaching, research and administration. Yet Birks’ collection misses key issues, too. The role of wellbeing, of emotion or affect, the relation of legal education to education, the status of legal education in what, since his volume, have become the devolved jurisdictions of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland – these and others are absent from the research agenda of the book. 　 Today, legal educators face new challenges. We are still recovering from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on our universities. In 1996 Birks was keen to stress the importance of comparative research within Europe. Today, legal researchers are dismayed at the possibility of losing valuable EU research funding when the UK leaves the EU, and at the many other negative effects of Brexit on legal education. The proposed Solicitors Qualifying Examination takes legal education regulation and professional learning into uncharted waters. This book discusses these and related impacts on our legal educations. 　 As law schools approach an existential crossroads post-Covid-19, it seems timely to revisit Birks’ fundamental question: what are law schools for?

<p>The <i>Clinical Legal Education Handbook</i> is intended to act as a good practice guide and practical resource for those engaged in the design and delivery of clinical legal education programmes at university law schools. The Handbook is primarily aimed at clinics in England and Wales, but is likely to have content that is of interest to those engaged in clinic in other jurisdictions. The Handbook offers direction on how to establish and run student law clinics and sets out guidance on both the pedagogical and regulatory considerations involved in the delivery of clinical programmes. It also provides an introduction to the existing body of research and scholarship on Clinical Legal Education (CLE).</p><p>CLE has become an increasingly popular method of legal education in recent years. Despite the popularity of CLE, there is very little guidance available in England and Wales as to how clinics ought to be set up or how clinical programmes might best be delivered. Although the legal regulators have a statutory duty to improve access to justice, it is not always readily apparent how pro bono and CLE fit into a complex regulatory framework. This Handbook aims to address those gaps.</p><p>The <i>Handbook </i>will be used by staff involved in running law clinics as a practical guide to establishing and running their programmes and can also be used as a teaching resource and recommended text on clinical programmes. It will also be a valuable resource for clinical legal education researchers who wish to engage in regulatory, pedagogic and legal service delivery research in this area.</p>