RSS 1.0Law
The academic staff are also research active in the areas of Family Law, Criminal Justice, the general area of Human Rights and Discrimination, and the development of legal education.
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Supporting Parents Through Their Studies: Insights from the University of Chester and QAAThis blog for HE Professional provides research-informed insights into how providers can best support students with parental responsibility through their studies.
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The Student-Parent's Guide to Open DaysThis short guide is to help you feel in control of your open day experience. It will help you gather the information you need to make an informed decision about whether the setting you're visiting is right for you and your family commitments.
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‘It’s both a blessing and a curse’: law firm attitudes to Qualifying Work Experience in England & WalesWith the advent of the Solicitors’ Qualifying Exam (SQE), Qualifying Work Experience (QWE) allows for flexibility in the journey to qualification as a solicitor in England & Wales that was not previously permitted by the Period of Recognised Training. This development was heralded as a lever to widening access to the profession, with the potential to assist those who may not have been recruited onto traditional graduate-level training programmes in securing a qualified legal role. This paper discusses the findings of empirical research conducted by the authors with a view to understanding the perceptions of, and attitudes towards, QWE of those responsible for recruitment in UK law firms. It reveals a friction between the perceived, and actual, value of QWE obtained via non-traditional routes and exposes the threat that law firm stances on QWE pose to the regulator’s aim of widening access to the profession.
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A Practical Guide to Embedding Commercial Awareness into your CurriculumThis chapter aims to equip lecturers with the tools they need to embed ‘commercial awareness’ in their teaching. The meaning of commercial awareness is explored and the arguments in favour of students developing this attribute are discussed. The chapter then introduces two examples from the law schools of UK universities where commercial awareness has been embedded. The first example concerns a very practical module which was specifically designed to ensure commercial awareness was at its core. The second example used student and employer partnerships to add commercial awareness to an established module which had a lot of ‘textbook’ learning but little real-world application. The examples provided offer lecturers with step-by-step toolkits to facilitate the creation of their own learning activities which embed commercial awareness. The positive impact of integrating commercial awareness is highlighted using feedback from students who have experienced these modules.
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Law in ActionThis case study considers the impact on student wellbeing of 'Law in Action', a Level 6 module co-constructed with students. The module aims to empower students to appreciate their transferable skills, understand how to articulate them to themselves and future employers, how to identify, and deal with, imposter syndrome, and to appreciate the importance of self-care and mental wellbeing within the legal profession.
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From a blank piece of paper to a compelling employability narrative: student-designed authentic assessment for creating socially responsible, employable graduatesAgainst a backdrop of increasing focus on graduate employability and employment outcomes (Bathmaker 2021) and increasing investment in widening participation programmes (Hutchinson, Reader and Akhal, 2020), this case study considers how handing over the reins and taking a student-led approach to module development has enabled students to develop a compelling employability narrative (Tomlinson, 2017; Tomlinson and Anderson, 2021), to better understand social responsibility and confidently articulate their skills for work.
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International Women's Day: Reflecting on the next 100 yearsIn December, the Law Society’s Women Solicitors Network Committee hosted the newly named Carrie Morrison Lecture at the University of Chester Law School, bringing this annual lecture event focusing on gender equality within the legal sector to the regions for the first time. Building on our 100 Years of Women Solicitors celebrations in 2022, this was an opportunity to reflect on past achievements but more importantly to look forward to the next hundred years. A thought-provoking keynote was provided by Victoria Evans (Level Law) ably supported by a panel of sector representatives; Deyontae James (rradar Law) and Carla Bennett (UNISON).
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Student-Parents' experiences of academic and non-academic support in UK Higher EducationThis report analyses the findings of a nationwide study of students who are also parents (student-parents). Carried out between May and August 2023, the study builds on previous small-scale research projects into the needs of student-parents1 and was undertaken in the context of: • the introduction of a new UCAS question inviting student-parents to self-identify when applying to university; and • the introduction of the Office for Students’ (OfS) Equality of Opportunity Register (EORR). This report explores participants’ experiences of pastoral and academic support at university. It exposes systemic failures in such support for student-parents across the sector which pose a significant risk to their retention, progression and success. Parental responsibility is not currently identified by OfS as a standalone characteristic likely to place students ‘at risk’ at university. However, the findings of this study reveal that student-parents are in fact vulnerable to five of the six ‘on course’ risks identified in the EORR. This three-part clickable report provides a compelling evidence base to support the inclusion of parental responsibility in the EORR list of student characteristics.
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The Personal Tutor's Guide to Supporting Student-Parents in Higher EducationThis research-informed, evidence-based, peer reviewed toolkit aims to assist personal tutors to provide effective support to their student-parent personal tutees.
