Elon University School of Law was represented recently at the United Kingdom's Center for Legal Education Learning in Law Annual Conference held at the University of Warwick in Coventry, UK, by Elon Law professors Steve Friedland and Bonnie McAlister, and by instructional technologist Christie Dickerman.
The theme of the conference was “Perspectives on Progress,” providing delegates with the opportunity to “assess the concept of progress in the context of legal education locally, nationally and globally.”
McAlister, Executive Coach in Residence at the law school, developed a program entitled “Doing Diagnostics: Accounting for Progress in Student Communication and Advocacy.” The program described the practice at Elon of executing communication diagnostics for entering first-year students to provide them with a benchmark for evaluating their communication proficiency.
Dickerman co-taught the session with McAlister and explained the technical support that the diagnostics require.
Included in the presentation was an overview of how McAlister and Dickerman organized 120 diagnostic sessions scheduled in the first several weeks of the fall term with each first-year law student; a template for evaluating communication and advocacy performance, a sample of impromptu topics from which students had to select and subsequently speak; a sample of the written critique each student receives of his/her individual performance; sample videos of student performance, and a listing of the most common communication pitfalls that speakers experience.
Friedland presented at the conference about pedagogical obstacles to modernizing legal education.
“There is a need to overcome centuries of tradition in modernizing legal education,” Friedland said. “Changing dynamics in our global environment require us to reconsider how legal education is delivered.”
Friedland’s presentation emphasized the need to consider the efficacy of current approaches to legal education and to consider interdisciplinary approaches to the study of law.
McAlister has presented the at United Kingdom’s Center For Legal Education conferences at the University of Warwick several times and also at the Association of Law Teachers conference at Oxford University.
Her presentation topics have included: “Teaching Law Today: A Communication Professor’s Perspective; “Changing the Field: Recognizing the Importance of Communication Methodology in the 21st Century American Law School” (published in the Web Journal of Current Legal Issues (http://webjcli.ncl.ac.uk/20009/contents 3.) as well as in an Elon University School of Law Legal Studies Research paper No. 2009 at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1402872); and “The Culture of Questioning Techniques in the Classroom,” co-developed with Friedland.