How to Develop Law Students’ Critical Awareness? Change the Language of Legal Education

Abstract

Over the last couple of decades in Australia there has been a number of factors that have set the scene for a radical re-think about the way practical legal training should occur between the completion of an undergraduate degree and being admitted to legal practice. One institution’s response to these factors has been to redefine the core of its Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice as an online, group based, integrated and simulated learning environment. In this new learning environment, the integration of assessment within the ‘course work’ has potentially had the outcome of creating a sustainable assessment regime that results in learning outcomes that benefits students as they move beyond academia to the legal profession. This paper provides a case study of this teaching methodology and analyses whether sustainable assessment has been achieved.