Fear in a handful of dust …
Just what would be TS Eliot’s take on the futures of the legal profession and legal education is anyone’s guess, but clearly the art department at Hart Publishing has some pretty firm ideas.
This 214-page snap-shot — released earlier this month — is edited by a gang of academics at Birmingham Law School’s Centre for Professional Legal Education and Research. And while the cover suggests the overall outlook has something of the Waste Land about it, light relief can be found in the promotional blurb, which includes some superb examples of academic jargon.
According to the book’s marketing team, a range of recent factors has “enabled and necessitated dramatic structural changes to the profession, as well as impacting on its ethos and ethicality”. How does “ethicality” differ from good old-fashioned “ethics”? Perhaps Eliot could mull on that from beyond the grave.
Or those Legal Cheek readers attending the University of Brum law school could take up the issue with the editors: Hilary Sommerlad, a prof of law and research as well as the centre’s director; Sonia Harris-Short, a former prof of family law and policy; Steven Vaughan, a lecturer and the centre’s education director; and Richard Young, a prof of law and policy.
The full ‘Legal pic of the day’ collection is here.