| Primary Workshop HighlightsLindsay Kelly 21 May 2012 12:19 This month brings an anniversary for me - a work-iversary if you will. On 29 May it will be five years since I started working at Edinburgh Law School. There have been many, many highlights along the way but one set of workshops I run has never failed to make me laugh over the years. They are, of course, the Primary School workshops we run as part of the Early Years initiative run by The University of Edinburgh. Read more... |
| In a follow-up to earlier blogposts about allowing cameras in court, we have learnt today that cameras will be allowed into court at the sentencing of David Gilroy who was found guilty last month of murdering Suzanne Pilley. The camera will focus on the judge, Lord Bracadale, and will not show David Gilroy. Read more... |
| Last week was the first Innovative Learning Week held at The University of Edinburgh. Formal classes were suspended for a week while we all got innovative and looked outwith traditional teaching and learning experiences. The resulting programme of events available for students to take part in in the Law School was nothing short of amazing. You can view the whole programme here: http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/lawlessordinary/ Read more... |
| The University of Edinburgh's award-winning initiative Pathways to the Professions is featured in the University's Annual Review. Read more... |
| Here is the most up-to-date information available from The Law Society of Scotland on funding for the Diploma/PEAT 1 in 2012/13. Read more... |
| LawPALS3: Review to DateLindsay Kelly 04 November 2011 10:49  Academic year 2011/12 saw the launch of a brand-new add-on to our successful LawPALS programme, LawPALS3. These sessions are mostly aimed at our third year LLB students and our fourth years who went away on the ERASMUS scheme in third year. Designed to help ease transition from ordinary to honours level study, LawPALS3 consists of lectures on study skills with question sessions at the end. There are also supporting materials online for the sessions, including powerpoint and other presentations given on the day. Read more... |
| The Law Society of Scotland's Journal carries the news today that Channel 4 are going to commence filming a Scottish murder trial tomorrow as part of a documentary looking into how courts operate. The link to the story is here: http://www.journalonline.co.uk/News/1010129.aspx Read more... |
| The ground-breaking Donoghue v. Stevenson case is brought to life in five great videos commissioned, as a free educational resource, by The Scottish Council of Law Reporting. There are five videos in the series, as follows: Read more... |
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| Graduation Congratulations!Lindsay Kelly 01 July 2011 11:40 Just a quick blogpost to say a massive congratulations to all our graduands who are due to graduate this afternoon in a ceremony at the beautiful McEwan Hall. It's agorgeous day here already and there is a buzz around the Law School on this special day. I'm really looking forward to congratulating the students in person after the ceremony and joining them for a little refreshment to toast their success. Well done, all!! Read more... |
| High FlyersLindsay Kelly 15 June 2011 16:50 Part of me can't believe it is June already and nothing makes me feel it more than annual events creeping up in what feels like less than a year. With Pathways Parents' Evenings two weeks ago and some of our other annual events coming up, I thought I'd take time to reflect on a session I ran yesterday for the High Flyers initiative. Read more... |
| Pathways Parents' EveningsLindsay Kelly 08 June 2011 14:50  Tonight we have the first of two evenings this week designed for the parents of pupils on our Pathways to the Professions scheme. Read more... |
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| Scottish Parliament VisitLindsay Kelly 14 March 2011 16:32  A couple of weeks ago, a colleague from the Pathways team and I took a group of local school pupils to the Scottish Parliament for a morning's visit. The pupils , in fourth, fifth and sixth year, attended the tour as they had registered their interest in law with Pathways to the Professions. Read more... |
| Vacancy: LawPALS CoordinatorLindsay Kelly 22 February 2011 11:25 We are currently looking for a new Coordinator for our Law Peer Assisted Learning Scheme (LawPALS). The vacancy is up on SAGE now and applications are invited by email. Informal questions to Lindsay.Kelly@ed.ac.uk Read more... |
| Pathways is 10!! For those of you unsure about what Pathways is or does, it's a scheme run by The University of Edinburgh which aims to offer information, guidance and support to local school pupils considering applying to Law, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and Architecture. The pupils are often the first in their family to attend university or their school might have a low progression rate onto university. The pupils are offered access to events designed to aid career exploration and most find it an extremely useful experience. Read more... |
| The January edition of the Law Society of Scotland's Journal is now online and can be viewed here: http://www.journalonline.co.uk/Magazine/ Read more... |
| Happy New Year to all! Read more... |
| That was the Year that was.. 2010Lindsay Kelly 17 December 2010 13:28 As hard as it is to believe that 2010 is almost over (yes, I know, we haven't even had Christmas yet!), I have been looking back at our activities during the year and looking ahead to the next. Read more... |
| 'So You Want to be a Lawyer?'Lindsay Kelly 18 October 2010 16:02 Pathways to the Professions: 'So You Want to be a Lawyer?'
