CIRLE Annual Lecture: Regulatory Theory and Legal Education: Command, Dialectic or Relational Space?
- Date: Wednesday 2 July 2025, 5:00 – 6:30
- Location: Liberty Building (Moot Court) LT (1.28)
- Cost: Free
Discover fresh insights into the future of legal education at the CIRLE Annual Lecture where Professor Paul Maharg will explore how we can rethink regulation to better meet today’s challenges.
Join the Centre for Innovation and Research in Legal Education for their 2025 Annual Lecture, given by Professor Paul Maharg. In this lecture, Professor Maharg will challenge conventional regulatory models in legal education and explore bold new frameworks for transformative change.
Abstract
Legal education has undergone significant changes in every jurisdiction in the last thirty years. These include massification of HE across the globe; the assault of neoliberalism on higher education; pressure from regulators at many levels from government downwards; new forms of professional gate keeping; the rise of digital academia and LegalTech; chronic HE underfunding, and much more. Reform of regulation is ongoing in many jurisdictions as a result of these changes; but why does it seldom result in better, faster, cheaper regulation?
In this lecture Professor Maharg will argue that the standard forms of regulation of legal education require fundamental revisioning. Just as there is a Standard Conception of lawyers’ ethics that rests upon the value claims of neutrality, partisanship and nonaccountability, so too are there general conceptions of regulation that, in spite of much regulatory reform, still underpin generally accepted approaches to legal education regulation. These conceptions, often derived from the regulatory frameworks of other disciplines and professions, were never satisfactory when applied to legal education, and have become increasingly ill-fitting in the new environments and pressures in which legal education finds itself. Two rival forms of regulation will be analysed, and in their place Professor Maharg will outline a conceptual design that, in its meta-regulatory role, may help to achieve radical change in legal education for the better.
About the Speaker
Professor Paul Maharg is Professor of Law at Manchester Metropolitan Law School, a Consultant in Legal Education at Osgoode Hall Law School in Canada, and a Visting Professor at the Faculty of Law, Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is a world-leading scholar in legal education, a space in which he has vast, global, experience in innovating (including through the use of technology within teaching, learning and assessment), leading, directing and writing. He has co-founded two book series, Emerging Legal Education and Digital Games, Simulations and Learning; is the author/co-author of seven books; is currently undertaking a further three book projects; and he has authored or co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed book chapters, journal articles, and professional reports (including for professional bodies). He is Honoroary Vice President of the British and Irish Law Education Technology Association (BILETA), having previously chaired the organisation; has worked as a consultant with numerous professional bodies, including the SRA, the Law Society of Scotland, and the Law Society of Ireland; and was a project partner in the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR).