James Harrison has just been awarded the Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence (WATE). As a result, he has been awarded the Butterworth Award for Teaching Excellence prize of £5,000.

The panel considering nominations for this year’s awards, felt that the evidence presented showed James's teaching and support of learning to be of an exceptional standard.

Pictured with John Kerr and Solicitor of the year 2010 Nigel Priestly

6pm- 8.00pm, Friday 4th March, 2011

Warwick Internal Mooting Competition Final is going to be held on Friday 4th March at 6pm, please arrive at the latest 5.50p.

Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe will be judging the event.

The event will be held at Scarman House, Restaurant Room 1 (no longer M1 of the WBS Teaching Centre as previously stated) 

Everyone is welcome, the event is public. Please all come along.

There will be refreshments after the event finishes at about 8.00pm.

Essay Writing Classes – Enhance your Skills

There will be optional essay writing classes in weeks 8,9 and 10 0f this term (see dates below). Michael Reddish, an expert in the teaching of writing skills, will run 3 classes in how to plan, write and reference your essays. There will be separate classes for 1^st years and 2^nd/3^rd/4^th years. There are still a few places available. So please book a place now to avoid disappointment by emailing Helen Stimson at  Helen.Stimson@warwick.ac.uk. Please tell her your year of study so you can be booked into the right class

Dates and Location

Tuesday 6 – 7pm (for 1^st years) - weeks 8, 9 and 10 (1,8, 15 March) in H0.51

Thursday 6 – 7pm (for 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th years)  - weeks 8, 9 and 10 (3, 10, 17 March) in H0.51

Rebecca Attwood, "How do you find great lecturers? Look for award-winning teachers and high student ratings, says Rebecca Attwood, if you want to be inspired and engaged" (The Times, 20 January 2011) 

With law schools set to charge undergraduate tuition fees of up to £9,000 from September next year, good teaching is bound to be top of students' priorities. So what should would-be law students look out for? The best-known indicator of teaching quality and overall student satisfaction is the National Student Survey, which gathers the views of more than 250,000 undergraduates each year. 

According to the most recent results, top-performing law schools include those at the universities of Edinburgh Napier, Newcastle, Greenwich, Buckingham and Reading, which all achieved satisfaction scores of more than 95 per cent. Christopher Rodgers, head of the law school at Newcastle University, says that his school's scores reflect a commitment to listening to students' views, and a strong emphasis on structured feedback and good organisation.

 Others, however, put less faith in the survey as a sign of teaching strength. "Students should be looking for institutions that clearly take undergraduate teaching seriously but there are many indicators of that. Some of the official statistical measures will not be the most reliable," says Gary Watt, Professor of Law at the University of Warwick, who was Law Teacher of the Year in 2009 and is a national teaching fellow. "Students might learn more from open days and the general tenor of websites, for example. It is about trying to get a feel for attitudes to teaching." 

One indicator that students may be less aware of is teaching awards. Professor Watt says that they could be a sign that good-quality teaching is valued in a school. The best-known is the Law Teacher of the Year award, run by the UK Centre for Legal Education and sponsored by Oxford University Press. 

The Higher Education Academy, the national body for university teaching, also announces a number of national teaching fellows (NTFs) each year, a cross-sector award that recognises excellence in teaching. 

The scheme is celebrating its tenth anniversary and more than ten law lecturers have been made fellows in that time. "The availability of the NTF has raised the profile of teaching awards," says Nigel Duncan, a principal lecturer at City Law School and a national teaching fellow. 

Many universities now also have their own internal awards, and teaching awards look likely to count increasingly in the case for promotion. However, Duncan says that students will be aware of awards only "if we make something of them and I'm not sure whether marketing departments pay much attention to them". 

Rebecca Huxley-Binns, a reader in legal education at Nottingham Trent University and Law Teacher of the Year 2010, also fears that there are not enough of them to go round. "The judging process for the Law Teacher of the Year was seriously rigorous. They interviewed students, line managers, they came and watched me teach. A huge amount went into it, but the fact that I won doesn't necessarily mean that the others who were nominated did not deserve to win. There are so few awards and there are times when I think it is pot luck."

