The Australasian Law Teaching Clinic: Its Past, Present and Future

Abstract

Discussing the techniques of teaching is not a common part of the experience of most law teachers. We are more often concerned with the content of what we teach than with the methods by which our students learn. Those times when we do explore our teaching tend to be irregular, unsystematic and somewhat haphazard. Discussions with colleagues in other disciplines also often seem pointless — the issues of teaching law are idiosyncratic. The Australasian Law Teaching Workshop is an attempt by a group of law teachers to change these circumstances; to explore the peculiar problems of teaching law and to do so in a systematic way, with others engaged in the same endeavour and in an environment of experimentation and cooperation. This note describes the programme which, although similar in many ways to those running in the United States and Canada, has developed its own regional variations.