This annual event was held today, Monday 18 October. It was attended by around 50 local s5/s6 state school pupils and is aimed at providing an insight into the profession. We had a wide variety of speakers this year as follows: The Hon Lady Stacey, Calum Wilson (Clerk of the Faculty of Advocates), Iain MacDougall of MBM Commercial, Chris Walters of Anderson Strathern, Simon Collins of Capital Defence, Heather McPhee of The Law Society of Scotland and Safeena Rashid of the Crown Office.
The pupils got a chance to hear from the speakers about what their role is, how they came to be in it and what a typical day might entail. Pupils then went on to work with some of the solicitors discussing legal scenarios and their possible implications. The afternoon was rounded off with debates, which the pupils spent their lunchtime preparing for. This got competitive, as ever, as the arguments flew on topics such as human cloning and televising criminal trials. Note to self - pupils will use google on their phones to construct arguments! Read more... |
| Scottish Judiciary WebsiteLindsay Kelly 22 September 2010 09:25 A new website has been launched that allows the public to find out more about the the work of Judges. The site, at www.scotland-judiciary.org.uk has up-to-date information on judgements and sentences, court room etiquette and a section on what a day in the life of various judges including an Inner House judge, Sheriff Principal and Justice of the Peace. Read more... |
| Welcome... and welcome back!Lindsay Kelly 20 September 2010 14:56 Welcome to all our new undergraduate and postgraduate students and to those of you continuing your studies, welcome back! Good luck to you all for a productive year - you know what they say about the Edinburgh lawyers... they work hard and play harder! Read more... |
| A massive WELCOME to our new students who are coming into Freshers' Week this week. What a year you have ahead of you! Just take it a step at a time and try not to get overwhelmed with the wealth of information coming at you this week. Some of it you can digest as you go through the year so do hang onto everything you are given - top tip! Read more... |
| Results matter. We know that and now so do thousands of school pupils who received their results over the last few weeks or so. The press is full of doom and gloom stories about people not getting university places amid cuts and the word 'clearing' must be high on google's 'top searches' list now but is it really as bad as is being made out? Are there any people who did manage to get the places they wanted? Not as far as the general press would have us believe. (Why does bad news travel faster than good news? All good questions to ponder but perhaps a bit deep for a Monday!) Read more... |
| LEAPS Summer School GraduationLindsay Kelly 26 July 2010 10:29 Congratulations to all those who graduated from the LEAPS Summer School on Friday 23 July. You have all worked incredibly hard and I hope you enjoy the rest of your summer - yes, there is still some left! The graduation was held at Edinburgh Napier University's Craiglockhart Campus and was attended by the students and their friends and families. The speaker was Ian Murray, MP for Edinburgh South, who gave an inspiring talk to the students. His own beginnings, as a student at Wester Hailes Education Centre and later attending The University of Edinburgh, gave the students food for thought. Read more... |
| Graduation CongratulationsLindsay Kelly 30 June 2010 10:21 Massive congratulations to all the Law School graduates who graduated yesterday! You got a beautiful day for it and I wish you every success in your future... Read more... |
| Motivating Student LearningLindsay Kelly 28 June 2010 11:16 Last week, I attended a lunchtime course/talk called 'Motivating Student Learning Through the Application of Teaching Innovations' which was delivered by Associate Professor Angela Paladino of Melbourne University. Professor Paladino's field is Marketing but the methods she was demonstrating to us were applicable to many other subjects with just a little tweaking and imagination. Read more... |
| Open Day!Lindsay Kelly 18 June 2010 12:43 Today George Square becomes a circus! No, not like the theme for this year's Big Brother but a circus of opportunity, information and education... it's OPEN DAY! Read more... |
| Pathways Parents' EveningsLindsay Kelly 14 June 2010 16:09 Last Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, The Pathways to the Professions team held two Parents' Evenings designed to answer questions parents (of those registered on Pathways) may have about their offspring heading off to university. Read more... |
| What a fantastic morning I've had - and it's all thanks to the great pupils we had in this morning! Two groups of s2 pupils from Leith Academy came into the university as part of the work the Lothians Equal Access Programme for Schools (LEAPS) does. The idea behind the s2 visits is to show the pupils what a university looks and feels like and let them experience some of the subjects that can be studied at university. Read more... |
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LawPALS, the School of Law's Peer Assisted Learning Scheme, is a key part of the first year LLB experience at The University of Edinburgh and aims to ensure students feel socially and academically integrated into the School. Read more... |
| Liberton and WHEC WorkshopLindsay Kelly 23 April 2010 15:49 I'm just back in from the rain, which I ventured out into to deposit a group of school pupils at the High Court. (The Pied Piper I was not as we dodged puddles and tried not to drown on the way!!) Read more... |
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| Friday was the second of three mentoring sessions we offer through Pathways to the Professions. Local school pupils (on the Pathways Scheme) who have been given an offer to study law at Edinburgh are invited to take part in this series of sessions. Read more... |