Huxley-Binns, who always wanted to be a teacher and lined up teddy bears to "teach" at the age of 4, says that good teachers need a number of qualities. "The student needs to have trust in your expertise, but good teaching is not indoctrination. Students should look for people who can inspire and are good public presenters." Professor Watt, whose teaching methods include interactive walks and lessons in which objects are used to help to explain legal concepts, agrees. "I've had a motto for years, which is that education should be about inspiration as much as information."

KK LUTHRA MOOT COURT REPORT

Morshed Mannan, Lucy Newton and Max Wilson represented Warwick Law School at the KK Luthra International Mooting Competition in January 2011. They were awarded the second best memorial in the competition and were third overall.

This is an account of their experiences:

“For the purposes of the mooting competition we had to prepare two Memorials outlining our arguments, one for the Appellants and the other for the Respondents, and had to send it to New Delhi to be marked an entire month before the competition began. It took weeks of research, assistance from Warwick Law Professors and an International Criminal Law Barrister as well as considerable quantities of apples and red bull to complete our Memorials in time for the December 10 deadline. We thought that a harrowing week of all-nighters before the deadline would be the worst of it; little did we know about the Indian visa application process.

After hours of queuing and after retaking a number of passport photos, we managed to secure our visas and we excitedly waited for the 12^th of January - the date of our departure. We boarded the plane with thinly-veiled pessimism and it was a feeling that was reinforced after being picked by the very hospitable students of the Campus Law Centre Delhi as they casually remarked that due to the exceptionally high standard of mooting at the competition, we should just “enjoy our holiday”. They reminded us that in the previous year’s competition Cambridge did not even make the Quarter-Finals and became grievously ill in the process. So brimming with confidence, we travelled across Delhi to our accommodation at the International Guest House within the campus of Delhi University.

On the day of registration, we were warmly welcomed to the University by one of the patrons of the moot, Mr. Siddharth Luthra and were able to witness an impressive opening ceremony at the Campus Law Centre. This included memorable speeches by two Indian Supreme Court Judges (Justices Singhvi and Ganguly) and renowned Indian legal academics. The ceremony was also our first opportunity to meet the other competitors. We were immediately intimidated by the size of their moot bundles. While ours was 25 pages, their bundles ran into several volumes and unlike our jet-lagged selves, they seemed very focused. We were fortunate enough to meet the organisers, the judges and many other legal figures in the High Tea that followed the opening ceremony. We were impressed by the standard of organisation and the food that was provided at every break.

We went through the two preliminary rounds of the competition the following day and were constantly challenged by the high quality of judging, where they persistently interrogated us throughout our speeches. It was interesting to note how our style of mooting differs to those practised in other parts of the world. In England we are told to be very formal and reserved while the style in countries like India and the US seem to be much more emotive and adversarial.  Nonetheless, despite the high standard of competition, we were informed over High Tea that we had successfully defeated the first two teams and had qualified for the quarter-finals. We were also very pleased to hear that we had been awarded the second best memorial out of the sixty teams enrolled.

We then narrowly managed to beat the quarter-final team, whose institution had won the competition in the previous instalment of the competition. We were very impressed by the quality of the opposition and how thoroughly they had researched each and every aspect of the moot. Late in the evening over dinner, there was a dramatic pause and the convenor of the moot announced the four teams that had qualified for the semi-finals and C1, our team number was one of them.

With a mixture of euphoria and nervous apprehension, we diligently prepared our extended speeches for the semi-finals in our hostel room. The next day when the early-morning mist was still lying heavy over the city and marathon runners were doing laps around the campus, we left for the venue of the semi-finals: the prestigious Indian Habitat Centre.  We were slotted against George Washington University Law School and had already heard of their formidable reputation. The moot began with judges from the Indian High Court firing questions at counsel on both sides regarding nuanced areas of International Criminal Law and judicial procedure in international courts. Unfortunately, we were narrowly beaten by the American team as they believed our style was too restrained compared to their standards. We were awarded third place overall and were given a large set of practitioners texts as a prize from another Supreme Court Judge (Justice Reddy).  We were extremely proud of getting that far in the competition, amongst the very dedicated and prepared students from around the world, and relished our opportunity to experience the culture of India.”