European Journal of Legal Education

The EU migration law simulation

2025-03-06T09:51:10+00:00

Developing, testing and applying an educational simulation tool preparing our students for a complex legal practice in which cooperation with European member states is essential resulted in the EU Migration Simulation. The simulation was designed to have students engage with strategies for protecting human rights, guarding national borders, or facilitating safe migration channels for a sustainable future under EU migration Law. This contribution presents the development of and working of the EU Migration Simulation as well as student evaluations from law schools across Europe, testing existing theories of educational simulation. This education project aimed to deploy a hybrid educational simulation off-line and online to offer European law and migration studies students opportunities for new forms of knowledge exchange. We found that off-line simulation was most successful for knowledge exchange and systems insight. The simulation requires a modest but well informed facilitator, which confirms existing knowledge on educational simulations. Furthermore, legal cultures had a decisive impact on the way students understood their roles, and thus in the developing of the roles during the stage of game design and testing. Moreover, we found that legal professionals were just as keen on engaging in the simulation as university students as it took them outside their professional ‘tunnel vision’ on problem solving and generating novel systems insight.

Breaking the silence

2025-03-24T18:24:18+00:00

For law students, actively engaging in class discussions is crucial not only for their learning but also for their future careers. However, research in legal education and my own teaching experiences reveal that a substantial number of law students remain quiet during class discussions. Existing research on why students are quiet primarily focuses on the context of US law schools, which differs from the settings of other regions in the EU or UK. Using two surveys and one reflective practice (action), this research explores the obstacles preventing quiet students from participating in discussions in the context of a Scotland law school and tries to improve their participation in class discussions. The findings reveal that the obstacles preventing quiet students from speaking out differ from those affecting active students. Quiet students are more likely hindered by subjective factors such as social anxiety or shyness, whereas active students tend to be influenced by objective factors such as whether they have prepared for class discussions. Additionally, as the semester progresses, the inhibiting effects of these obstacles on quiet students decrease significantly, compared with active students. These findings imply that strategies for encouraging quiet students should differ from those for active students. To encourage quiet students to speak up in law classes, lecturers should focus on alleviating subjective anxiety or shyness and helping them quickly become familiar with the course setting. In the end of this article, it further discusses the pedagogical value of class discussion for quite students, despite this is not their comfort zone.

Legal wellbeing pedagogy

2025-03-24T13:54:09+00:00

This paper introduces a new pedagogical model for law schools, the Legal Wellbeing Pedagogy. It draws upon positive psychology, namely Self-Determination Theory and its Basic Psychological Needs sub-theory, as its theoretical basis. Synthesising these theories with existing international research into legal education enables them to be adapted to meet the specific requirements of the discipline of law. Based on this theoretical grounding, the focus of Legal Wellness Pedagogy spans cognitive, experiential and affective engagement with learning and teaching in legal education. It provides a clear framework for the integration of challenge and growth, independence and meaning, and collaboration and connection into the law degree. It also highlights the role of empathy, reflection and values and ethics as key inter-connecting concepts to promote a holistic approach to wellbeing. Overall, this paper sets out a theoretically grounded model which is focused upon promoting positive wellbeing for both staff and students, reimaging the legal curriculum as a vehicle to facilitate thriving and flourishing in an evidence-based and sustainable manner.

Legal skills

2025-05-25T15:20:09+00:00

The movie A Few Good Men is known for the infamous line: ‘You can’t handle the truth.’ Less attention is placed on the dialogue that follows when Jack Nicholson’s character tells the attorney cross-examining him: ‘You have the luxury of not knowing what I know… I have greater responsibility than you can fathom.’ In imbuing lawyering skills, much of the academic focus has been on legal writing, research, analysis, and advocacy. Although, these skills remain the core requirements for lawyers in ‘handling the truth’, this article argues, however, that, particularly, in a world changed by the pandemic and artificial intelligence, lawyers will need to be able to offer more. There needs to be a move from a ‘linear’ approach to case progression which, typically, starts with the historical facts of the dispute presented at an initial lawyer-client interview and progresses to final hearing or settlement, to one in which lawyers need to consider the wider implications of the conflict that has arisen. Consideration must be given to the personal, financial, societal factors or responsibilities that may have contributed to the legal issue for the client and how these factors may potentially impact on the client’s autonomy to resolve the dispute.

