Who we are

About Us

We are a vibrant, welcoming, and inclusive community of academics, professionals and practitioners engaged in legal education across the world. The Executive Committee is staffed entirely by volunteers who are elected per our Constitution and who serve for fixed terms. Elections to vacant posts are held at our AGM annually and we advertise any vacancies in our newsletter and via our website. The current Executive Committee is set out in the list below and if you would like to have a look at our governance documents, you can do so here.

To get in touch with us you can use the following email addresses or you can look at the list below and click on the name of the relevant Officer or Executive Committee Member to email them directly.

History

The Association of Law Teachers was founded in 1965 to represent the growing interest in law in Regional Colleges of Technology, further education colleges and schools. It now engages largely with university-based legal education. We have developed into a vibrant, welcoming, and inclusive community of academics, professionals and practitioners engaged in legal education across the world.

Vision

Our vision is as follows:

To promote the development of legal education as a vibrant and inclusive field where learning and teaching are fully valued and supported.
To ensure that law teachers’ contributions to the discipline of law are fully acknowledged and amplified
To ensure that law teachers are connected, skilled, confident and able to innovate to promote the social mission of universities and maximise the potential of students.

Mission

Our stated charitable objects are the advancement of legal education for the public benefit, in particular, but not exclusively, the development, study, understanding, and use of the educational aspects of law and its teaching and other forms of dissemination.Achieving these objects involves us connecting and empowering our members, enhancing the contribution of law teachers in all areas of our discipline. We seek to support each other in our efforts to create the best learning possible for all our students, fostering supportive, collegiate and inclusive learning and teaching environments. We also aim to be at the forefront of shaping policy which supports our vision and mission.

Our Values

We empower each other and build on our individual and collective strengths through the creation of a welcoming, diverse and vibrant community of practice.
We are curious about each other and about our students in order to learn about the impacts our approaches to learning and teaching can have.
We value learning and teaching as a core part of what universities and other educational establishments do.
We support pedagogical research and other research which furthers our understanding of learning and teaching in law.
We represent the voice of law teachers in the UK and strive to ensure this voice is heard within broader discussion, dialogue and change involving law, legal education, higher education and other relevant topics.
We collaborate and actively seek connections both in the UK and internationally, and across law, education and beyond– the more we connect and work together the stronger our collective voice becomes.

Our Long Term Strategic Aims

The quality of law teaching improves, benefiting the public and enhancing the sustainability of legal education.
Law teachers are equipped and empowered to help students maximise their life chances and create environments where all students can learn
Law teaching and evidence-based scholarship has parity with research and other activities in terms of support, recognition and rewards
People who teach law are connected, feel supported, valued and have a sense of belonging throughout all stages of the law teaching lifespan.
People who teach law lead enjoyable, enriching and fulfilling careers.

Organisational Objectives and Key Results for 2023-2027

1. Intentionally design our offering of events, grants and prizes and other activities by the end of 2024 for January 2025 to September 2027.

A. Conduct a community-needs assessment of membership and potential members.

B. Decide what to stop, do, and do better.

C. Create a Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) framework to be able to gather evidence that our offering works and are moving us closer to our Long Term Strategic Aims.

D. Using learning from the MEAL framework to make improvements to accessibility and quality of our offering where needed.

2. Following the development of our offering, develop our approach to how we communicate about our work.

A. Review our ‘brand’ both visual and narrative.

B. Create a clear and consistent approach to communications across social media, newsletters, the website, other external communications and all programme areas.

C. Develop a long-term communications plan.

3. Increase our membership by 20% by 2027

A. Review the current Member journey/experience and continue to make improvements to onboarding and overall experience.

B. Consider new target groups and how to make them aware of the Association.

C. Agree how to resource membership recruitment drive, i.e will there be a budget for this?

4. Explore new income streams and develop an income generation plan.

5. Develop our Governance to ensure we are following best practices for a CIO.

6. Continue to support the international growth and reputation of The Law Teacher journal.