Law as it is, and how it could be: law reform participation as authentic assessment and a pedagogical tool

Legal education occurs against a backdrop of governing ideologies, including vocationalism–education for the profession, and intellectualism–law as an educational discipline. Additionally, empirical evidence suggests that society and students require elements from each approach to fulfil their needs. In this paper, we advocate expanding the use and integration of authentic assessment through law reform activities–broadly defined–within compulsory and elective units within the law school curriculum. By making law reform a mainstream pedagogical tool, we contend that students are given the opportunity to build their vocational “black-letter” legal knowledge, as well as develop skills in advocacy, research and critique.