Helena Whalen-Bridge

Towards A Comparative Rhetoric of Argument: Using the Concept of “Audience” as a Means of Educating Students about Comparative Argument

Are Asian law schools adequately preparing law students to handle problems raised by cross-border disputes? Preparation has generally been limited to courses in conflicts of law, international law and comparative law, but the successful presentation of a legal position in a foreign legal system arguably requires more than an understanding of legal rules. Studies in legal culture suggest that participants in different legal systems think about the law in radically different ways. Comparative examples from the criminal justice systems of the United States and Japan demonstrate that some knowledge of a comparative rhetoric of argument – which arguments are appropriate in different legal systems – is required. Legal Writing Programmes can play a role in teaching comparative argument by expanding the concept of “audience” to include foreign legal systems.

Court backlogs: balancing efficiency and justice in Singapore

ABSTRACT In attempting to eradicate a backlog, can a jurisdiction prioritise court efficiency without affecting substantive justice? This article engages with this question by considering the experiences of Singapore, a common law country in Southeast Asia that overcame a large backlog in the 1990s. The article investigates how efficiency and justice were conceptualised in relevant court reforms. In the beginning of backlog eradication, efficiency took centre stage, but it does not appear to have been considered in isolation. The introduction of business management principles, which could have boded ill for justice, in fact introduced a theme of consumer satisfaction that ultimately developed into a more robust approach to access to justice. Singapore’s experience suggests that the connection between efficiency and justice is not a logically linear landscape, but rather an intertwined relationship in which efficiency and justice find a context-specific understanding.

A common law fly on the transsystemic wall: observing the integrated method at McGill Faculty of Law

ABSTRACT Law schools attempting to prepare students for a more global practice are generally advised to tailor a law curriculum to their individual resources. When offering comparative perspectives, some law school programmes have pedagogical advantages arising out of a mixed legal heritage, such as McGill Faculty of Law’s transsystemic approach. What does the transsystemic approach entail, and can aspects of the transsystemic approach, which is grounded in Québec’s bijural and bilingual context, be practised at national-focus law schools? In order to consider this question, the author observed classroom dynamics in first year transsystemic courses. The McGill experience cannot be imported, but its pedagogy offers key lessons for common law national-focus law schools, including the need to make alternative visions of law necessary for understanding.

Clinical legal education in Singapore

Law schools have traditionally confined themselves to the academic instruction of law, but recent curriculum development, around the world and in Singapore, represents a paradigm shift in goals and methods of instruction. Clinical legal education (CLE) programs have become an established feature of the Singapore law school curriculum, in order to, inter alia, instill legal professionalism in students and fulfill an institutional responsibility toward indigent needs.

We don't need another IRAC: identifying global legal skills

For some time now, there has been a perceived need to prepare law students to handle legal issues beyond national borders. Much has been written on how globalisation should shape legal education, but no clear direction has emerged. There is also a contrary impulse to retain a focus on domestic law in order to prepare students for practice in their home jurisdiction. One way of addressing these apparently contrary impulses is to take a skills approach that articulates the analytical processes distinctively active in a more global context. Some of these skills could then be integrated into a variety of courses. However, skills in the global context should not merely replicate domestic conceptions of skills. This paper proposes that students develop abilities in comparative thinking and heuristic question framing, and reviews the advantages and disadvantages of a course in Comparative Advocacy designed to accomplish these goals.

The Conceptualisation of Pro Bono in Singapore

Abstract “Pro bono” is a familiar phrase in North American jurisdictions that generally refers to a lawyer’s provision of free legal services to indigent persons. The phrase “pro bono” has also come to imply a particular approach to a lawyer’s relationship to indigent persons, one that stresses the obligatory as opposed to the charitable nature of the services provided. To what extent has this phrase, and its conceptualisation of a lawyer’s role, been used in Asian jurisdictions? This article examines how one Asian jurisdiction, Singapore, conceptualises a lawyer’s relationship to indigent persons by examining newspaper usage of phrases describing legal services for indigent persons. The article argues that changes in usage over time, from free legal services and legal aid to inclusion of pro bono, coupled with increased discussions of access to justice, represent a shift to a more obligatory concept of indigent legal services. An obligatory conceptualisation potentially exerts greater pressure on lawyers to provide indigent legal services, but can also exert pressure to revise the historical lack of broad-based government funded criminal legal aid in Singapore.

Challenges to Pro Bono Work in the Corporate Context: Means Testing and the Non-Profit Applicant

The various sources of formal and informal regulation in Singapore and selected Asian and other common law jurisdictions in order to consider how to means test non-profit organizations for the purposes of pro-bono assistance are discussed. The need for pro bono service providers to examine funding, expenses and related documentation in relation to programming goals is highlighted.