LILAC09: Going ‘beyond text’, ‘out for a walk’ and ‘telling a couple of stories’ in legal education

The next four speakers seemed to be well connected in terms of looking at the law beyond the constraints of written statements, arguments, opinions, rules etc.  Firstly, Zenon Bankowski set the scene with a new AHRC funded project to look at uncovering the hidden information that is not perhaps visible through a textual approach to the law.  In particular, the problem a museum curator has when visitors refer to the catalogue to gain information on the object before them; and Wayne Rooney’s tempero-spatial awareness to know the past, present and future location of fellow players have commonalities that can be introduced to legal education.

Next, in a rather exciting outdoor session, Gary Watt took the audience on a guided walk around Warwick campus – in the manner of a school trip – identifying things relating to the law.

First stop, in the quasi-Roman amphitheatre, the hierarchical nature of the steps led on to discuss the building and edification of the campus.  Second up was the tree, sharing qualities with law such as branches, roots, growth, and a tendency to hurt if you run into it!  Lastly, the water feature highlighted qualities such as fluidity, man-made constraints yet eroding qualities and attempting to settle on an even level.

This was made interesting by noting the name given to Aristotle’s students (peripateikos) as they followed him walk around the gardens and courtyards; and the pedagogus slave who was responsible for walking a child to school safely.

The next two speakers looked at the narratives and versions of the facts.  Robert McPeake and Marcus Soanes gave a practical BVC perspective to identifying basic plots, story framing and identifying ‘outsiders’.  This also 'involved the audience' to look at the characters in a case and identify their role/plight/motives with a basic plotline such as tragedy, quest, rags-to-riches, comedy, rebirth etc.  Audience participation was certainly appearing to be a key theme of LILAC09!

Lastly, an excellent story was told by Dawn Watkins who will attempt to engage her students in more dry subjects (in this case final year trusts and equity, but could be done in tax or revenue) by empathizing with the key characters in a case, adding, perhaps, intrigue, mystery or even humour.  The gist of the story involve academics in hi-vis jackets on JCBs shouting through megaphones at students to "find the ratio!" whilst they sat on top of a hole in the ground that had been filled in, but previously contained a mass of lawyers, boundary disputers, mouners, judges and others!  It made sense at the time!