Law Experiential Law

Experiential Learning Project 2014.

Objective of module: To allow you to undertake further experiential learning which will involve you needing to think about conducting some research either in the legal workplace or equivalent

such as work in the voluntary sector which has a legal connection e.g. The Citizens Advice Bureau. Alternatively the practical research element may be through observation of and research into

courts or organisations carrying out work linked to the subject matter chosen.

The outcomes for the module:

1. You will need to design a strategy for executing and completing a project on a chosen area of law and/or practice.
2. As part of 1 you will also need to identify what you hope the outcome of the project will be, plan the activities/ practical research you will need to undertake and an appropriate timetable.
3. Again as part of 1 you will need to identify the types of skills and knowledge you will need to complete the project e.g. communication skills, organisational skills, data gathering and

recording of information. You will then as you undertake the project utilise these skills and you will need to describe and reflect on them in your logbook and reflective journal which forms part

of the assessment. See below.

What you need to do

This project should NOT be purely academic in content. It should have a connection with an area of law ,legal practice or procedure. Your project can be in one of the following areas: The

Criminal Justice System; The Civil Justice System or The Voluntary Sector. To try to give you an idea here are a few examples from previous years:

? A comparative study of how barristers organise themselves as compared with solicitors. This would require arranging to speak to some barristers and solicitors practices to see how they

organise themselves plus more library based research.
? A comparative study between different types of work solicitors undertake and whether the way a solicitor/department organises themselves differs depending on the type of work. Here you

may want to arrange discussions with a criminal legal aid firm and a firm or department doing conveyancing, for example.
? The different procedures, styles of aIDress, type of cases, formality etc that different courts operate e.g. look at the Crown Court and The County/High Court. Visit the Courts but also

possibly interview court staff. Perhaps as a different approach but similar compare say Tribunal work and the County Court.
? Look at the work currently undertaken by the Voluntary Sector and whether their role in the legal arena is increasing. This could for example involve interviews with the Citizens Advice Bureau

and the Law Clinic at the College of Law plus academic research.
? A review of Legal Aid ? interviewing possibly courts, the legal services commission and lawyers plus academic research into the way the systems have changed.

These clearly are not meant to be exhaustive but hopefully it will provide you with an idea of the type of project you are going to need to undertake. Clear planning and agreement on the

project is required before Easter and you may well be able to undertake some of the academic research over the Easter break.
A list of some more recent and innovative projects will be posted up on Moodle during the coming week.

Assessment:

1. You will need to submit a logbook and reflective journal (1500 words). The logbook will be simply a list of entries of what work you have undertaken and when. This should include research etc

that you have undertaken. The reflective journal will consist of 2 critical incidents and an overall reflection on the project ,where particular emphasis should be placed on the skills that you have

had to utilise during the project and how those skills have developed. Please see template on Moodle for both logbook and CI reflection.
2. The second part of the assessment is an analytical Report (2500 words) on the actual research project. You will need to explain the basis for the project, the research undertaken and the

conclusions you have drawn from comparing the ?theory? with the ?experiential?.