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The Student-Parent’s Guide to Navigating UniversityThe Student-Parent Guide to Navigating University is a research-informed, evidence-based, peer reviewed toolkit which has been published via the UCAS (Universities & Colleges Admissions Service) website
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Law Students as Active Citizens: Instilling a Career-Long Commitment to Pro Bono and Social Justice via the CLE CurriculumBy engaging in pro bono work whilst at university, students demonstrate that they are good citizens. Students perform a valuable service for members of the local community, and the skills they learn enhance their ability to secure, and succeed in, a graduate role. But is this enough? Should we, as clinical legal educators, be doing more to facilitate students becoming active (and not just good) citizens, who know not only how to ‘do’ pro bono, but who also actively engage with the why of pro bono? Can facilitating a critical understanding of the political and social backdrop to the need for pro bono advice engender a genuine commitment to social justice which students can take with them into their working lives? This paper explores the drivers for an ‘active citizenship’ approach to pro bono learning and reflects on the pilot year of a student-led module aimed at fostering social responsibility and a strong sense of social justice to achieve a long-lasting commitment to pro bono in the lawyers of the future
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Happy anniversary to the women in law pledgeOpinion piece on anniversary of women in law pledge
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Advising Students on Qualifying Work Experience (QWE): The Careers Advisers’ CompanionWith the introduction of the Solicitors’ Qualifying Exam (SQE) in September 2021, sweeping changes were made to the rules relating to qualifying as a solicitor, including the introduction of a period of two year’s Qualifying Work Experience (‘QWE’) which can be undertaken either before or after the candidate completes the SQE assessments and can be collected from up to four organisations, including law firms, law centres, charities, in-house legal teams, and university legal advice clinics. The rules around QWE can be complex to decipher. Following discussions with stakeholders in this area, the authors published two research-informed peer-reviewed student guides to QWE. This Careers Advisers' Companion accompanies the student-facing guides and aims to provide Advisers with an overview of the most important issues to discuss with students when helping them to navigate the rules around QWE.
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Recording, Confirming and Registering Qualifying Work Experience (QWE) from Work Placements: A ‘Ten Top Tips’ Toolkit For Students - and Guidance on Completing the SRA QWE TemplateThis Toolkit is intended to assist students in understanding the rules about Qualifying Work Experience and how it may apply to work placements. The definition of work placements in this document includes periods of formal or informal ‘work experience’ (typically of up to a few weeks) as well as ‘placements’ and ‘internships’ (typically involving attending the workplace over a longer period of time, sometimes organised by, or with the help of, the student’s education provider).
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The Solicitors' Qualifying Exam and Qualifying Work Experience: Dispelling Common MisconceptionsAndrea Todd, Director of Pro Bono and Community Engagement at the University of Chester, and Lucy Blackburn, Director of the Advice and Resolution Centre at the University of Central Lancashire, are co-Chairs of the Clinical Legal Education Organisation. In this article they provide a taste of their QWE Toolkits for students and careers advisers by explaining the reality behind eight common QWE misconceptions.
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‘What Is? What If? What Next?’ Why institutions must urgently identify, support, and celebrate their student-parents – and imagining a world in which they do soStudents who have dependent children are ‘relatively invisible in the policy and physical spaces of universities’ (Moreau and Kerner, 2015: p.4), are ‘ignored or only briefly mentioned’ in governmental communications (Moreau, 2014: p2), and are impossible to track in terms of entrance to, performance at, or attrition rate from, higher education. There is no obligation on institutions in England and Wales to compile data on their students’ family circumstances (Moreau, 2014), and as such student-parents at such institutions can remain unidentified and unsupported throughout their higher education journey. With the aim of adding urgency to the calls to take the first step in supporting student parents, this paper uses Hopkins’ (Hopkins, R., 2019; 2022a) ‘what is? what if? what next?’ method to stimulate conversation about this overlooked cohort and to visualise the ways in which student-parents could be supported and celebrated by their institutions if they were visible participants in higher education. The article underlines why the higher education sector should collect data on student-parents (‘what is’); presents a vision of the university of the future which collects data from, and thus is able to support and celebrate, its student-parent population (‘what if’); and urges higher education institutions, in the absence of a national requirement to do so, to compile data on an institutional level which in turn facilitates the retention, progression, achievement and satisfaction of this committed and motivated cohort (‘what next’).
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Let’s get visible: evidence-based interventions aimed at supporting, empowering and celebrating student-parents in higher educationThis paper analyses the findings of a two-stage small-scale research project investigating the needs of undergraduate students with dependent children (‘student-parents’) studying in a post-1992 university. The findings of Stage 1 of the study, using data from semi-structured interviews with student-parents, show that student-parents need two things from their institution: a sense of belonging and flexibility. In Stage 2, a questionnaire survey was used to explore the impact of two interventions piloted during the 2021-22 academic year to address the Stage 1 findings. The paper then presents the next steps in this project: co-creation, with students, of systems designed not only to make visible our student-parent community but also to support, empower and celebrate their identities as student-parents.
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Sustainable and Inclusive Growth Commission Inclusive Economy Working Group Evidence ReportThis report sets out an overview of the evidence collated by the Inclusive Economy Working Group (IEWG) in line with the timetable provided by the Sustainable and Inclusive Growth Commission (SIGC). It commences with an outline of the IEWG remit as agreed following consultation. It then explores the nature of inclusive growth (IG) and the legislative context. The report then moves onto a discussion of the data collected on inequalities at a sub-regional, local authority and national level before setting out the activities which are already being rolled out in relation to the IG agenda at a local level. Finally, the report will set out exemplar approaches towards IG beyond the sub-region before exploring how the evidence collated will inform next steps for the IEWG feeding into the SIGC timetable for action and the SIGC Report which was launched in November 2022.
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Reinvigorating the drive to improve diversity across the legal sector through improved flexibility and targeted actionAn opinion blog on the need to ensure flexibility within the workplace to improve gender representation and diversity within the legal sector supporting the research carried out by LexisNexis on the future of law.
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Working smarter, not harder, to address the gender pay gap in the legal professionBlog opinion piece discussing the need to work in a more nuanced and efficient manner to address the gender pay gap within the legal sector.
