Colin James | The Australian National University (original) (raw)

Papers by Colin James

Law students are a special case in academic integrity. If a law student breaches academic integri... more Law students are a special case in academic integrity. If a law student breaches
academic integrity policy, such as by plagiarism or collusion during their legal
education, it may have long-term consequences for their reputation and their future in
the legal profession. Graduating law students applying for admission to practise as a
lawyer are advised to disclose mere investigations, whether or not they were found to
have breached the rules, as failure to disclose may lead to their admission being
refused or delayed. This paper analyses the views of 28 academic integrity
stakeholders across six Australian universities, interviewed by the Academic Integrity
Standards Project, with a specific focus on the 12 interviewees that were associated
with legal education in their own institution. While the broader understanding of
academic integrity among participants associated with legal education was similar to
that of the overall participants interviewed in the study, legal academics raised the
issue of disclosure requirements for a breach of academic integrity policy by students,
given the significant professional consequences for a law student. Based on our
findings, we propose a need for clarity and uniformity in the rules of disclosure as part
of the emerging national legal profession. We also propose an approach that
promotes academic integrity as an emergent professional integrity among law
students, rather than focusing resources on identification and punishing students who
breach academic integrity policy.

The cognitive dominance of legal education is a product of the narrow imagination of law schools ... more The cognitive dominance of legal education is a product of the narrow imagination of law schools and the conservative expectations of the corporatized profession. One consequence, it can be argued, is the failure of law schools to educate students for the actual work demands they will experience in practice. Law schools might defend by saying their role is to teach doctrinal law subjects, and PLT providers train graduates for legal practice. The problem is that until recently, neither institution has responded to research confirming the poor mental health status of many law students and lawyers. In recent years the Wellness Network for Law, in association with the Tristan Jepson Memorial Foundation, has initiated a series of conferences and publications designed to improve awareness and promote strategies for improving the mental health of law students and lawyers. This growing discourse has highlighted the importance of emotions, among other things, and the role awareness of emotions could play in legal education and PLT, as well as in legal practice.
This paper connects the research on emotions with recent research on habits. It proposes that existing models of emotional intelligence have limited worth because they don’t inform ways to change unproductive or destructive responses to difficult and stressful situations. Law students for example may develop habitual responses to stressful situations that are unhelpful, such as denial, procrastination or self-medication, and develop destructive attitudes associated with depression, self-doubt, imposter syndrome, and a shift from core intrinsic motivating values to extrinsic values associated with poor mental health. The paper concludes with strategies for promoting positive habits for law students that may not only build resilience but enhance performance in a difficult profession.

The results of a large online student survey (n = 15,304), on academic integrity at six Australia... more The results of a large online student survey (n = 15,304), on academic integrity at six Australian universities, indicate that a majority of respondents reported a good awareness of academic integrity and knowledge of academic integrity policy at their university and were satisfied with the information and support they receive. Response varied across cohorts, with international students expressing a lower awareness of academic integrity and academic integrity policy, and lower confidence in how to avoid academic integrity breaches. Postgraduate research student respondents were the least satisfied with the information they had
received about how to avoid an academic integrity breach. The results from this survey provide an opportunity to explore the student perspective and inform the higher education sector in relation to communicating with and educating students about academic integrity. The students have indicated that Australian universities need to move beyond the mere provision of information to ensure a holistic approach that engages students about academic integrity.

This paper reports on one important aspect of the preliminary findings from the Australian Learni... more This paper reports on one important aspect of the preliminary findings from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) project, Academic integrity standards: Aligning policy and practice in Australian universities (Bretag et al., 2010). Our project aims to identify approaches to the complex issues of academic integrity, and then to build on these approaches to develop exemplars for adaptation across the higher education sector. Based on analysis of publicly available online academic integrity policies at each of the 39 Australian universities, we have identified five core elements of exemplary academic integrity policy. These have been grouped under the headings, Access, Approach, Responsibility, Detail and Support, with no element given priority over another. In this paper we compare the five core elements identified in our research with best practice guidelines recommended by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) in the UK. We conclude that an exemplar policy needs to provide an upfront, consistent message, reiterated throughout the entire policy, which indicates a systemic and sustained commitment to the values of academic integrity and the practices that ensure it. Whereas the HEA created two discrete resources, the key aim and challenge of this project will be to develop exemplars that demonstrate a strong alignment between policy and practice.

Research studies have reported elevated rates of psychological distress (e.g., depression) in pra... more Research studies have reported elevated rates of psychological distress (e.g., depression) in practicing lawyers yet little research has examined predictors of such problems in law students.
Specific personality traits have been shown to be predictors of a range of psychological problems. We administered a battery of tests to a cohort of 1st-year law students (n = 150) and measured the Big Five personality traits and emotional intelligence (EI) to examine their relationships to psychological well-being as indicated by coping styles, satisfaction with life, performance-based self-esteem (PBSE), Global Severity Index (GSI) scores from the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI), depression, and alcohol use. We found that whereas EI was significantly related to three of the five well-being variables, the Big Five personality factor of neuroticism was found to be a stronger predictor of well-being. The findings suggest that EI does not account for additional variance in well-being over personality.

This article reports on research at the University of Newcastle, Australia, in 2006, which sought... more This article reports on research at the University of Newcastle,
Australia, in 2006, which sought to identify the major causes of stress and dissatisfaction among lawyers and to correlate that information with measures of lawyers' mental wellbeing (neuroticism), emotional intelligence, and the type of legal education and practical legal training (PLT) they had received. Part II reviews the relevant literature, Part III outlines the methodology, Part IV the findings, and Part V the recommendations.

This paper discusses proposed research on the well-being of Australian lawyers in the workplace. ... more This paper discusses proposed research on the well-being of Australian lawyers in the workplace. It examines what we know about workplace satisfaction for lawyers in Australia, compared with the worrying findings about the legal profession in the United States. The paper examines the likely causes of dissatisfaction including how universities traditionally teach law and what students are not told about legal practice. We discuss the need to investigate the well-being and satisfaction levels among newly-admitted lawyers, and to consider ways to teach law that could help lawyers not only make wise career choices but develop strategies to cope better with stressors in their workplace.
Clinical legal education could help students develop professionally as well as personally in order to improve their
chances of having a happy and productive life at work.

This paper considers the relevance of emotional intelligence for the cognitively dominated law sc... more This paper considers the relevance of emotional intelligence for the cognitively dominated law school. I describe the crisis in the American legal profession and suggest how those problems are
likely to be replicated in Australia. I examine what little we know about the impact of law schools on students and find the extant research is not encouraging. The paper considers how clinical legal education provides the best opportunities to engage with students on levels that could make a difference to their inner well-being in practice. I then look briefly at our developing understanding of emotional intelligence and its relevance in clinical legal education. The last part considers specific opportunities already in many clinical programs for encouraging students to develop their emotional capacities.