Connections in Legal Education Fest 2024

I attended the Connections in Legal Education (CLE) Fest 2024 on Thursday 20th June 2024. 

CLE was set up during the pandemic. It is a community of practice for anyone interested in legal education, that brings people together online to talk about their projects, interests and specialisms.  

Attendance to the conference was free, but I received funding from the Faculty Learning and Teaching fund to cover accommodation and travel. The event hosted around 100 people, and the theme was ‘celebrating connections’. The hosts invited us to get into the true festival spirit and to come along to celebrate connection – whether through connection and collaboration with each other, with your students, through joyful learning experiences, or indeed with the wider world.  

 

I got up very early on the day of the conference to walk my dogs around my local park and it was beautiful weather. This set the tone for the rest of the day, it was good from start to finish.

One of the requests from the organisers was to bring plants from your garden if you have one, so I set off from home armed with a bunch of sage and rosemary to catch the train.  

I arrived at the School of Law in Leeds to a sea of bubbles, which was oddly relaxing! We had tea and coffee, collected our reusableplastic cup for the day, and headed off to start the day of talks and workshops. The opening was led by Ishan Kolhatkar, whom I met for the first time in person but had known online for many years. Ishan introduced us to the ‘Donkey in the Room’, made us laugh, and set us off having fun and learning for the rest of the day. 

Throughout the day there were sessions on the fear of failure and curiosity. The first session I want to highlight was titled ‘Using Simulation to Develop Practical Skills’. I learnt a lot from this session about bridging the gap between academic and professional legal education. Another session that sparked my interest was on handing power to students in assessments. I already have assessment optionality in one of my modules, but this goes further and allows students to decide which type of assessment they want.  I had so many thoughts about this, especially as we move to Canvas. Can Canvas help with this, will it be easy to do, how vague would the module description need to be to enable this approach? I suppose, watch this space!  

Two of my colleagues from Manchester, Luke Graham and Fae Garland, also presented on negative emotions. They spoke about barriers to engaging with feedback. It was so interesting to hear them speak, even though I have listened to them before and have already changed the way I deliver feedback because of the work they have done, such as through using more audio feedback. Since implementing, I have seen a higher level of students coming to see me, as they feel more connected with the feedback I gave them. Students felt that the feedback was more personal and made them feel like it was not as scary as they thought and provided opportunity to talk through the feedback to unpick what they had interpreted from it.  

A presentation that I want to say more about was by Catherine Shepherd (MMU) and Richard Collier (Newcastle). They spoke about wellbeing and the crisis of mental health. This really made me think more about coping with failure again, and the SQE assessment course that law students need to do after their degree if they want to qualify as a solicitor. This course has a high failure rate. It made me question how we deal with this as educators, or do we deal with it? Is there someone else that should take responsibility to help that is trained to deal with student wellbeing? My feeling is that we can’t ignore it. I make many cups of tea and spend hours in my office talking to my academic advisees and other students I teach about their fear of failure or fear of not reaching their full potential.  

In this session, there was further discussion on feedback and asking students how they would like their feedback tailored. I kept asking myself if I would have the time to do this…I might give it a go, ‘might’, is this my own fear of failure?  

One of the lightning talks I was really interested in was given by Darren Weir from Kent titled ‘Action Speaks Louder Than Words’.  I am going to join this scheme, as it was a project that links students with court work, and I think it will change the way I think about dealing with students who are interested in a career in criminal law. 

Finally, the last interactive workshop was led by Ali Struthers (Warwick). Ali runs the School Taskmaster project that Manchester has recently become a part of, and if you watch the TV show Taskmaster, you will know what this is all about. Not that I am competitive, but I joined in the task of throwing spoons in a bucket just using your mouth. I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to leading this social responsibility initiative at Manchester. This is another ‘watch this space’.  

One of the other highlights of my day was painting my conference bag. My daughter is an artist but I, well, I don’t indulge in this kind of creativity often, but when I do I find it quite relaxing. My artistic talent is woeful, but at least I tried and enjoyed it.  

The final highlight was the afterparty as there was a silent disco. It was wonderful, we danced, chatted, and then headed into Leeds for some food after the event.  

In summary, the day lived up to and beyond my expectations and I felt that I cemented many connections I had made online over the years since CLE was first set up. I learnt so much from others, and my perpetual student brain was in overdrive. I will certainly be using some of the ideas, and I can’t wait to get stuck into the School Taskmaster. 

I can’t thank the faculty enough for the award, it enabled me to attend the conference and fully participate.  

Claire McGourlay, Law School, professor of legal education 

Connect with Claire on X, Threads, and Instagram @clairemcgourlay

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