| Pathways Work Observation WeekLindsay Kelly 15 February 2010 12:30 This week, eight local state school pupils have been given the opportunity to experience life in law firms and legal organisations as part of the Pathways to the Professions programme. They work in pairs visiting different organisations and have a varied week ahead of them... Read more... |
| Election? What election?!Lindsay Kelly 18 January 2010 12:02 Did you know there's an election coming up, readers? No? I know - the news programmes and websites really haven't mentioned it at all. So much so that it almost slipped by unnoticed... (that reminds me - a company last week applied for a patent for a mark to indicate sarcasm in written text. That would be incredibly useful for me!) Read more... |
| Happy New... Semester!Lindsay Kelly 11 January 2010 10:28 Happy New Year and Happy New Semester to all! It's hard to believe it's 2010 already but it's here! Aside from the usual considerations - do we call it twenty-ten or two-oh-ten or as I heard someone do recently, just ten - I am looking ahead to an action-packed year. Read more... |
| (T)wittering on...!Lindsay Kelly 09 December 2009 11:43 (T)wittering on...! Read more... |
| As you are probably aware, this year we celebrate 100 years since the first two women graduated with law degrees from The University of Edinburgh. The School is putting on a lecture series to celebrate this landmark achievement and the first of these is being given this evening by Joyce Cullen, Chairman of Brodies, LLP. Read more... |
| One from the archive!Lindsay Kelly 16 November 2009 16:07 While trying to find the latest position on the student fees debate which is currently ensuing, I came across this clip of Gordon Brown in his university days in 1975 speaking about what has now become known as Widening Participation. In the clip, he talks about 'positive discrimination' and quotes a figure that suggests "half the the nation's talent was being lost at 16"owing to a lack of money and/or aspirations. Read more... |
| 'Pathways' article in Staff BulletinLindsay Kelly 06 November 2009 15:54 The University of Edinburgh's Pathways to the Professions programme has a three-page feature in this quarter's University of Edinburgh Staff Bulletin. The article, looking at all the professions covered by this award-winning scheme, gives a great account of the hard work carried out by the Student Recruitment and Admissions Widening Participation team and their counterparts in relevant schools. Read more... |
| Work Observation WeekLindsay Kelly 02 November 2009 15:53 After the success of our So You Want to be a Lawyer event on 20 October, eight keen school pupils in s5 or s6 enjoyed work experience for the remainder of their October holiday week. Read more... |
| So You Want to be a Lawyer...Lindsay Kelly 16 October 2009 12:56 Well, it's been a busy couple of weeks here at WP HQ! Read more... |
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| LawPALS Week 3: MOOTINGLindsay Kelly 02 October 2009 15:32  Read more... |
| Congratulations to all the nominees and winners at last night's Law Awards of Scotland 2009. Among the candidates and winners there were plenty of familiar names and I would like to make particular mention of: Read more... |
| Lord Sutherland, the former principal of The University of Edinburgh and former head of Universities Scotland, has called for tuition fees in Scotland to be brought back to fund scholarships for students who cannot afford to attend university. Read more... |
| Get ahead with LawPrep!Lindsay Kelly 26 August 2009 14:35  Read more... |
| Warmest congratulations to all LEAPS Summer School students who are graduating today. LEAPS, Lothians Equal Access Programme for Schools, runs a summer school for around 160 LEAPS eligible students who are holding one of more UCAS offers. Read more... |
| This week saw the publication of the final report of the Panel for Fair Access to the Professions, which was led by the Rt. Hon. Alan Milburn. The Report concludes that "‘Closed Shop’ Britain Must End to Unleash Aspiration in all Children." The full text of this report can be accessed by clicking here and you can access the Cabinet Office's press release from 21 July 2009 by clicking here. Read more... |
| "Quality Needs Diversity"Lindsay Kelly 08 July 2009 10:20 “Quality needs diversity... Diversity has an inherent educational value. That is why we need... it. And we will learn more from those people, those ideas, and those phenomena that we do not know, than from those we know only too well. We need people around us who represent the rich spectrum of... life, and we need the diversity of ideas that are new to us. We need... to prepare our students to become active and confident participants in a multicultural and globalised society. Read more...Comments (0) |
| Last Wednesday, 27 May, I attended a half-day conference on 'Facilitating Participation in Higher Education' which was put on by the Moray House School of Education. It was a great opportunity to meet up with colleagues from: Read more...Comments (0) |
| If children ruled the world...Lindsay Kelly 22 May 2009 15:21 ... we would all be in for some shocks! I ran a workshop today (on behalf of Student Recruitment and Admissions, SRA) for 20 s1 pupils from Wester Hailes Education Centre (WHEC) and Liberton High School They were in for a taster visit to the School of Law and were then going on to the Faculty of Advocates for a look round (and popping into the High Court too). Read more...Comments (0) |
| Workshop season...Lindsay Kelly 20 May 2009 11:46 Well, it's early summer now (perhaps even officially) and that means one of the workshop seasons is in full swing! Read more...Comments (0) |
