Legal Innovation - How should the Educators respond?

Kindly sponsored by
Lexis-Nexis

Christina Blacklaws, Director or Policy, Co-operative Legal Services

Peter Crisp, Dean and Chief Executive of BPP Law School

Dana Denis Smith, CEO, Obelisk, former City solicitor and entrepreneur in legal process outsourcing

Professor Paul Maharg, member of LETR academic research team, Australia National University's Centre for Australian Legal Education and Nottingham Trent University

Geoff Wild, Director of Governance & Law at Kent County Council, Kent CC Legal Services

Chaired by Professor Dame Hazel Genn, Dean of UCL Laws

Tuesday 29th October, 6-7.30pm

(Followed by a drinks reception in the Keeton Room, Bentham House)

Venue: 
UCL Faculty of Laws
Bentham House, Endsleigh Gardens
London WC1H 0EG 

About the Event

With Phase 2 of the Legal Education and Training review upon us, we bring together leading innovators in legal services with two leading legal educators to discuss how the changing nature of legal services impacts on legal education. 

Legal innovators are rethinking how legal services should be provided and who they should be provided by.  Disaggregation of legal services; greater specialisation; and, the emergence of new roles in legal services design, project management, and analytics pose challenges for practitioners and educators.  What will those challenges be?  How do the panel see education providers responding? How will we ensure students are adequately prepared for this new world of legal practice? What knowledge and skills will they need?  Should (and how should) learning on ethics contribute?

The aim of the event is to enable both educators and innovators to openly debate the purpose of legal education alongside the demands of emerging legal practice.  The panel of highly qualified speakers will put their views to an audience of lawyers, business professionals, academics and students who will be invited to respond at the close of the debate. We hope you can join us for what promises to be a lively discussion.

The UCL Centre for Ethics & Law was established in 2009 to reflect the growing need for enhanced collaboration between academics, practicing lawyers and industry, given the fast changing and increasingly interdisciplinary nature of the global issues lying at the intersection between ethics and regulatory compliance. The work of the Centre is resolutely multi-disciplinary and practice-oriented, focusing on a number of current themes including the professional ethics of in-house and external legal counsel, ethics of risk, anti-corruption, global business and human rights, and distributive justice.

The Centre for Access to Justice combines the unique advantages of clinical legal education with the provision of pro bono legal advice to vulnerable communities, predominately in the areas of social welfare, employment and education law. 

UCL is unique in its incorporation of casework and social justice awareness into the law degree programmes we offer. Working in partnership with charity organisations and legal professionals, the Centre provides legal assistance to members of the local community while giving students an opportunity to gain hands on experience in meeting legal needs. Understanding the broader implications that a lack of access to justice can have, we take a holistic approach to resolving the legal problems our clients face.