This document summarizes a presentation about three potential futures for legal education research: Prometheus, Sisyphus, and Themis. Prometheus represents a creative but counter-cultural approach that suffers consequences. Sisyphus is characterized by endless, futile effort. Themis proposes a collaborative online research project to systematically study and provide evidence for legal education and professional development. It would include original research, literature reviews, and resources to inform policymaking.

1. Prometheus, Sisyphus, Themis:
three rival futures for legal
education
Paul Maharg
He had been told that when looking for a good
oracle it was best to find the oracle that other
oracles went to, but he was shut. There was a sign
by the entrance saying, ‘I just don’t know any
more. Try next door, but that’s just a suggestion,
not formal oracular advice’.
Adams, D. (1993). Mostly Harmless. Pan Macmillan, London, 73
(Slides @ http://paulmaharg.com/slides)

2. preview
1. The two David Hamiltons: Interdisciplinary historical
understanding and the trading zone
2. Techne, forgetfulness and the future
– Glosses and webcasts
– Digital technologies
3. Three rival futures of legal education research:
Prometheus, Sisyphus, Themis
Slides @ http://paulmaharg.com/slides
Professor Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CANADA 1

3. The two David Hamiltons:
Interdisciplinary historical understanding and
the trading zone

4. Towards a Theory of Schooling, eg 1
• Historical investigation of concepts such as ‘class’,
‘course’, ‘curriculum’ via intellectual genealogy, eg
– Class: from the University of Paris’ new Modus et
Ordo Parisiensis (early 16th century) describing
‘sub-division of schools’ with ‘individualized pupil-
by-pupil instruction’ (Hamilton, 7)
– It can refer either to sequence (eg of knowledge) or
coherence (eg an ordered society) and re the
second, see the new schools founded and
patronized by mercantile classes, to provide
a new knowledge for specialist mercantile
activities, not church administration,
and overseen by them.
Professor Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CANADA 3

5. Towards a Theory of Schooling, eg 2
• Curriculum – first used in English in 17th
century records of University of Glasgow, in
1633 (OED) (Hamilton, 3). Context:
• introduced by Andrew Melville to create a
specifically Calvinist mode of learning
• Used Ramist techniques of highly formalized
teaching, with a knowledge plan that was rigid
• ‘the “whole life” of each student was to be
rendered open to teacher supervision’ (Hamilton,
49)
Professor Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CANADA 4

6. Towards a Theory of Schooling, eg 2
‘First came the introduction of class divisions and
closer pupil surveillance; and second came the
refinement of pedagogic content and methods.
The net result, however, was cumulative:
teaching and learning became, for good or ill,
more open to external scrutiny and control.’
(Hamilton 49)
Professor Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CANADA 5

7. Towards a Theory of Schooling, eg 3
• Classroom – first used in the context of Adam
Smith’s professorial lectures in Glasgow
University, including jurisprudence (1752-64)
• In education, Smith’s The Theory of Moral
Sentiments is influential, where sympathy is an
ethical & social bond (cf Francis Hutcheson’s
concept of the moral sense faculty, akin to an
aesthetic sense)
• Further developed by educators in and around
Glasgow – David Stow, Robert Owen.
• A pedagogy was developed around sympathy and
emulation (as self-esteem and self-improvement),
not emulation and competition (as rivalry and
conflict) Professor Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CANADA 6

8. Results…
‘Slowly I began to appreciate that the weak sense of
history shown by classroom researchers was matched
only by the weak sense of the classroom shown by
educational historians.’
(Hamilton, 2)
• Hamilton’s meticulous historical discourse analysis
draws on generations of bibliographies into medieval,
Renaissance, modern universities – historical and
educational.
• His work is an example of Peter Galison’s trading zone,
where multi-disciplines come together to work on a
project
Professor Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CANADA 7

