Monthly Updates for Students of the English and Welsh Legal System. Number 1 November 2013

I know from my 25 years teaching Law that new relevant points emerge all the time. Much more so than in most other subjects I think, for example I don’t want to upset Latin scholars but I don’t think that much new turns up very often for them to digest. However, for Law students, these regular developments present both an opportunity and a problem. An opportunity because, of course, brand new relevant points look fantastic in assignments and in exam answers. I’ve sometimes enabled students of mine to include in their AS or A Level exams points which were in the news on the day of their exam! Such up to date knowledge partly explains why over 300 of my students obtained ‘A’ Grades down the years. A problem because Law students have plenty to do already, there’s not much time available for updating their knowledge. This is where my new update service comes in. Every month, at a cost of £2, I shall publish 10 new points for students of our legal system. These will help students at all levels, As, A Level, Law Degrees, HND and Degree Level students studying some Law in their courses. What these points will be about depends of course on what has turned up; they could, for example, be about Human Rights, the jury system, precedent, the European Union, Bail and so on. 10 new things per month, each explained as clearly and briefly as possible. The last thing students need is a set of long rambling new points. You will discover that I often find updates by using topical legal events in an unusual way. For example, the various recent and forthcoming jury trials where the defendants are well known people raise a question about whether juries can truly be fair to these defendants. It’s impossible to give a definite answer, perhaps such juries will indeed be affected by the celebrity status, or the juries deserve much more respect and trust than that and will indeed give a fair trial. So I make such stories relevant in jury system answers. One more, there’s been a lot of recent publicity about whether ‘confidentiality clauses’, often included as part of out of court settlements, should continue to be allowed legally. Well, here’s a link I’ve thought of to Human Rights. Will a court case emerge, in which the defendant has breached a confidentiality clause and is therefore being sued for the return of the money, in which a senior court will hold, as a precedent, that such clauses breach the right to free speech found in the European Convention on Human Rights, enforceable under the Human Rights Act 1998, and that therefore they are indeed invalid? Only time will tell. You’ll notice that the above is a point which can be used in two topics, ADR and Human Rights, very handy for saving revision time!