Shared space: regulation, technology and legal education in a global context
Abstract
The LETR Report on legal services education and training (LSET), published in June 2013, is the most recent of a series of reports dealing with legal education in England and Wales. Earlier reports do not deal directly with technology theory and use in legal education, though the use of technology has increased exponentially in recent decades in all areas of social activity, not just in legal education and the administration of justice. LETR does deal with technology use and theory, however, and its position is comparable with at least two reports from other jurisdictions internationally, with the findings of two large-scale projects in legal education and has parallels with the regulation of the quality of legal education in another jurisdiction in these isles.
In this article I set out that position and contrast it with regulatory positions and statements on technology and legal education in England and Wales going back to the 1971 Ormrod Report. Based on a review not just of technological implementations but of the theoretical educational and regulatory literatures, I shall argue that the concept of multi-modal regulation and ‘shared space’ outlined in the Report is a valuable tool for the development of technology in education and for the direction of educational theory, but particularly for the development of regulation of technology in legal education at every level.
Keywords: LETR; regulation; legal education; digital technology; shared space; multi-modal regulation
Published
Issue
Section
License
EJLT is an open access journal, aiming to disseminate academic work and perspectives as widely as possible to the benefit of the author and the author’s readers. It is the assumption of the EJLT that authors who publish in the journal wish their work to be available as freely and as widely as possible through the open access publishing channel.
Authors who publish with EJLT will retain copyright and moral rights in the underlying work but will grant all users the rights to copy, store and print for non-commercial use copies of their work. Commercial mirroring may also be carried out with the consent of the journal. The work must remain as published – without redaction or editing – and must clearly state the identity of the author and the originating EJLT url of the article. Any commercial use of the author’s work - apart from mirroring - requires the permission of the author and any aspects of the article which are the property of EJLT (e.g. typographical format) requires permission from EJLT.
Authors can sometimes become no longer contactable (through, for example, death or retirement). If this occurs, any rights in the work will pass to the European Journal of Law and Technology which will continue to make the work available in as wide a manner as possible to achieve the aims of open access and ensuring that an author's work continues to be available. An author - or their estate - can recover these rights from EJLT by providing contact information.
The European Journal of Law and Technology holds rights in format, publication and dissemination.
EJLT, as a non-commercial organisation - which receives donations to allow it to continue publishing – must retain information on reader access to journal articles. This means that we will not give permission to mirror the journal unless we can be provided with full details as to reader access to each and every journal article. We prefer and encourage deep linking rather than mirroring. Encouragement is thus given for all users – commercial and non-commercial – to provide indexes and links to articles in the EJLT where the index or link points to the location of the article on the EJLT server, rather than to stored copies on other servers.
Please contact the European Journal of Law and Technology if you are in any doubt as to what this statement of use covers.