9. Techne, forgetfulness and the future

10. Can you remember your first mobile
phone?
Professor Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CANADA 9
My first step into
mobile comms –
but can’t remember
what it did, apart
from make calls…
Fortunately there are
mobile phone
chroniclers…
see:
http://www.lokety.com/t28faq.html#t015
https://ericssoners.wordpress.com/2014/10/26/t28/

11. manuscript writing: the early context,
pre-12th century
1. Materials
– Wax tablets
– Tally sticks
– Paper
– Parchment or vellum
2. Forms of writing
– Different hands, thickness of line,
height of letters
– Early medieval scripts included scriptio continua –
– theexperiencewasratherlikereadingthisnottoodifficultthoug
heasierifyoutryreadingunderyourbreathalsocalledsubvocalis
ationwhichiswhatalotofscribestendedtodowhenreadingand
writingandofcoursenomodernpunctuation
3. Punctuation
– Marks were used at different heights in lines, eg ‘diple’
or arrowhead (for quoting scripture), hedera or ivy leaf
for start of quotations, and 7-shaped mark (end of
section)
CodexSinaiticus,
http://tinyurl.com/6mm
w95

12. the 13th century
scholarly text
• Writers used alphabetisation,
arabic numerals, chapter divisions,
rubrics, capitals, paraph marks,
running titles
• Used compilatio – compilation of
extracts of works of authority
or auctoritas, chosen by
hierarchies of compilators
‘The late medieval book differs more from
its early medieval predecessors than it
does from the printed books of our own day.
The scholarly apparatus which we take for
granted – analytical table of contents, text
disposed into books, chapters, and paragraphs,
and accompanied by footnotes and index --
originated in the applications of the notions of
ordinatio and compilatio by writers, scribes, and
the rubricators of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and
fifteenth centuries.’ (Parkes 1976, 66)

13. glossators were intermediaries…
• Major scholarly industry
• Helped law students & professional lawyers
navigate informational overload
• Used collaboration to scale, collaborative
filtering, recommender system, used
bookmarking and scholarly folksonomies
• Sophistication of reader means that intermediaries
may be preferred at first; but as expertise grows,
mediation is needed less. But:
– glosses are fluid: later, more sophisticated
arguments replace earlier
– interface design shapes learning
12

14. 1317.8.17 Professor Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CANADA
‘Aesthetics matter:
interface design shapes learning’
Maharg (2007), chapter 9.
webcast v.1
https://onlineteachingmanifesto.wordpress.
com/

15. 14Professor Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CANADA
webcast v.2

16. 15Professor Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CANADA
webcast v.3

17. recovering the past
16Professor Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CANADA
1. Coherence
2. Signalling
3. Redundancy
4. Spatial contiguity
5. Temporal contiguity
-- Richard E. Mayer’s multimedia principles (2009)

18. we forget how powerful, invisible
protocols shape our digital interface
• TCP/IP (Kahn & Cerf, 1970s)
• WWW (Berners-Lee, 1980s)
• Peer-to-peer (decentralised, sharing cultures, social
media, 1990s, 2000s)
• Blockchain (decentralised ledgers, where entries are
permanent, transparent, searchable, and can
store asset transactions, smart contracts,
digital signatures and certificates)
See Blockchain in Education
http://bit.ly/2zIdfMk
See also 10 ways Blockchain could be used in
education: http://bit.ly/2kmaFsV
Professor Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CANADA 17

19. possible futures…
• Quality of digital content essential, more convergence in
platforms; campus becomes a learning platform
• A return beyond the book to a manuscript culture. But
immensely faster, more complex, with its own hierarchies of
knowledge and power.
• Distance and intimacy will be redefined; ownership and identity
defined
• More need for Open: OAccess, OResearch, OPlatforms, remixing
tools and cultures
• Increased threat to academic independence from corporate
providers, eg publishers:
– Cost of journal subscriptions – see http://bit.ly/2mNFxRv
– Corporate capture of our learning / teaching systems
• Analytics will matter more and will re-code what we do
• Bots and exo-cortices will facilitate collaborative learning online
18

20. 19
But we have no disciplinary memory
of our technology in legal education…
• There are no histories, one bibliography (Goldman,
2008), no collective statements, no policy papers, no
map of interdisciplinary collaborations, no meta-
reviews, few discourse analyses of the field (none
updated). In the UK, three BILETA Reports (1991,
1996, 2004). One systematic review:
Maharg, P., Nicol, E. (2014). Simulation and technology in
legal education: a systematic review and future research
programme. In Grimes, R., Phillips, E., Strevens, C. (eds),
Legal Education: Simulation in Theory and Practice, Ashgate
Publishing, Emerging Legal Education series, 17-42.

