Bringing linguistic research to legal education

Language plays a central role in legal settings. The way linguistic diversity is conceptualized and accommodated can affect access to justice in a myriad ways and there is a plethora of linguistic scholarship to show that. Yet a growing concern among researchers working in this area is that this scholarship may not always reach the right audiences to have as much of a real-world impact as it could or should have.

But how do we make our research more accessible to those who are in a position to improve the design and implementation of law, procedure, and policy? For myself and collaborators like Dr Alexandra Grey, and members of our Law and Linguistics Interdisciplinary Researchers’ Network, our recent efforts have been multi-pronged, involving everything from preparing individual submissions to relevant government inquiries and reviews, through publishing and guest editing in legal journals, to presenting at law conferences.

However, as pioneering law and language scholar Diana Eades recently observed, effecting change in this area is like water dropping on stone: it is a long-term process.

Therefore, it is just as important to reach future lawyers and law- and policy-makers. As a teacher based in a law faculty, 2020 created a unique opportunity for me to work on integrating linguistics research into my law teaching.

In this post, I report back on the way in which I integrated my research expertise – in linguistics and beyond – into my teaching. I first provide some background on the teaching context, and explain what I did to integrate linguistics (and other) scholarship into my teaching during the changes that occurred as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, I will share the feedback I received about the learning materials I developed and critically reflect on possible next steps.

Ethics Law and Justice in 2020

Since beginning as a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in 2019, I’ve had the opportunity to teach in a core subject, Ethics Law and Justice (ELJ), which provides (usually) first-year law students with the opportunity to learn about lawyers’ professional practice rules, reflect on ethical legal practice, and on access to justice in legal settings. My Fellowship research project involves exploring the beliefs and practices of a particular group of practitioners – migration agents – and specifically how they and their clients navigate access to justice through their interactions. More broadly, my research is interested in linguistic diversity as a factor for access to justice. As a core subject, all law students must complete ELJ, creating an excellent opportunity for me to reach a large number of potential future legal practitioners at an early stage in their study.

In March 2020, in response to the global spread of Covid-19, UTS made the decision to shift classes online. For ELJ, we shifted to using Blackboard, Zoom and Microsoft Teams, with individual teachers being responsible for the particular timing, structure and medium for their individual seminar groups. A significant change was the way we divided up delivery of the subject content. Each teacher became responsible for preparing a pre-recorded lecture, in the form of an audio-narrated Powerpoint presentation, for one or two weeks of the semester’s material, that would be accessible for the whole ELJ cohort to watch, rather than each individual teacher preparing and presenting the entire semester’s content individually for their groups. The teachers could then focus more energy into designing and conducting the interactive learning components of their individual seminars, and students could watch lecture-type content before (or after!) their live seminar.

Integrating research into law teaching

For me, this meant that I had the opportunity to update the learning materials to reach the whole cohort of over 300 students. I was responsible for the part of the subject exploring social and cultural factors that can affect access to justice, with pre-existing material mentioning refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, Indigenous people, and disability. There was also a little content on language considerations, with some discussion questions about whether students had ever communicated using an interpreter before, and the Local Court Bench Book’s section on interpreters was included as a reading resource.

While still covering the same topics as usual, I redesigned the lecture content to integrate a range of new considerations and explanations, beyond what had been provided previously. These incorporated my and others’ scholarship from my various areas of research interest, including studies on asylum seekers and refugees, language and cultural concerns in legal settings. Some of this research I also added as additional readings, choosing blog posts rather than traditional research outputs to maximize accessibility and engagement for students. Similarly, I added a video resource (Aboriginal Interpreter Service), along with an explanation and instructions, to provide another engaging source that exemplified in practice some of the relevant linguistic and cultural concerns.

Where to next?

Autumn 2020 provided an opportunity for me to integrate my research experience and expertise into my teaching, and the feedback I received overall show promise. Personally, I believe that making these changes also motivated me as a teacher: not only could I share knowledge and do my best to present this in accessible ways for students, I was also able to demonstrate my passion and enthusiasm for these areas.

Most importantly, I was able to raise awareness about language and communication among the next generation of lawyers.

However, like some of my colleagues, I suspect that the remaining challenge is mainly one of delivery rather than content, especially in the context of remote learning. In future, the key way I’d like to refine my approach is to do more to integrate innovative learning technologies. While I am confident and passionate about the content, it is equally important to reflect carefully on how I share my knowledge, and ensure that it is accessible, relatable and engaging. In fact, when teaching topics that are all about optimal communication and equal participation, I’d go so far as to say that this is absolutely essential!