In attempting to ensure that future lawyers ‘fathom’ the client perspective, this article will examine importance of legal educators underpinning design thinking in law by being cognisant of, and engaging law students with theory, to include Bronfenbrenner’s theory of the ‘ecology of human development’ and the extent to which being part of this wider ecology impacts on conflict and the way in which a dispute develops. It argues that a robust theoretical framework will aid understanding for a more ‘client-centred’, multi-disciplinary and therapeutic jurisprudential approach enhancing design thinking, such that future generations of lawyers develop the transversal skills required to take a wider, shared leadership perspective in addressing clients’ concerns in a more complete way. While this applies more specifically to future lawyers in common law jurisdictions, it is argued that such understanding will be important for anyone who wishes to use their law degree or training, in-house or in industry, whether working with teams of professionals, clients or customers across both common and civil law jurisdictions.

Liberty and the Legal Services Act

2025-03-24T18:22:05+00:00

Seeking to assure consistent standards, and to promote diversity, the solicitors profession in England has adopted two different approaches to qualification, terminating in a capstone examination. One is by a funded government apprenticeship of 5-6 years, and the other is almost entirely open. Candidates in the latter may in principle choose how to prepare for the examinations and compile the necessary work experience in up to four different organisations. This article shows how the two routes are characterised by different concepts of “liberty”. Further, it uses Fraser’s axis of recognition and retribution and Youngs’ concept of oppression, to interrogate the extent to which each is capable of contributing to a statutory obligation to promote diversity in the profession. Whilst there are overlaps, it concludes that, in principle, an apprentice achieves qualification because of their job, but a candidate in the open route may need to do so despite their job.

Law in historical fiction

2025-09-16T13:40:54+00:00

This paper presents teaching experiences in a course offered to bachelor students at a faculty of law in the Netherlands. It aims to enable educators to replicate or utilise (parts of) the experiences in other environments. The paper explores the various characteristics of the course: its niche within the Law and Literature-movement; it being research-based (for students as well as tutors), rather than content- (or canon) based; its structure and objectives; and its role in terms of legal education with an academic context. In that last regard, the paper connects to legal history, thought, and philosophy.

The role and impact of relying on digital technologies in contemporary legal education: an empirical study

2025-03-24T18:00:09+00:00

This paper critically evaluates the role and impact of relying upon digital technologies to deliver legal education within Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). HEIs now use and rely on digital technologies as a key component of their delivery of teaching and learning. However, despite this, many students do not have digital access. Therefore, there is the risk that some students become digitally excluded and thus unable to (fully) participate and engage with their learning. While HEIs had to rely exclusively on this delivery method during the global COVID-19 pandemic, many have now moved to a hybrid or blended approach to teaching and learning, retaining many of the digital provisions used during the pandemic. The paper seeks to investigate the risk of digital exclusion: its causes, nature, and effects.

To do this, we engage in qualitative and quantitative research to examine whether providing students with a tablet computer affects students’ perception of the learning environment, student satisfaction, student performance and attainment, and removes barriers to learning owing to digital exclusion. We critically examine our findings. Notably, we offer tangible and practical recommendations to providers and teachers of legal education to ensure that all students have digital access to promote a more inclusive and supportive learning environment for students.

Why allowing law students to use GenAI for writing assignments is a bad idea.

2025-04-24T10:17:14+00:00

Curriculum decisions in Higher Education (HE) regarding students’ use of Generative AI (GenAI) are often substantiated by arguments such as graduate employability. This labour market orientation dictates that, because GenAI will inevitably play a crucial role in their future jobs, we should prepare our students by allowing or even encouraging them to use GenAI tools for their writing assignments. A quick scan of Dutch policy documents shows that the labour market perspective dominates the agenda related to GenAI on the governmental level and in Universities of Applied Sciences. In all HE institutions, the use of GenAI is allowed (sometimes conditionally, sometimes reluctantly) or even encouraged. We observe that the regulation of GenAI in Higher Legal Education (HLE) is virtually absent and fragmented, perhaps because the labor market orientation does not always align with local HLE education objectives. In our view this regulatory gap could only be filled if room is made for other orientations on curriculum decisions related to Gen AI, such as: focus on the legal discipline itself, on students’ self-development and on societal reform. This will enable HLE to make curriculum decisions aimed at training law students’ writing skills and teaching them to ‘think as a lawyer’.

Editorial

2025-09-16T15:00:48+00:00