Using A Reflective Court Report To Integrate And Assess Reflective Practice In Law

Abstract

In an Australian legal education context, there is minimal research on designing and implementing a court report as a summative assessment task. This journal article attempts to fill this gap by reflecting on the journey of a legal educator who pioneered a court report for a core final year course in a Bachelor of Laws program with large cohorts and improved it over 13 semesters in six years. Integrating reflective practice into the court report enhanced its level of authenticity. Notably, this journal article disseminates an example of a court report template and a criterion-referenced assessment rubric for a reflective court report that was grounded in the literature that conceptualises ‘reflective practice’ and has been refined over time with the benefit of a longstanding and rich experience.