The report includes a number of examples of modules and extra-curricular projects from different Law Schools where students are asked to directly engage with empirical research.  It also indicates a number of barriers to introducing empirical research in the undergraduate curriculum. These include:

• resistance from other faculty members

• resistance from students, particularly to unknown forms of assessment

• lack of suitable textbooks

The idea of the project was to find examples which could be learned from and built on by colleagues in order to encourage undergraduate law students to take an interest in empirical research and also hopefully to inspire a few to take this futher into postgraduate studies. There are undoubtedly more examples than were uncovered by the research. We are interested in these too, so do post any in response to this which you feel will add to the debate. In particular, there seems to be very little use of empirical research in qualifying law degree modules or in the first year, so it would be good to find out if there are indeed examples from QLD and first year modules. We are also keen to find out your experiences of including empirical research in assessment.  What innovations have you used and how did students react to them? What materials and text books do you draw on?

Please do add any ideas which may contribute to an on-going debate.

I don’t have a fixed view on this, but whether you are a legal or a non-legal academic would be very interested to find out your views.

Part of the background to this is the suggestion that the replacement for the RAE (the REF) may seek to include funding as one of the basket of indicators of quality. Whilst one might expect the inclusion of funding in on Law’s basket to be resisted to protect (dominant) humanities and doctrinal approaches to legal scholarship, is there a risk that Law is seen, in research terms, as something of a cinderella subject, protected only by its popularity with student?

Does overemphasisng the importance of grant-funding threaten QR funding? Conversely, are there perversities in the ways Universities and Law School’s provide incentives for funding.

It would be interesting to hear people’s views and also, in particular to encourage the sharing of experiences around models of (good and bad) practice. For instance, I believe it is important that grant-funding is not seen as free-money to supplement QR by Heads of Schools but is properly used to buy out staff time and overhead is invested in building and maintaining capacity. One speaker at the conference reported that her institution saw having got at least one grant as key to promotion to senior lecturer level, perhaps a more controversial approach! What kinds of policy does your school have and what do you believe works?

Assuming this is allowed, feel free to post anonymously if you prefer!

Richard Moorhead, Cardiff

How can we help to improve media coverage of legal research? 
If government-funded, this should be a joint effort by both researchers and government – but it must start with the researcher. 

What do researchers need to do? 
First and foremost, we as researchers must be able to convey our findings in a comprehensible way to the media – and to appreciate the requirements of media coverage.  A few basic questions every researcher should be thinking about when publishing empirical legal research include:  

1. What is the single most important message to come out of the research? 
For instance, can you imagine a headline for your research? Can you briefly summarise the main findings in language that is understandable and interesting to a wider public?  

2. What do these findings mean for the public? 
Far too often we write and speak only in terms that the legal research community can understand. But if empirical legal research is supposed to be about “law in the real world”, we need to be able to convey what we do in terms that people living in the real world will understand.  

3. How might the findings be misinterpreted or sensationalised? 
There’s no point in complaining later on about media misrepresentation if you haven’t anticipated this and made every effort to make sure that it doesn’t happen.  And finally, researchers need to be available to the media. Of course, some researchers may be particularly uncomfortable facing the press, but we must remember that the media will want to hear from the person who did the research – not just a government spokesperson.  It would be interesting to hear from researchers about whether they feel they need guidance in dealing with the media.

What does government need to do? 
If the research is funded by a government department, then the government also must take responsibility for ensuring that the findings are conveyed as widely as possible and that the message is as clear as possible. Of course, not every piece of government-funded legal research will have immediate media interest. But it is not good enough for the press office to simply issue a press release saying the research has been published and expect the media to pick up the story.   The press office needs to ensure that the right journalists know about the research.  It also needs to work with researchers to make sure they are prepared to speak to the media.  Press officers should not assume that researchers all have experience dealing with the media. 

Good (and bad) practice.  
It would be interesting to hear from researchers who feel the did not have a good experience in publishing government-funded empirical legal research.  But I’ll give one example of good practice. Last year when MOJ published my research, the research was widely and (crucially) correctly reported in the media. The potential for misleading reporting was very high, but the accurate reporting was due in large part to the way MOJ approached publication. Well ahead of publication, an internal steering group was convened of government officials in and outside MOJ affected by the research, as well as the MOJ press office. We met several times.  Each time I presented the research and we worked through how to make the large, complex study accessible and how to avoid misrepresentations.  When it was published, the media had access to both a minister (to answer policy questions) and myself (to explain the research).  Journalists were also given extra time to read the report before publication. 

Legal affairs correspondents.
And what about the role of the legal affairs correspondents?  I’ve certainly found that most are very well-informed and interested in identifying new legal stories.  But why are there only a few academics who always seem to speak about legal issues in the media?   It would be really helpful to hear from legal affairs correspondents about what we as researchers can do to improve media coverage of our work: How do you view legal researchers?  Are we accessible and aware of media needs? Would it help, for instance, if there was an independent group that could put you in touch with an appropriate legal researcher for specific stories?   

Professor Cheryl Thomas, Centre for Empirical Legal Studies, UCL Faculty of Laws

Good data sets are important in promoting and supporting high quality empirical research. A range of views have been expressed as to the adequacy and utility of existing data, but at the very least, perhaps
there needs to be an improvement in the co-ordination and information-sharing about available data sets. There is also the potential to encourage or facilitate access to existing sources and/or build on
existing surveys rather than ‘reinventing the wheel’.

What is the current experience of gaining access to data and how could this be improved? What practical barriers prevent researchers gaining access to the data they need and what are the implications of this?

We can arrange for researchers who want to post (more or less) regular or frequent observations on a particular theme to do so in the form of a blog. All such blogs will be listed on this ‘LERSnet blogs’ page, where clicking on the name of the blog will access all the posts in it. We can also arrange for a blog (or particular posts within a blog) to be linked from other pages.

Example:
Anne Other is heavily involved with adjudicating on research grant applications, and makes frequent applications herself.

• She can have ‘Anne Other’s grants blog’ listed here. Clicking on the blog names will give access to all her posts.
• We can also put a link in from the ‘Research funding’ page. This can simply lead to the whole blog, or she may want to limit this link to a selection of key posts giving important advice.
• Whenever she makes a new post, she ticks a box to put in ‘Anne Other’s grants blog’ and decides whether also to tick a box to make it accessible from the ‘Research funding’ page.

(a) Go to http://www.lersnet.ac.uk/, click Register (bottom of the screen) and register yourself as a user.

(b) Contact Marie Selwood marieselwood@btinternet.com to talk about having a blog, topic and title.

2. Posting to a blog

[for now the basics; notes on optional extras will follow]

(a) Go to Login to edit or comment (bottom of the screen ) and enter your login and password

(b) Click the Write tag (top of the screen)

(c) Write the post and give it a title

(d) Tick the Categories box for your blog (top right of the screen)

(e) Click Publish