ABSTRACT
The binary divide between the academic and the vocational-professional stages of legal education present special problems for law teachers who wish to achieve the dual goals of encouraging a deeper engagement among law students as well as to contextualize their classroom experiences. It also provides an impetus for the exploration of more invigorating methods of teaching and learning. Achieving these goals is a reliable method of ensuring that deep learning, as opposed to surface learning, takes place.2 The problem may be put in succinct form: how do law teachers introduce a healthy dose of reality to balance out the academicconceptual discussion that takes place in lectures and seminars? To use an obvious example, an in-depth discussion of the legal technicalities relating to the principles of negligence must, perforce, remain ‘merely academic’ without the addition of the crucial role of insurance in the mitigation and mediation of the payment of damages. A simulated/role-play exercise, involving perhaps the negligent driver of a motor vehicle, increases the possibility of student understanding and engagement with the crucial notion that such claims are, in fact, ‘run’ by insurance companies; those students who are drivers will understand this point immediately, while it is not too difficult to explain this point to non-drivers.
