Centre for Legal Education

Centre for Legal Education Conference

Building on the success of previous conferences, the Centre for Legal Education at Nottingham Law School is delighted to announce its seventh international conference, taking place between 29th June and 3rd July 2026.

Please visit the conference's event page for more information on the conference, including submitting proposals.

Centre for Legal Education Research Seminar

The annual CLE research seminar took place on 25^th February in conjunction with Taylor’s University in Malaysia:

Michael Bjorn Krakat - Dialogic Pedagogy, AI legal teaching and research in legal theory perspectives

Sia Chin Chin - From Law to Technology: The Power of Integrated Multidisciplinary Projects'

Jane Ching/Pamela Henderson - Creating a centre for research, scholarship and practice

Jane Jarman - Assessment inference, and the underpinning of authentic assessment

Paulo Karat - How Rogerian psychological principles can inform teaching and the creation of psychologically safe relationships / learning environments

On 3^rd June 2025 the centre hosted a celebratory event in honour of the 60^th anniversary of the Association of Law Teachers.  Starting with an introduction from Mark O’Brien, president of the Association, the event took the form of a series of panels and short presentations from people at all stages of legal education: from students and recent graduates to Visiting Professor Pat Leighton, a founder member of the ALT.  Presenters and attendees, face to face and online, came from many universities in the UK and elsewhere, and from legal practice.

The annual CLE research seminar took place on 11^th February:

• Helen Hall: Imagination, Empathy and Narrative in Legal Education: Game Based Approaches.
• Joy Davies: What is learning? A brief exploration of the tension between the abstract practice of reflection in professional legal education and the very instrumental use of learning outcomes and assessment.
• Paulo Karat:  Are lawyers destined to suffer? Personality traits and conditioning as a mediating factor in burnout and mental illness (a preliminary review of the literature).

Natalie Braber, Jane Ching and Jane Jarman gave a research seminar on 5^th February on 'I’ve never met a barrister who sounds like me: accent bias at the Bar'.

On 20^th March, the centre hosted an Anglo-Dutch roundtable on AI in legal education.  Colleagues from the law school and elsewhere in NTU joined presenters from Open Universiteit, Tilburg University and Hasselt University in vigorous discussion about the challenges and opportunities presented by AI in our context.

The CLE’s annual research seminar took place on 11 July 2024 with the following papers:

• Jane Jarman & Peter Vaughan - "Just make it fair!”: Validity in Assessment – A review of the Professional Certificate in Trade Mark Practice"
• Julia Jennings - “Unveiling student potential through engagement with the Skills Audit - a lifelong iterative employability tool”
• Paulo Karat - "Working with reactivity: mindfulness-informed teaching possibilities in legal education"

Satisfying Stakeholders In Legal Education: How To Pack Everything In (Including The Kitchen Sink) – June 2024

Our sixth biennial international conference again took a partly online, partly face to face format. We were delighted to meet friends old and new, and many useful conversations took place that have positive implications for the future. We were delighted to hear from participants throughout the world as well as from a wide range of UK universities. Our keynote speaker, Professor Joshua Castellino, provided much food for thought in his presentation on The Role of the Law School in Times of More & More: Suggestions for Navigating Tough Terrain.

Papers were presented by:

• Simon Best, Leeds Trinity University, UK - COIL Insights: Tailoring Legal Education for Global Stakeholder Approval
• Lucinda Bromfield and Gillian Sproule, BPP University, UK - SQE: A challenge and an opportunity
• Mariia Domina, University of Lorraine, France - Why interdisciplinary research matters in law schools: a case study of financial markets law
• István Erdős, University of Debrecen, Hungary - How the international convergence of common law and civil law affects legal education?
• Olugbenga Damola Falade, University of Hull, UK - The Nigeria Teaching Experience: A Case for Practitioners’ Collaboration to Enhance the English Legal Education System
• Maaike Geuens, Tilburg University, The Netherlands - AI and legal education: back to the drawing board? A Case Study in Academic Writing
• Jane Jarman and Callum Scott, Nottingham Law School, UK - “A Profound Sense of Mystery?” Navigating Competing Tensions in Clinical Legal Education
• Kalyani Jayasekara, General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University, Sri Lanka - Regulatory requirements for the Legal Education in Sri Lanka
• Jenny Kemp, University of Leicester, UK - Addressing learner needs: how to help LLM students acquire discipline-specific vocabulary
• Geo Quinot, Stellenbosch University, South Africa - Transformational Legal Education 2.0
• Victor Reyes, healingjudges.com, USA - Thriving as a Human Being: Tools to Better Connect with Ourselves, Mitigate Secondary Trauma and Better Serve our Communities
• John Rumbold and Paulo Karat, Nottingham Law School, UK - The Application of Mindfulness in legal education
• Jennifer Spreng, Southern Illinois University Simmons Law School, USA - From Feedback Literacy to Evaluative Judgment: Satisfying Stakeholders with a Pedagogy that Improves Students’ Academic Performance, Professional Capacities, and American “NextGen” Bar Examination Readiness
• Fikayo Taiwo, Essex Law School, University of Essex, UK - Transitioning from Online/Blended Learning to In-Person Teaching after the Covid19 Pandemic: Assessing Impact on Student Engagement
• Sanya Yadav, Bennett University, India - Educational Design & Development with collaboration for developed and developing countries

A major event was the Global Legal Skills Conference, hosted at NLS over 31 July to 1 August.  Papers were presented by NLS colleagues:

• Liz Curran et al: Policy Clinics: Why and How?
• Mathew Game: Virtual Internship Model: Empowering Students with Drafting and Employability Skills
• Matthew Homewood et al: Developing Global Legal Research and Writing Skills Through a Unique UK-US Collaboration.
• Jane Jarman and Peter Vaughan: Practice Makes Perfect: An Integrated Approach to Drafting Witness Statements by Trainee Trade Mark Attorneys.
• Julia Jennings: The Skills Audit – A Globally Transferrable Employability Tool.
• Katie Smith: From Classroom to Courtroom: A Focus on Clinical Legal Education in a University Teaching Law Firm.

Our 2023 research seminars included

• Jane Ching and Azhin Omer: The motivations and experiences of international law students
• Helen Hall: Using Brave New World and escape rooms as a teaching tool.
• Pamela Henderson: Using storyboarding software as a support for undergraduate learning.

In addition:

• Joy Davies and colleagues held a very successful Negotiation and Mediation Week for students (31 May – 2 June).
• Azhin Omer and Jane Ching hosted their SLS-funded dissemination event on the Motivation and Experiences of International Law Students on 9^th June 2023.  Special credit should be given to NLS LLM students Jamiu Akinpelu, Harrison Ononiwu, Osamwonyi Odiase  and Oluwatomilola Oyewusi-Muraina for their participation in a closing student panel.