Towards a taxonomy of legal education research

The nature of legal research is the subject of much discussion. Yet there is far less attention given to the place of legal education scholarship within the field of legal research more broadly. In this chapter, we make the claim that legal educational research might be regarded as an interdisciplinary contribution to legal research, and we embark on a project to recognise and chart the diversity of the scholarship of legal education. In doing so, we develop the first iteration of a taxonomy designed to make explicit the methods, approaches, purposes, and subjects of the scholarship of legal education as a reflection of the intersection of scholars’ discipline practices in both law and education, as both teachers and as researchers, as both lawyers and academics. Through description and theorization of legal education research by way of a taxonomy, we seek to substantiate the contribution of scholarship of legal education to the legal academy, and to law and legal practice, within an explicit research framework.