21. Also true of legal education, legal
services and the profession
• LETR (2013)reported on poor or non-existent data,
research that was not sufficiently robust in methods –
same holds true for many jurisdictions
• For LETR we collected over 2,000 references online,
but not updated by regulators
• Recently, the IBA President’s Taskforce on the Future
of Legal Services attempted a survey of the field of
technology and legal services – but again, one-shot
research
• No sustained, longitudinal effort to map the field,
create taxonomies, tag-structures, etc
16.6.17 Professor Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CANADA 20

22. Three rival futures
of legal education research:
Prometheus, Sisyphus, Themis

23. Compare how others organise their
research, eg medical education…
The example of AMEE (Association of Medical
Educators in Europe)
– BEME – Best Evidence in Medical Education
– ESME – Essential Skills in Medical Education
– MedEdWorld – information about medical
education
– AMEE Guides
– AMEE Translations
– BEME Guides
Professor Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CANADA 22

24. 16.6.17 Professor Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CANADA 23

25. How could we start to emulate?
1. Map the field & create taxonomies for research data
2. Organise systematic data collection on law school
stats, eg across entry/exit points, across jurisdictions
(eg using Big Data Project methods)
3. Focus on studies on learning, and longitudinal data
4. Provide meta-reviews and systematic summaries of
research, where appropriate; literature guides;
commentaries; policy papers.
Professor Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CANADA 24

26. Prometheus, Sisyphus, Themis?
• Prometheus – brilliant, creative,
experimentalist, counter-cultural and suffers
for it – Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound
• Sisyphus – condemned to roll a boulder
endlessly uphill – Robert Garioch’s Sisyphus, or
Carol Ann Duffy’s Mrs Sisyphus
• Themis -- goddess of right order, through
Eunomia, fair law, Dike, justice, Eirene, peace,
mother of the Hours, prophetess at Delphi
Professor Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CANADA 25

27. Themis project
• An online space for collaborative, cross-disciplinary, inter-
jurisdictional research into legal education and the profession:
– Original research and meta-analysis on, eg
• the changing profession/market for legal services
• developments and best practices in legal education and
training
– Synthesis: consequences for LET of
regulatory/organisational/technological change in legal
services
– Databanking for evidence-based policy-making
• Resources and training:
– Working Paper Series
– Systematic Reviews Series
– Methods Series
Professor Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CANADA 26

28. References
Goldman, P. (2008). Legal education and technology II: An annotated
bibliography. Law Library Journal, 100, 3, 415-528.
Hamilton, D. (1989). Towards a Theory of Schooling. Falmer Press, Lewes,
East Sussex. Reprinted 2013, Routledge, Oxon.
Maharg, P. (2007). Transforming Legal Education: Learning and Teaching
the Law in the Early Twenty-First Century. Routledge, London.
Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd ed). New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Parkes, M.B. (1976), The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and
Compilatio on the Development of the Book, in Medieval Learning and
Literature: Essays Presented to R.W. Hunt, edited by J.J.G. Alexander
and M.T. Gibson, Oxford University Press
Webb, J., Ching, J., Maharg, P., Sherr, A. (2013). Setting Standards. The
Future of Legal Services Education and Training Regulation in England
and Wales. SRA, BSB, IPS
Professor Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CANADA 27

29. 28
Email: pmaharg@osgoode.yorku.ca
Web: paulmaharg.com
Slides: paulmaharg.com/slides