CLELP Speaker Series: ‘Curriculum is everything that happens to the child’: What law school can learn from primary school for GenAI-augmented legal education
It is now axiomatic that GenAI presents law schools with perplexing problems. While earlier iterations of machine learning and machine-generated text engines were available in the past decade, generative AI first appeared in 2020 with the launch of GPT-3 via an OpenAI API. The mass market took off in November 2022 with the appearance of ChatGPT. Law school staff became aware of student use largely in assessment, leading to concerns regarding plagiarism, passing-off and the like. Since then, it has become apparent that assessment was only the start of design problems, which extend to almost every part of the curriculum, with consequences for how we teach and how students learn.
In many respects, though, GenAI is no different from the effects of previous generations of digital technologies on law school. The introduction of computer labs, notebook computers, email communications, multimedia, learning management systems, webcasts, etc - all these and much else affected teaching, learning, assessment, reading, writing, thinking, administration, and the material cultures of legal education. Two factors have made the situation worse. First, the speed of GenAI mass take-up, driven largely by student use and not by staff or law school design, was new. It was deeply unsettling for staff, who in 2022 were coping with emergence from pandemic lockdown and the emergency measures adopted during that time. Second, HE institutional responses largely took the same shape they have taken in the past to new technologies. Initial incomplete understanding of a technology and its effects gave way to patchy and incomplete research on theory and practice, accompanied by resistance to change and work-arounds, institutional guard-rails, and then reluctant acceptance of change; and all accompanied by more or less passive acceptance of the technologies handed down to us by digital corporations, whose focus is on their profits and shareholders not students or teachers.
Can things be different? It can, and we can learn how from the most unlikely domains of education. In this seminar I will argue that forms of primary school education can show us how fundamental redesign can assist us in the age of GenAI. In particular, I will focus on progressive primary education at a moment in twentieth-century England. With its historical roots in European Romantic education, it presents us with models of learning, assessment and regulation that show how we can use GenAI to enhance legal education in all its aspects and at all its levels from pre-undergraduate to doctoral and professional qualifications.
About the Centre
The Centre for Legal Education and the Legal Profession (CLELP) is one of the UK’s leading hubs for research and innovation in legal education and the legal profession. We study how the profession and legal services market are changing, and how legal education in law schools is evolving through rigorous empirical, doctrinal and socio-legal research.
Our members research, teach and collaborate across themes that shape modern legal education and practice, including LegalTech and Generative AI, Clinical Legal Education, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging in the Legal Sector, Legal Ethics and Professional Regulation, Access to the Profession and Widening Participation, Student Employability and Careers, Curriculum and Assessment Design, and Communities of Practice in Legal Education.
CLELP sits within Westminster Law School, one of the largest and most diverse law schools in the UK. Our members teach across a wide range of subjects and bring current research into the curriculum. We play a central role in the student experience equipping our students with the knowledge, confidence and professional skills to thrive in their future careers. Through our Legal Careers, Employability and Professional Development Hub, led by CLELP’s Student Fellows, students can take part in activities that connect legal education with practice, explore routes into the profession, and build the skills and attributes most valued by employers.
About the speaker
Professor Paul Maharg
Paul is a part-time Professor of Law at Manchester Law School, and works as a consultant to Osgoode Professional Development, Osgoode Hall Law School.
Previously he was Distinguished Professor of Practice – Legal Education at Osgoode Hall Law School, Ontario, and Honorary Professor, ANU College of Law. Prior to that he was Professor of Law at the ANU College of Law, and Director of the PEARL centre (Profession, Education and Regulation in Law); He was a part-time Professor of Law, Nottingham Law School, served nine years as a Visiting Professor at the Faculties of Law in Hong Kong University and Chinese University of Hong Kong; was Professor of Legal Education at Northumbria Law School, and before that Professor of Law in the Glasgow Graduate School (GGSL), University of Strathclyde where he was Co-Director of Legal Practice Courses, and Director of the innovative Learning Technologies Development Unit at the GGSL, as well as Director of the two-year, JISC/UKCLE-funded project, SIMPLE (SIMulated Professional Learning Environment).
He is the author, co-author and editor of seven books. He is the founder & co-editor of two book series, Emerging Legal Education and Digital Games, Simulations and Learning, has published widely in the fields of legal education and professional learning design, and is a strong advocate of Open in research and education. His specialisms include interdisciplinary educational design, and the use of technology-enhanced learning at all levels of legal education. He was appointed a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2015), HEA National Teaching Fellow (2011), a Fellow of the RSA (2009), and Honorary VP of the British and Irish Law Education and Technology Association (BILETA, 2022).
