‘Complicitous and Contestatory’

Abstract

It is the content of reports into legal education are subject to comment and analysis, rarely the form, functional discourse markers or rhetorical nature of such genres. In this chapter we describe a discourse framework for understanding the historical development of modern reports into legal education in England and Wales by analysing the textual features of genre markers. We then apply this framework to a specific subset of topoi within such reports, namely the reporting of digital technologies within legal education. We shall make three related claims. First, the discourse and rhetorics of reports on legal education has scarcely been analysed in the research literature, and we begin that process here. Second, the culture and context within which digital innovation is reported, analysed and recommended upon in regulatory reports is relatively shallow and theory-lite. We need to draw from the sophisticated insights into our understanding of digital in a variety of disciplines and discourses, eg media, education, and discourse analysis generally, and apply those to legal education. Third, the genre-form of reports on innovation actually inhibit or constrain our ability to develop imaginative, theory-rich and persuasive accounts of digital cultures for legal education. In this regard our case study has implications not just for law schools, but also and more significantly for regulators and accreditors.

The Role of Legal Education in Shaping the Legal Culture of the Future: Strategies and Prospects for Development

“…It is worth noting here that the classical approach of the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, according to which education plays a dominant role in shaping legal culture, is gradually becoming irrelevant. Education provides an understanding of the legal field not only in a practice-oriented but also in a cultural and historical dimension (Ching & Maharg, 2020).…”