The Art of Law Teaching

Book excerpt: Written by an award-winning professor with over 25 years of experience, this book explains comprehensively the different facets of law teaching from the law teacher’s perspective. It uniquely covers numerous topics which have been ignored by the legal education literature so far, but which are of immense importance for the success of law students, law schools and—last but not least—the day-to-day work of law teachers themselves. These topics include the goals of law teaching, the factors that lead to successful law teaching, special characteristics of good law teachers, different ways of preparing for in-class success, face-to-face versus online teaching, the in-class teaching experience, assessments, teaching evaluations, the design of new courses and programmes, the teacher–student and the teacher–teacher relationship, the importance of teaching administration as well as the future of law teaching in the digital age. The author approaches various themes from the viewpoint of his own experience. He tells his very personal stories of classroom success and failure, of enthusiasm, fun and disappointments when dealing with law students, of accomplishments and frustrations when considering learning outcomes and of surprises when dealing with red tape. He thus allows the readership to grasp different aspects of law teaching in a very hands-own way and facilitates the understanding of the underlying often rather complex human-to-human relationships. This book should be in the bookshelf of any law teacher. As it covers a wide spectrum of so far unexplored legal education issues, it is also an invaluable source at the start of a law teaching career, but also for established law teachers who wish to reflect on their own teaching approaches. A rich body of cross-references to the existing literature makes the book a powerful tool for research on any aspect of legal education. Last but not least, the author’s ironic sense of himself and of the law teacher profession makes the book a very entertaining read for anybody who always wanted to know what law teaching really is (and is not) about.