'We’re not in Kansas anymore': identifying our ‘New Normal’ in Legal Education

Shephard, Catherine ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2805-4943, Burns, Norah, Martin, Vicky, Regan, Martin and Wilson, Paulina (2023) 'We’re not in Kansas anymore': identifying our ‘New Normal’ in Legal Education. In: Annual Conference of the Socio-Legal Studies Association 2023, 04 April 2023 - 06 April 2023, Ulster University. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to identify and begin to articulate clearly our ‘New Normal’ in legal education, and to acknowledge the specific challenges and opportunities this is bringing into our classrooms. The Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns affected human behaviour. Higher Education experienced unprecedented change. As we approach the end of the first subsequent academic year without restrictions, this paper will refer to the existing literature to frame this as a wicked problem requiring urgent debate in our legal education community. The paper will set out for discussion the authors’ observations of how behaviour in our community has changed in response to the pandemic and other environmental factors. This will include references to student behaviour (including engagement, confidence, identity, wellbeing and mental health), institutional and governmental responses (including technology, human resources, assessment and grade inflation), internationalisation (of law schools), globalisation (of the legal profession), and the effects of the cost-of-living crisis. Delegates will be offered the opportunity to record their own observations of behavioural change, to begin to build a body of evidence to inform our community’s understanding of our ‘New Normal’. Building on their paper presented earlier this academic year, which identified as ‘Covid Keepers’ some innovations in legal education which emerged during the pandemic, this paper will create the opportunity for further research: to begin an informed and timely debate on what is now required to support the continued delivery of excellence in legal education in our newly articulated ‘New Normal’.