"Girlfriends of the Court"

Archive for the ‘higher education’ Category

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S|M| i |L|E-ing

In blogs, higher education, law students, legal education, Social Media on July 20, 2014 at 9:21 pm

Why not start a new blog you say?

S|M| i |L|E Social Media in Legal Education is a new collaborative project by Australian legal academics. The project aims to promote and support the integration of social media into legal education, starting as a resource and repository for the ongoing explorations of academic collaborators, Kate Galloway, Kristoffer Greaves, Melissa de Zwart and Melissa Castan; others will be involved too.  It aims to be a useful resource for academics, ECRs and HDR students, law students, and legal practitioners. Please take a look at the libraries there.

Legal education, digital, social media,

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Opportunity knocks more than once

In Balance, higher education, legal education, women on June 21, 2012 at 5:04 pm

Ana felt it was time to stretch her academic wings

When the southern hemisphere winter sets in and the days are short and bleak, its time to start planning to get out of the doldrums and into a conference. But how do you get a paper accepted by the convenors? And what if you are an inexperienced public speaker?

Flora Poste Writes has a very useful summary of tips and advice for those preparing to present or attend at a conference, and similarly the Thesis Whisperer has shared her slides on Academic Conferences: A beginners’ guide. Over at Hook & Eye Amiee Morrison (digiwonk) has a terrific post that reminds us that Conference Papers are like Movie Trailers. Her key points ~ “Hit the highlights, Show the chase scene, Simplify the plot”. That’s good advice! [read on…]

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New Kid on the Block

In Career, Education, Guest Post, higher education, legal education on December 16, 2011 at 9:46 pm
Early Career researchers, legal education

Early career academics - are they the pop stars of legal academia? *

Reflections of a NKOTB: my first two months as a legal academic

After ten years of study, five years of practice (including private practice and homelessness lawyering), two undergraduate degrees, three postgraduate qualifications, two children, hundreds of clients and thousands (millions?) of pages of legal documents, I came to the conclusion that I don’t want to be a lawyer. For now.

It wasn’t that I was burnt out, mistreated or jaded; I just don’t have the passion for casework at this stage of my career. But I loved the research and advocacy part of my role managing Victoria’s Homeless Persons’ Legal Clinic, and the impact the law can have on society.

And so, after searching my soul, I joined the academe. Read on… Read the rest of this entry »

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30 sites in 30 slides (or why you should love your librarian)

In higher education, legal education, Procrastination, Social Media on November 27, 2011 at 8:28 pm
Social Media, law, research

Things have changed in your law library

We are all busy, and sometimes its hard to catch up with what is new and useful.  But some things are really worth taking a few minutes to check out. We asked Kay Tucker, the wonderful law librarian at the Monash Law Library, if we could post a link to her terrific presentation, “30 sites in 30 minutes”. Read on… Read the rest of this entry »

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3 Top Tips from ‘Girlfriends of the Courts’

In Balance, Career, Employment, higher education, law students, women on May 11, 2011 at 2:13 pm

Should I have asked about the dress code in the interview?

A career in the law: be prepared…

The NSW Young Lawyers have just released a great booklet on how to ‘Survive and Thrive in your First Year of Law’ (the pdf is available from their site click here). It is full of honest advice about starting life as a law student, and then as an early career lawyer. Have a look back at our post on Depression and the Dark Side of the Law.

Amicae Curiae has asked some of our ‘girlfriends of the courts’ on their top tips* for starting out in a law career, and here are the best ones (read on):

ps like what you see? You can subscribe to this blog by scrolling to the bottom of the page, or

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Calling all academic bloggers!

In blogs, higher education, non law, Social Media, women on May 10, 2011 at 7:45 am

This morning’s Age has two pieces on academics and blogging; one starts out as a story of a scuffle between Monash and Melbourne Universities over the ‘Melbourne Model’ (Click here) but ends up discussing Edublog, a proprietary blog platform (Click here). The other piece is a nifty list of ‘academic bloggers’ on a variety of topics (Click here), including one I like, Dr Samantha Thomas’ Discourse (Click here).

The Age inexplicably overlooked Amicae Curiae, and the Castan Centre’s Human Rights Blog (Click here).

Like what you see? You can subscribe to this blog by scrolling to the bottom of the page, or

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and if you are amused by branding (or law and economics)

In Education, higher education, Procrastination on April 5, 2011 at 9:55 am

read this ….

http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2011/04/best-april-fools-joke-yale-ludicrous-school.html

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Missing by Increments

In Education, higher education, Journals, law students, legal education, women on March 30, 2011 at 10:32 am

I have been talking to a friend about the ‘incremental disadvantage’ faced by under-represented groups in legal practice. Lots of little lost opportunities eventually add up to a big disadvantage. Interesting in this light is a study by Nancy Leong and Jennifer Mullins which finds that fewer female than male students publish case notes in US law Journals. It might not seem like an issue but scholarly publications are relevant to later employment and promotion opportunities.  The authors also include some practical suggestions for addressing this issue.

See  Leong, Nancy and Mullins, Jennifer, An Empirical Examination of Gender and Student Note Publication 1999-2009 (March 8, 2011). Available at SSRN:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1781149

A related link is this one from Freakenomics: “Why Don’t Female Economists Blog?” Matthew Kahn explores the disparity. http://t.co/9F2UMY9

Is the same true for Female Lawyers/Academics? What do you think?

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Journals We Like

In Education, higher education, law, law students, legal education, women on March 23, 2011 at 6:44 pm

The Australian Feminist Law Journal publishes critical, postmodern and feminist writing on practices of legality and justice, broadly conceived.

The Alternative Law Journal is an Australian, refereed law journal focusing on

• social justice, human rights and law reform
• critique of the legal system
• developments in alternative legal practice
• community legal education

Law in Contex is a peer-reviewed socio-legal journal,  that examines key legal questions in the context of broader issues on topics such as:

  • rights protection
  • anti-terrorism
  • patents
  • dispute resolution
  • competition policy and law
  • gender
  • race
  • people with disabilities
  • refugees
  • citizenship
  • the judiciary
  • jurisprudence.

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The plight of Law’s Supergirl

In Barristers, Career, Education, higher education, Judiciary, law, law students, legal education, Solicitors, women on March 23, 2011 at 5:59 pm

From Supergirl to Invisible Woman: The divide between student perception and professional reality in corporate legal practice by Melissa Castan and Jeannie Paterson in the Alternative Law Journal 2010

Young women are prominent and successful at Australian law schools, yet women remain under-represented in the senior echelons of the legal profession. In this article the authors examine factors affecting the attrition of young women lawyers from corporate legal practice, and make suggestions regarding the responsibilities of law firms and law schools to address this issue… (Long version here).

 

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