Using Sustainability to Inform Renewal of the LLB Foundation Curriculum: Knowledge Skills and Attitudes for the Future

Abstract

The discipline standards for law have coincided with a renewed focus nationally on student learning in higher education. In addition to threshold learning outcomes, higher education nationally and internationally is seeking to foster sustainability education. In this paper, we chart the evolution of an explicitly designed first year law program as it has used the conceptual approach of sustainability in tandem with the discipline standards to recalibrate the balance of lawyering skills, legal method and analysis, and reflectivity in the first year curriculum. Early uptake of transition pedagogies in the program’s original 2005 design gives the authors some six years of experience on which to reflect, concerning student learning and the structure of and approach to curriculum design. This case study of curriculum renewal illustrates the tools and philosophy that underpin a refresh of the first year law curriculum seeking to engage in a bigger conceptual project, with the discipline standards in mind.

Keywords: legal education, first year in higher education, sustainability, lawyering