"It's what you do with it that counts". Embedding skills into the law curriculum Becky Huxley-Binns Nottingham Law School

1. Becky Huxley-Binns
Nottingham Law School

2.  Students should be able to
 apply knowledge to complex situations;
 recognise potential alternative conclusions for particular situations,
and provide supporting reasons for them;
 select key relevant issues for research and to formulate them with
clarity;
 use standard paper and electronic resources to produce up-to-date
information;
 make a personal and reasoned judgement based on an informed
understanding of standard arguments in the area of law in question;
 use the English language and legal terminology with care and
accuracy;
 conduct efficient searches of websites to locate relevant information;
 to exchange documents by email and manage information exchanges
by email;
 and produce word-processed text and to present it in an appropriate
form.

3.  Students should have acquired
 knowledge and understanding of the fundamental doctrines and
principles which underpin the law of England and Wales
particularly in the Foundations of Legal Knowledge;
 a basic knowledge of the sources of that law, and how it is made
and developed;
 of the institutions within which that law is administered and the
personnel who practice (sic) law;
 the ability to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of a
wide range of legal concepts, values, principles and rules of
English law and to explain the relationship between them in a
number of particular areas;
 the intellectual and practical skills needed to research and
analyse the law from primary resources on specific matters;
 and to apply the findings of such work to the solution of legal
problems;
 and the ability to communicate these, both orally and in writing,
appropriately to the needs of a variety of audiences.

4.  1. Cases: finding, reading, understanding, summarising, applying...
 2. Legislation: finding, read, interpreting, construing, mapping across
primary and secondary sources...
 3. Legal theory: understanding the legal and social context, values
and philosophy, theories and principals underlying law, jurisprudence
in context...
 4. Legal reasoning: deductive reasoning, formal logic, casuistry,
solving problems, testing hypotheses against antitheses...
 5. Ethics...
 6. Legal writing: drafting, explaining, describing the law, in different
contexts, to different audiences, with different purposes...
 7. Legal Commercial Awareness: alternative business structures, the
business context, profit and loss, marketing...
 8. Dispute resolution: negotiation, mediation, litigation, mooting.

5. QLD Year Skill linked to knowledge Skill
achieved
Year 1 Dispute resolution and litigation (negotiation) with Contract and 8
Employment law
Cases with Torts 1
Critical legal reasoning with constitutional law 4
Ethics with Land Law 5
Year 2 Dispute resolution and litigation (mooting) with Criminal Law 8
Legal Theory with Jurisprudence 3
Legal writing (drafting) with EU law 6
Professional skills, including commerciality, with The Legal Services 7
Sector
Year 3 Research project -
Cases with medical law 1
Negotiation/mediation with family law 2 and 4
Cases and legislation with Trusts 1 and 2

6.  Canbe taught and could be assessed by
requiring students to draft
 an exclusion clause in a contract/commercial law
module,
 a restraint of trade in an employment law
module,
 an indictment in criminal law or evidence,
 a clause in a will for trusts,
 a lease in land law or landlord and tenant law,
 a clause in a conveyance,
 counsel’s opinion, in any module at all,
 and so on, according to programme design.

7.  Law is about avoiding and resolving disputes;
dispute resolution should therefore be an
explicit requirement of a qualifying law degree.
So, although negotiation is ubiquitous in life, it is
a common dispute resolution mechanism in law
which can and should be taught on the QLD as
being a legal skill. Mediation is a more formal,
less ubiquitous and therefore more legal method
of dispute resolution. Litigation, the last port of
call for dispute resolution, consists of
understanding the court structures, hierarchies,
jurisdictions, appellate routes and powers, as
well as mooting and making legal oral
presentations.

8.  50% of the module
 Moot weighted 20% skeletons and 80% oral
presentation
 Four students
 Lead and junior appellant
 Lead and junior respondent
 One judge (subject tutor)
 In seminars
 Added to the ‘normal’ seminar problem
question for the group...

9.  Neil, a medical student, has a serious shoe fetish, finding men’s brown
shoes a real turn on. One of the other students on his course, Thomas,
bought a new pair of designer brown loafers and Neil was very attracted
to them. Neil started following Thomas everywhere at university and
taking photos of Thomas wearing the new shoes. Neil would often leave
Thomas a present of brown shoe polish, a new pair of laces or a photo of
Thomas’s shoes in his student pigeon-hole. Consequently Thomas
became ill through stress just before his exams and asked the doctor to
sign him off university, which the doctor duly did stating that he was
suffering from severe depression.
 To relieve the frustrations created by Thomas’s brown shoes Neil decided
to visit his local sado-masochist mistress, Kate, and ask her to walk up
and down his naked back whilst wearing red patent stiletto boots. Kate
granted his request and did so whilst also whipping him all over with a
whip. The whipping left large welts on Neil’s back, and the stiletto heels
caused a number of deep puncture marks to his skin.

10.  Neil then had consensual sexual intercourse
with Kate without using any protection
despite the fact that he thought he might
have contracted HIV from an earlier mistress.
Kate mistakenly thought that Neil was the
client who had shown her his HIV clear
medical certificate earlier that week and so
did not insist that he wore a condom. Three
months later Kate was diagnosed as having
contracted HIV.
 Consider the criminal liability, if any, of Neil
and Kate under the Offences against the
Person Act 1861, and the common law.

11. Oral Presentations:
 Before attempting this exercise you need to
make yourself familiar with the mooting
handbook. You will be expected to observe the
correct formalities by referring to the judge
correctly, introducing yourselves, citing cases
accurately, and using legal language
appropriately.
 Prepare a 5 minute presentation on the facts in
paragraph 1.

12.  Please note that Neil was convicted after trial of an
offence under s.20 of the Offences against the Person
Act 1861. It was not disputed that severe depression
was capable of amounting to GBH and that Neil was
the cause of Thomas’s psychiatric illness. The trial
judge, Angus J ruled that he would direct the jury
that there was an infliction of harm for the purpose
of s.20 of the 1861 Act, because the decision in
Clarence [1888] 22 QBD 23 had been impliedly
overruled by the decision in Ireland;Burstow [1998]
AC 147 and he agreed with the conclusions of the
Court of Appeal to the same effect in Dica [2004] QB
1257. Neil now appeals to the Court of Appeal on the
following ground;
 that Clarence [1888] 22 QBD 23 has not been impliedly
overruled by Ireland;Burstow [1998] AC 147 in respect of
the meaning of the word ‘inflict’ in s.20 of the 1861 Act.

13.  Whole cohort split into the 4 groups
(allocation of a role)
 Groups of 4 then allocated to a room and a
time with a tutor (central timetabling help)
 We have 8 tutors (not all FT)
 It takes 2 weeks to assess 400+ students

14. Any questions?