Synergistic Literacies: Fostering Critical and Technological Literacies in Teaching a Legal Research Methods Course

[Extract] Public and professional discussion about the behaviour of lawyers is perennial to the point of cliché. Commentary about perceived inadequacies is also commonplace, but it is ordinarily based on anecdotal, though powerful, “war” stories. It seems, however, that legal educators and regulator...

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Main Authors: Paul Havemann, Jacquelin Mackinnon
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Bond University 2002-01-01
Series:Legal Education Review
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.53300/001c.6149
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author Paul Havemann
Jacquelin Mackinnon
author_facet Paul Havemann
Jacquelin Mackinnon
author_sort Paul Havemann
collection DOAJ
description [Extract] Public and professional discussion about the behaviour of lawyers is perennial to the point of cliché. Commentary about perceived inadequacies is also commonplace, but it is ordinarily based on anecdotal, though powerful, “war” stories. It seems, however, that legal educators and regulators must tackle the “ethics issue” with renewed vigour if legal institutions are to retain moral, and perhaps even spiritual, relevance. Ethics awareness projects are, of course, under way in many places (for example, the American Bar Association’s “Ethics 2000” programme); however, often they proceed with little direct information from the mass of legal practitioners as to their own perceived standards of conduct. As legal educators we can only design and teach ethics courses and help the legal profession describe the desirable attributes of the future lawyer using indirect information as to what is needed. My concern here is that legal ethics programmes, both in and after law school, may be proceeding on a comfortable, but possibly unfounded, assumption – that as legal educators or regulators we can simply appeal to the supposed better nature of our students and members in order to improve attitudes and, hence, behaviour. While, in my opinion, there is a link between lawyers’ attitudes/values and their behaviour, we first need to know about these attitudes and values.
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spelling doaj-art-c0582a933ed4402ab39193a07ccfa33a2025-08-20T03:22:39ZengBond UniversityLegal Education Review1033-28391839-37132002-01-0113110.53300/001c.6149Synergistic Literacies: Fostering Critical and Technological Literacies in Teaching a Legal Research Methods CoursePaul HavemannJacquelin Mackinnon[Extract] Public and professional discussion about the behaviour of lawyers is perennial to the point of cliché. Commentary about perceived inadequacies is also commonplace, but it is ordinarily based on anecdotal, though powerful, “war” stories. It seems, however, that legal educators and regulators must tackle the “ethics issue” with renewed vigour if legal institutions are to retain moral, and perhaps even spiritual, relevance. Ethics awareness projects are, of course, under way in many places (for example, the American Bar Association’s “Ethics 2000” programme); however, often they proceed with little direct information from the mass of legal practitioners as to their own perceived standards of conduct. As legal educators we can only design and teach ethics courses and help the legal profession describe the desirable attributes of the future lawyer using indirect information as to what is needed. My concern here is that legal ethics programmes, both in and after law school, may be proceeding on a comfortable, but possibly unfounded, assumption – that as legal educators or regulators we can simply appeal to the supposed better nature of our students and members in order to improve attitudes and, hence, behaviour. While, in my opinion, there is a link between lawyers’ attitudes/values and their behaviour, we first need to know about these attitudes and values.https://doi.org/10.53300/001c.6149
spellingShingle Paul Havemann
Jacquelin Mackinnon
Synergistic Literacies: Fostering Critical and Technological Literacies in Teaching a Legal Research Methods Course
Legal Education Review
title Synergistic Literacies: Fostering Critical and Technological Literacies in Teaching a Legal Research Methods Course
title_full Synergistic Literacies: Fostering Critical and Technological Literacies in Teaching a Legal Research Methods Course
title_fullStr Synergistic Literacies: Fostering Critical and Technological Literacies in Teaching a Legal Research Methods Course
title_full_unstemmed Synergistic Literacies: Fostering Critical and Technological Literacies in Teaching a Legal Research Methods Course
title_short Synergistic Literacies: Fostering Critical and Technological Literacies in Teaching a Legal Research Methods Course
title_sort synergistic literacies fostering critical and technological literacies in teaching a legal research methods course
url https://doi.org/10.53300/001c.6149
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