Law Clinics in Taiwan: Can Clinical Legal Education Succeed in this Civil Law Jurisdiction with an Undergraduate Legal Education System?
Law school clinics are an important part of legal education around the world, but there are still many places without clinics, including Taiwan. It is important for Taiwanese legal educators to consider whether and how clinical education might fit into the Taiwanese legal education system. When discussing clinical education, several concerns are commonly raised: are undergraduate students capable of doing and benefitting from clinical work? Is student practice legal? What effect does student practice have on quality of representation? How does a clinic fit with the existing apprenticeship program? Who would teach a clinic? How do clinics fit with the legal academy’s view of itself and its purposes? Can Taiwanese law schools afford to operate clinics? Ultimately, none of these concerns presents a serious obstacle to the introduction of clinical education. Taiwanese law schools should introduce clinics to their curriculum to give students the opportunity to enjoy the many benefits of clinical education.
The 2010-11 Survey of Applied Legal Education
This report presents the results of the 2010-11 Center for the Study of Applied Legal Education (CSALE) “Survey of Applied Legal Education.” The Survey was composed of four parts – a Master Survey that was directed to each of the 194 ABA fully-accredited U.S. law schools; Live-Client Clinics and Field Placement Program Sub-Surveys that were distributed by the schools to the persons responsible for each distinct law clinic or field placement program at the school; and a Faculty Sub-Survey that was distributed by the schools to each applied legal educator at its school. The results provide valuable insight into the state of applied legal education in areas such as program design, capacity, administration, funding, pedagogy, program challenges, and the role of applied legal education and educators in the legal academy. This is the second triennial survey, following up on the initial survey in 2007-08.
Application of resource allocation optimisation to provide profitable options for dairy production systems
A linear program (LP) model analysed resource use on a 100 ha dairy farm. A single optimum-profit combination was established for resources which were either optimised or constrained. It was found that, with a fixed herd of 320 milking cows, when production increased from 305 kg milksolids per cow (kg MS/cow) to 415 kg MS/cow, cash profit increased by 65%. This required additional supplements. If, however, feed demand and supply were optimised at 415 kg MS/cow, the LP reduced milking cow number rather than buy in feed to meet the increased feed demand from higher production per cow. At all production levels chosen between 305 and 415 kgMS/cow, it was most economic to dry off and cull cows early in dry summers to optimise feed demand vs. feed grown; use nitrogen (N) fertiliser to avoid a feed deficit only when response rates of better than 10 kgDM to 1 kg N could be expected; not use N for growing supplements to harvest. Pasture cover, within defined constraint levels, provided a buffer for feed demand and supply fluctuations. The study highlights the importance of assessing production, income and cost in an integrated framework to identify the point at which individual resources become limiting.