Content
For content to be of high quality, it ought to come from professionals qualified to offer it. But you must also properly vet legal content, not just for spelling or grammatical errors but for legal accuracy, precision, or both. There may be subtle yet important difference in legal concepts, and it is important to handle them properly because a qualified professional will immediately spot the mistake and the courseware will lose credibility. For example, an intellectual property lawyer with global experience will immediately know whether a course has incorrectly cited “fair use” as “fair dealing.”
Though lawyers tend to be verbally oriented, there is no rule mandating that all legal education exclusively employ text. In fact, graphics and animated multimedia can be successfully utilized, for example to depict procedural processes or judicial appeal structures (see Figure 1). When done properly, graphics and animation can enliven a presentation and increase learning effectiveness. (Editor’s Note: In Figure 1, “CFI” is the Court of First Instance, with unlimited jurisdiction in both civil and criminal matters.)
Leading legal academics know this as well. If one attends lectures of presentation-savvy legal lecturers, one would witness stellar examples of how the inspired application of multimedia can transform lectures on complex and potentially dreary legal topics into captivating educational events.
The importance of restraint
However, graphics should be employed judiciously and professionally; the overuse of cartoonish imagery, audio, or animation can leave some learners with a feeling of being patronized. Avoid unwelcome clutter.
There is also no need to go overboard with expensive graphics and animation. Good legal courseware need not look like Hollywood’s latest science fiction blockbuster to be attractive, engaging, or effective. In a legal presentation, the appearance of a single word – if relevant and timed properly – can have far more impact than dozens of extraneous, immaterial animations that may, in fact, be needlessly distracting.
Legal learners are far more interested in substantive content than stylish graphics. Accordingly, the incorporation of expensive multimedia into one’s legal courseware is often neither necessary nor justifiable — in many cases it is a waste of money.
Proper use of multimedia – that is, animation, audio, and video – offers other challenges.
Synchronization
In offering online courseware, some providers offer copies of slides and audio but do not synchronize the audio with the slides. The potential problem is that information on slides may be critical to the correct comprehension of the materials. Learners may easily match the wrong audio bits with the wrong slides, thereby taking away the wrong information. This is potentially disastrous if legal authorities (for example, case law, regulations, or legislation) are involved, and as a result the learner associates the wrong authorities with the wrong concepts or principles. Ideally, a course developer should synchronize audio with accompanying slides and additionally offer copies of any reference materials.
Video
Many online legal courseware presentations are video recordings of live classroom sessions or of persons reading from scripts. Admittedly, shooting and posting a video online may consume fewer production resources than producing a quality online course with synchronized audio and graphics or animation. However, an online video course is not necessarily an effective or an interesting one.
The mere inclusion of video does not automatically improve a course’s pedagogical effectiveness. Neither does it automatically make a course more compelling, particularly if the presenter is simply reciting a script in a monotone delivery.
Legal learners’ expectations may change when they experience quality courseware that features high-quality animation and offers high levels of interactivity. For that matter, even when they simply start to delve though the videos available on YouTube, videos of boring law lectures may no longer be good enough.
However, superior legal e-Learning need not, and in most cases, should not, rely solely on videos of subject matter experts lecturing on a topic. Unless the lecturer is exceptionally compelling, videos of lectures often fail to engage learners on their own
A lecture video (if one is necessary) should tangibly contribute to, or at least not distract from, the actual content. For example, one could display the video in a small window while showing the content on a slide – or simply dispense with the visual portion of the video and only retain the audio.
Engagement
Unlike classroom lectures, where learners may not be able to do anything other than listen to the lecturer, there are abundant potential distractions for online legal learners.
Given that legal learners may take courses during lunch breaks, after office hours at the office, or at home, engaging learners is even more critical in online than classroom training. Developers can make their courseware engaging both by ensuring their courseware is highly interactive, and through the judicious application of audio, possibly some video or other multimedia.
Should developers choose to have subject matter experts, rather than professional narrators provide the audio voiceovers, developers will need to contend with variations among presenters. Some presenters will be clear, concise and compelling, while others may seem pedantic, condescending, or dreary. There are many lawyers whose intellectual fireworks are not matched by their oratory delivery. Some can quickly focus on the salient points, while others get mired with trivial minutiae.
Interestingly, a person’s legal designation is frequently no indication of his or her speaking or pedagogical aptitude. For example, in Hong Kong, barristers advocate at the highest levels of the local court system. More experienced barristers often take in fresh law school graduates as pupils for several months at a time, under a sort of apprenticeship scheme. A lay person might reasonably assume that since barristers argue legal points in public all day and manage relatively inexperienced pupils, they are automatically good instructors or exciting speakers. But this is not always true.
Court proceedings are rarely as interesting or dramatic as they are portrayed in movies or on television. In law school, advocacy instructors often caution students against excessive theatrics, and many judges frown upon courtroom histrionics. Because of considerable conditioning, many barristers who may be able to present brilliant legal arguments tend to do so in a relatively subdued manner. In other words, they aren’t exciting speakers. On the flip side, there are lawyers who rarely present arguments in court, yet are marvelous speakers.
While it is not always possible to make a boring presenter more interesting, it may be possible to mitigate the dreariness by judicious editing or by adding animation. (Though it must be said that poor editing can also dull an otherwise interesting presenter.)
Thus the developer’s challenge is to make boring presenters a bit more exciting while ensuring that the engaging ones remain interesting. At the same time, of course, the developer must make certain that the quality and depth of the content is not compromised.
Contrasts
The importance of detail in legal courseware cannot be overstressed.
