3. ESCOLANO-CANTON, IDA MARIE V. Reflection Paper No.

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EDAD 310: Seminar in Educational Planning November 12, 2021

THE FUTURE OF LEGAL EDUCATION

“Men who have more especially devoted themselves to legal pursuits derive from these
occupations certain habits of order, a taste for formalities, and a kind of instinctive regard
for the regular connection of ideas, which naturally render them very hostile to the
revolutionary spirit.”1

Legal Education at the Time of Pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic is posing unprecedented difficult
challenges and hardships to families and communities the world over. The novel realities of this global
health situation have profoundly disrupted the dynamics of legal education in the Philippines, upending
existing assumptions about teaching and learning law in many ways never before expected. Pursuant to
the Legal Education Board Memorandum Circular No. 56, Series of 2020, The COVID-19 Pandemic
Guidelines For Law Schools, in the exercise of academic freedom, law schools are encouraged to design
their respective contingency learning plans to the extent their particular local COVID-19 situation will
allow, in accordance with the following general principles:
1. During this extraordinary health crisis, the inherent right to life, health and integrity of the human
person takes precedence over academic goals.
2. Any and all academic interventions that will be adopted at this time must be premised on the
values of compassion, empathic understanding, and solidarity, with care to mitigate existing
technological, gender, and socio-cultural-economic inequalities that may be exacerbated by the
crisis.
3. Law schools are encouraged to adopt innovative ways of teaching and delivery of instruction that
will enable continued learning without imposing additional hardship or burden on the students,
faculty members and administrative officials and personnel during these difficult times. (Section 1)

In this regard, greater instructional flexibility and student learning autonomy is highly encouraged in the
curriculum. Instructional flexibility shall refer to openness to and the use of modern learning management
systems and modalities to overcome the challenges of remote learning. This shall also include the
recalibration of teaching techniques that focuses on foundational and critical topics instead of a detailed
and exhaustive approach to teaching. Student learning autonomy, meanwhile, shall refer to the
expectation of and increased level of independence by the learner to manage their academic goals on
the basis of their capacities, resources and pace with limited interventions from their instructors. This
shall be grounded in the status of law students as graduate students who are expected to contribute the
majority of the effort in learning. Complementarily, focus on higher order thinking skills is encouraged in
the development of assessment methods for student’s performance. (Section 7, Legal Education Board
Memorandum Order No. 22, Series of 2020)

Schools switched instructional activities to online learning, on its own has advantages, the unexpected
change to online learning became a measure of organizational agility (Wu, 2020 as cited in Adnan and
Anwar, 2020), with several academic institutions primarily focused on the transfer of educational content
to the digital world (Zhong, 2020, as cited in Adnan & Anwar, 2020) 2.

Apart from the change of learning modality and the transfer of educational content, the manner in which
legal education is delivered remains to be the same, despite the educational revolution brought about by
the pandemic and despite the directives made by the Legal Education Board. This is succinctly described
by one law student in his response to NEU LAW Survey on Online/Flexible Learning:

“The manner of conducting recitation on every meeting, occasional assignments and

quizzes, and midterms are of its typical nature as conducted during face-to-face classes.
Nothing has changed except that it is now only online and virtual.”

Apparently, this is nothing new in legal education. In a 1970 article by Paul N. Savoy, entitled, ‘Toward a
New Politics of Legal Education’, he said:

1
A. De Tocquevill, DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA 171 (H. Commager ed. 1947), as cited in Savoy (1970)
Toward a New Politics of Legal Education
2
Muhammad Adnan and Kainat Anwar (2020) Online learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic: Students'
perspectives, Journal of Pedagogical Sociology and Psychology Volume 2, Issue 1,2020,
http://www.doi.org/10.33902/JPSP. 2020261309
 The student revolts that have rocked campuses across the country have left the law
schools relatively untouched. This is a social phenomenon that is not difficult to
understand. Law and revolution have never made very congenial bedfellows. Xxx

That is not to say that administrators or law professors have been unaware of certain
deficiencies of contemporary legal education or have failed to undertake measures to
remedy them. But the climate of educational reform has had about it that smug
satisfaction and bland assurance that proceeds from the assumption that those
who teach know what is best for those who learn.

The Future of Legal Education. It is claimed however that the future of legal education must not be
left to the past, the formal, the archaic and the inflexible. The administrators and the law
professors must adapt to the changes forced upon them by the pandemic and even beyond, in a
manner presented in the framework below, which the writer calls, OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE
NEW, to effectively achieve all of the core competencies of legal education:

This was highlighted in A Forum on Philippine Higher Education of the Future. Although it is unlikely that
the legal profession will be replaced by automation and digital machinery in the near future, it must adapt
to remain relevant to needs of the time. Laws must catch up to the rapid pace of digital and data
technology and provide and teach the laws and regulations needed. The Colleges of Law must not only
teach the students the law, but necessarily be the producers of research and knowledge on new
emerging trends. It must develop the skills of the law students to keep up with the times, and even stay
ahead of it. According to the Future of Jobs Report 2018 of the World Economic Forum, the following are
the growing skills needed: (1) Analytical thinking and innovation, (2) active learning and learning
strategies, (3) creativity, originality and initiative, (4) technology design and programming, (5) critical
thinking and analysis, (6) complex problem solving, (7) leadership and social influence, (8) emotional
intelligence, (9) reasoning, problem-solving and ideation, and (10) systems analysis and evaluation.
These can be summarized by the four Cs: (1) critical thinking, (2) communication, (3) collaboration and
(4) creativity, which have been regarded as crucial skills for every successful future worker.

Law professors must understand that their role in the classroom needs to change, from the sole
‘knowledge-giver’ to one of a ‘facilitator’. They must view “students as having knowledge” and not “treat
them like blank slates.” (Hill, 2014). This is supported by Jarvis and Rubenson, who have identified some
overarching concepts governing good teaching methods for adult learners, like law students, to wit:
1. Teachers should facilitate learning. They should create the environment in which learning occurs,
and guide the students through the learning process; however, they should not dictate the
outcome of the experience. “They may seek to create an awareness of a specific learning need in
the students; to confront students with a problem requiring a solution; to provide the students with
an experience and encourage reflection on it” (Jarvis, 2004, p. 153)
2. Teachers should provide autonomy and independence. This can mean the freedom of pace,
choice, method, content, or assessment. For instance, students “should be free to work at their
own speed, choose to study particular aspects of a course, choose to study particular aspects of a
course, adopt whatever learning style suits them best, and be free to choose what they learn”
(Jarvis, 2004, p. 154).
3. Teaching should empower learners. As a corollary to the need to provide autonomy and
independence, teachers should share power and decision-making roles with their students.
Teachers should “avoid being in the position of providing right answers.” They should make sure
that there is equal access to all resources, include self-evaluation in graded courses, involve
students in managing the learning environment, and be open and explicit about what is happening
and why (Rubenson, 2011, p.57).3

The article, Engaging Adult Learners, enumerated the effective teaching methods for adult learners,
which can be applied in law school, whether in online or face to face learning.

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Schwartz (n.d.). Ryerson University. Engaging Adult Learners