structure – Public understanding of law

So, we near the end…

September 4, 2024 PeteLeave a comment

Of writing this book. Or at least, the draft I’ll submit!

What does it look like?

Intro- looking ahead to the book. Sets the context- the importance of law and the need for people to know it, challenges to the university and law school, engagement as one way to respond to both of those those areas. Underlying idea is the law school *can* respond to challenges, but in a systemic and co-operative way- a challenge in market environment…

History- a *very* broad overview of university and law school history, focusing on England. Highlighting the current challenges of neoliberalism, the liberal / vocational divide, and how that divide can be- and has been- transcended. Roles of the university and law school- teaching, research, engagement.

Engagement- again, a *very* broad history- of engagement this time. Defining engagement- connecting with the world, understanding the world, responding to the world. The public understanding of law as an aspect of engagement, with a closer look at public legal education and information. The wider institutional context of engagement- organisational systems, ideals and values, and options and choices. The delivery of engagement- ideals and outcomes, methods and people. The challenges of engagement. How engagement can be delivered. This chapter might be split up…

Public understanding of law- defining publics- as groups both created by issues and the work of law schools, and as creating themselves. How the law school connects with, forms an understanding of, and responds to publics. How the public experiences and sees the law. How the law school works with the law. What understanding the law is- using ideas of legal literacy, capacity, and capability. What delivering understanding aims at, what it looks like, and how you know it’s worked (or not…) This chapter might be split up…

Examples- drawn from various law schools. Includes law clinic and other areas *not* about public understanding of law, but PUL is the focus. Common elements are identified.

Model- drawing on institutional context and critical realism, broader issues are covered- structure. agency, culture. Focusing on engagement delivery, activity theory is adapted to look at elements from examples. The two are then connected. To see this in action, two imaginaries- the Hilltop and Riverside law schools- are used- looking at how they respond as institutions, and how they deliver engagement.

Conclusions- summary of the book, and some alternatives- ways of being a university (commons, co-ops) and of moving beyond the university.

Wrangling, but not writing

March 20, 2024 PeteLeave a comment

So, yes, I’ve not done so much writing recently. A lot more ‘wrangling’ and thinking about writing.

So, following the previous post I’ve been wrangling the structure / flow. The imagined audience for the book is legal academics, mainly but not only in the UK. These academics are also interested in public engagement- they may even be doing it. They will appreciate a model, but are not necessarily looking for a lot of in your face theory.

The structure then:

Intro- what is coming up? what are you going to get out of this? Broad international background leading to an English focus, moving from university and engagement generally to the specifics of the law school, before moving back out to a model. The model can be used to plan and analyse engagement.

History and nature- bit of background on the university and law school. This has been done elsewhere in much more detail; this chapter is a summary of this and sets the scene for my approach to the university and law school. Introduce the ‘missions’ of the university- teaching, research, engagement- as aspects of knowledge.

Engagement- pick up the broad discussion in History / nature chapter and develop it. What is engagement? What does it look like? And what does it look like in law? What challenges arise? Distinguishes various forms of clinical education and engagement- separating service from education-information– as well as looking at policy work, design, and provision of space / resources. Leading in to 3 chapters which look at aspects of public understanding of law as the educational / informational engagement contribution of the law school.

Public- who are the publics of public engagement? How do they come into being? How do they relate to the law school?

Law- what do the publics think the law is, and how do they engage with it? And how does the law school?

Understanding- what does it mean to understand the law? How does this relate to engagement?

Examples- bringing together the public / law / understanding chapters by seeing how these elements are reflected in examples of public engagement with law work. In these examples, the works will be set in broader institutional contexts. They will also be linked to how the law school teaches and researches.

Modelling- drawing on the examples to model the university-law school elements of systems, ideas, and opportunities (institution) and the engagement elements of people, aims, ways of delivery, and relationships (works.) These are then presented via the imaginaries of Rutland (drawing on Twining) and Riverside, discussing how law schools deal with their context and how this leads to particular engagement works.

Summary- what have you read? What does it mean? What next?

The underlying theory aspects… critical realism (system / ideas / opportunities being structure, culture, agency) and activity theory (modified for engagement,) Plus elements of boundary work, knowledge mobilisation, and decentering approaches to law.

As ever comments welcome. I will do some writing soon 😉

Structure, paths, readers

March 18, 2024 Pete2 Comments

I’ve been doing a lot of writing! Or, to be accurate, repurposing of older work. Things written for one purpose / audience, things which were put aside but are now useful. But they need to be reworked for the new audience and purpose.

This has meant changing the tone some times. At others it’s the assumptions; things need a bit more spelling out for the book, but then again not too much. For example, there’s a very detailed history of English legal education. That needs to be covered, but there also needs to be some stuff on other jurisdictions. This means editing down the existing chapter and rejigging it to incorporate the new material.

And then there is the ongoing structure / flow issue. Moving from the general issues to the particular, keeping a consistent thread to help the reader along. That thread is examples+model, without getting too heavily into the model early on and not giving too much detail about the examples either, until the right time.

Topic sentences, discussions, topic recaps. Repeat, link. move on.

In other practical news, waiting for ethics clearance to do some interviews. These will give a bit of life to the discussion of examples, and a bit of richness to what would otherwise be a lit review plus what I reckon 😀

Of elevators and travel

February 19, 2024 Pete2 Comments

When putting a book together people often talk about the elevator pitch. In fact for pretty much any idea people recommend an elevator pitch. This is special treatment of your idea, something that could be delivered in the time you might have with somebody in an elevator or lift.

Leaving aside the social awkwardness of talking about your idea to a stranger in a lift, the idea has some value. It gets you to think about the core the essence of what you’re trying to say. You’ll have plenty of time to elaborate it in the book, but in talking with a colleague, a friend, or a book editor you often have a short window of time to get across what your book is about.

So if we were in lift what would I say to you about this book? I’ve thinking about this as I’ve been working on some of the basic aspects of the book, going through each chapter and adding in what I think are really important elements. I’ve been doing this largely from memory, with a plan to go back to through my research to add detail to some of these ideas.

So my imaginary lift companion. The book is about how universities can use public engagement to positively deal with the challenges they face in the current policy environment. They are expected to produce a return on social and economic investment, and from public engagement they can do this in a way which supports research and teaching, and which builds meaningful connections with the wider community; a wider community who support is increasingly important as universities are challenged.

If we were in a space elevator we’d have more time to elaborate on these things. But this is the general direction of travel of the book. Understanding universities as institutions with their own histories and presence, public engagement appears as a way in which various responses can be developed to these challenges, reflecting those differences. Public engagement is not presented as a singular response for a singular type of institution, but as a multiple response for institutions which share a core aspect of working with and disseminating knowledge, but work this out in various ways.

For the law school we can talk about public engagement with the law school, as an aspect of public engagement with the law. And law schools can offer various publics different ways of interacting with and understanding legal knowledge, or as the book will expand on legal knowledges, drawing on the work of various colleagues¹ in how we can change legal education to reflect those different knowledges.

So, if we were only going one floor? Public engagement is a way for the law school to come to know itself, as it comes to know others, to the advantage of both.

Such as Adebisi, Sandberg ↩︎