Lawyers’ obsession with detail is partly due to the nature of legal work, where, for example, a case may hinge on the interpretation of a single word. This is partly a product of legal education where instructors can spend hours covering a single legal notion, and the inherent complexity of law, particularly in areas such as patent infringement or white-collar crime. Such cases are often very long, detailed, and multifaceted.
Legal professionals may mull over points that professionals in other areas may overlook. For instance, business executives may view a business merger in terms of commercial terms and sensibility. Lawyers, on the other hand, may additionally contemplate the regulatory, intellectual property rights, competition/anti-trust, employment, or environmental implications.
As lawyers will expect legal education to be substantive and comprehensive, developers should preferably err on the side of including additional details.
Attention span
At the same time, developers must keep their legal courseware from becoming excessively bloated.
Given the importance of detail in law, one would expect that lawyers have better than average attention spans. This is generally true. However, like all human beings, lawyers will tune out if a course is too boring.
One solution is to work with the subject matter expert (i.e. lawyer, legal academic, or expert) to distill the salient elements. Present the key points in as clear a manner as possible using multiple slides. Prune excessive details from the main presentation, and place them elsewhere, for example as associated reference materials.
This is not always as easy as it seems. Some subject matter experts may be used to speaking at length without presentation aids, or may produce content in a single contiguous, monolithic output. It therefore falls upon the developer to work with the subject matter expert to carve up this content mass and create courseware that is effective, substantive – and not boring.
Another solution is to add graphics and animation, but as noted earlier, developers need to employ graphics and other multimedia with some care.
Relevance
Law continually evolves as new ordinances and regulations are introduced, court cases are overturned, or new practice rules take effect.
The speed at which laws can change can be illustrated by the Hong Kong case of Ng Ka Ling which dealt with the right of abode in Hong Kong. (Ng Ka Ling v Director of Immigration (1999) 2 HKCFAR 4)
On January 29, 1999, Hong Kong’s highest court (The Court of Final Appeal) ruled that certain groups of Mainland Chinese had right of abode in Hong Kong. The decision in this case arose from three separate judicial review proceedings brought as test cases to assert the right of abode in Hong Kong of Chinese nationals born in the PRC (People’s Republic of China) to a parent who had acquired permanent resident status in Hong Kong after living in Hong Kong for a continuous period of seven years. (Readers who are interested in the details may wish to read Tom Clarke’s article cited in the References.)
A few months later, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress issued an interpretation (on June 26, 1999) that effectively overturned the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal’s verdict. Had one produced a course on the issue of right of abode in Hong Kong in February 1999, the course would have been out of date within five months.
Because of frequent changes to law, legal textbooks, reference books, and classroom courses must be regularly revised. This means that legal courseware developers ought to keep abreast of new legal developments and alter or delete courseware where necessary. This will both ensure content accuracy and uphold their professional reputations.
Additionally, interest in various areas of laws can wane or wax depending on legislative, political, business, technological, or other developments. While telecommunications law was a hot subject years ago, today anti-monopoly law is of great interest in Asia in large part because of China’s recently introduced Anti-Monopoly Law. A developer should also be able to react to these changes by quickly making and implementing changes to the relevant courseware, or introducing new courseware.
Applicability
Developers must also be careful not to cut corners in the international application of training, for example by using experts in one jurisdiction to cover laws in another.
There are significant differences among jurisdictions, for instance:
- Property law practice in Hong Kong, which currently relies heavily on time-consuming conveyancing transactions, is radically different from the United States, which utilizes a title insurance scheme.
- In patent law, the notions of what constitutes patentable subject matter, “prior art,” or “novelty” differ significantly among American, Chinese, and European laws.
- Legal practices differ within countries. As an example, two out of six states in Australia have separate practice regimes for barristers and solicitors, where the other four states have what is referred to as a “fused” profession.
Accordingly, instructors familiar with the laws in one jurisdiction may be unqualified to instruct in other locations.
Instructors need to be familiar with and accommodate local jurisdictional realities. For example, unlike America, Mainland China has laws governing the use of one’s visage under portraiture laws, so instruction on Mainland Chinese trademark law should also cover the relevant portrait laws. American and European copyright regimes treat an author’s rights to his or her copyrighted works differently. An American instructor, unaware of these differences, might omit key concepts were he or she to apply American legal notions to teach the subjects of European Copyright or Chinese trademark law.
Conclusions
Developers creating quality e-Learning for international legal professionals need not blow their budgets on fancy animations, graphics, or video. Rather they should focus on ensuring that their courseware is relevant, substantive, and engaging. Courseware developers ought to consider the needs of their audience – legal professionals – and adapt their materials as well as the underlying systems powering their e-Learning offerings accordingly.
This, however, requires some effort, given the complexity of laws, problems in locating the right presenters or subject matter experts, producing interesting courseware, keeping abreast of legal developments and updating course materials as required.
(NOTE: None of the above constitutes, or should be seen to constitute, legal advice. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective owners.)
References
Tetley, William. “Mixed jurisdictions: common law vs civil law (codified and uncodified),” available at http://www.unidroit.org/english/publications/review/articles/1999-3.htm (visited Feb. 20, 2009)
Community Legal Information Centre, “Making a business contract in Mainland China,” available at http://www.hkclic.org/en/topics/businessAndCommerce/setting_up_business_in_Mainland_China/making_business_contract_in_china/index.shtml (visited Feb. 20, 2009)
Clarke, Tom. “Ng Ka Ling V Director of Immigration; Tsui Kuen Nang V Director of Immigration; Director of Immigration V Cheung Lai Wah: One Basic Law, Two Interpretations.” Melbourne University Law Review [1999] MULR 29
