ABSTRACT
Legal education research has had a chequered history in the UK (as is the case with many other jurisdictions), and has generally not been well-regarded - an attitude neatly reflected in the comment of the Law Research Exercise Framework (REF) Sub-Panel in its Report on REF 2014, which said ‘the sub-panel was pleased to receive submissions relating to legal education, but the methodological rigour and significance exhibited by some of these outputs was uneven’.
In the light of the ambivalent reception of legal education research, using the UK as a case study, this chapter considers some of the significant developments in legal education research in universities since its inception in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It identifies some of the features of best practice in legal education research and goes on to consider the challenges faced by legal education researchers today as they seek to ensure that the legal education research of the future focuses on matters of significance to the development of our knowledge of higher education, in particular in the context of rapid changes, not only within the higher education sector but also in the legal profession, both of which affect legal education and the research needed to understand it.
