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.
Legal Professionalism and the Ethical Challenge for Legal Education: Insights from a Comparative Study of Future Lawyers in Greater China
Abstract This article uses data gathered from a survey that probed the career orientations and values of more than 1,000 law students in Beijing, Hong Kong and Taipei to examine the legal professionalism of future lawyers being trained under different legal education systems in Greater China. Our findings suggest that these future lawyers have a “materialistic” career orientation, although those studying in a system whose legal education goal is to train professional lawyers are more inclined to pursue professional legal ideals, and those trained in a system that emphasizes legal ethics are more likely to pursue public interest issues. On the basis of the findings, we argue that legal education systems in Greater China, while different in their traditions, share the same need to strengthen legal professionalism by according greater emphasis to legal ethics in their respective law school curricula.
School Principals and Education Law: What do they know, what do they need to know?
Principals now work in complex and challenging environments where uncertainty and change are the hallmarks of their roles and responsibilities. As such, the knowledge and capability demands on principals have expanded, including those related to education law. While these matters attracted some research interest a number of years ago, there has been little recent work in the area of principals and education law. This article reports on an exploratory study into aspects of the legal knowledge held by Tasmanian government school principals, particularly concerning non-sexual physical contact between teachers and students. The research was undertaken using a small-scale, mixed-methods research design, which required principals to respond to various legal scenarios. Three key findings emerged from the study. First, principals used two different levels of working knowledge about education law  one related to legal problems, and the other to legally-related routine activities. Second, on the particular topic of physical contact, some knowledge held by principals was not legally accurate. Third, for major legal issues, participants indicated that they acquired access to information from legal experts. The situation for routine legal matters was less clear, although in-service training and practical experience were identified as potential sources of knowledge. Participants recognised the importance of a sound knowledge of education law, especially for dealing with security and safety issues and preferred to access further information through in-service training. Notably, the findings of the study are broadly consistent with those from earlier Australian and international research, suggesting that much remains to be done in the area of principals’ education law knowledge.