This practice report provides an overview of a podcast series designed to support first-year student transition to university and promote wellbeing and belonging. The podcast was established in 2017 in a compulsory first year law subject (Legal Institutions and Methods) at La Trobe University, Australia. The podcasts record interviews with…

In 2017, the School of Law at the University of Wollongong commenced an experimental initiative through the introduction of a Law Student Pledge. It was designed as a symbolic statement to students that from the day they begin their law studies they become a member of the legal professional community. In this way, it invited First Year Students to…

This article develops a series of speculative propositions for an immanent environmental ethics that is responsive to the challenges of the Anthropocene epoch. The article is framed within a new materialist approach to environmental education, and specifically works to re-imagine the notion of justice in terms of performative gestures,…

University law schools have been beset with a sense of schizophrenia ever since first established in the 19th century. They were unsure as to whether they were free to teach and research in the same way as the humanities or whether they were constrained by the presuppositions of legal practice. More recently, this tension has been overshadowed by…

The University of Southern Queensland's online study environment continues to grow with over 16,000 students studying online. Pre-Covid-19, online enrolments typically represent around 67% of all students studying at USQ. This article usefully analyses quantitative data in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the pilot of an online peer-assisted…

The discourse around student wellness is a marked feature of the 21st century Australian legal academy. It has resulted in various initiatives on the part of law schools, including the development of a national forum. The phenomenon relates to psychological distress reported by students through surveys. Proposed remedies tend to focus on improving…

This mixed method study involved twenty students enrolled in three consecutive intakes of an Australian Bachelor of Laws program's introductory unit. Pioneering a multi-element blended design, the unit featured three key elements: summary videos, self-test online quizzes and interactive discussion boards. These elements were chosen based on…

Recently embraced by the legal profession to make justice more accessible, social media (SM) is fast becoming the primary tool of communication for the courts. In Australia today the Supreme Court of Victoria uses SM to share judgments, media releases, publications, speeches and other information. On the County Court of Victoria home page, one can…

The Australian Learning and Teaching Council's Bachelor of Laws Learning and Teaching Academic Standards Statement identified "thinking skills" as one of the six threshold learning outcomes for a Bachelor of Laws Program, which reinforced the significance of learning, teaching and assessing "thinking skills" in law schools…

In an Australian legal education context, there is minimal research on designing and implementing a court report as a summative assessment task. This journal article attempts to fill this gap by reflecting on the journey of a legal educator who pioneered a court report for a core final year course in a Bachelor of Laws program with large cohorts…

Since "Courting the Blues" was published by Kelk, Luscombe, Medlow and Hickie in 2009, legal educators across Australia have been measuring psychological distress in law students, as well as implementing and evaluating strategies to support students' well-being. This paper reports on initiatives implemented at the Newcastle Law School in…

Law students internationally suffer from a high level of psychological distress compared with the general and student populations, and anecdotal evidence suggests that students developing skills without adequate support experience significant stress and anxiety. This article considers an initiative at one Australian law school to develop a…

Empirical evidence in Australia and overseas has established that in many university disciplines, students begin to experience elevated levels of psychological distress in their first year of study. There is now a considerable body of empirical data that establishes that this is a significant problem for law students. Psychological distress may…

Aligned assessment is a cornerstone of higher education curriculum design. Yet, it does not address the problem of how students learn "how" they should proceed when faced with a new assessment task. That teaching task is often left to the role of "feedback". This article examines changes to a first year law unit, introduced…

"Thinking like a lawyer" is traditionally associated with rational-analytical problem solving and an adversarial approach to conflict. These features have been correlated with problems of psychological, or emotional, distress amongst lawyers and law students. These problems provide a strong argument for incorporating a consideration of…