Innovative and effective teaching methods for legal courses

Abstract

Law has always been associated with teaching general Theories and principles. Despite it, for teaching law, the most important issue is to teach the application of the above-mentioned theories and principles with practice and to make visible these connections to students. Another conceptual problem is the circumference of the law. Law includes several areas: ex. Criminal law, contract law, contract law, private law, property law, etc. This means that every part of the law needs a specific strategy of teaching. The main strategy of teaching law should be, making connections between theory and practice. So, while teaching law it is important to use methods that will help students understand how the law works in real life. Another main challenge while teaching law is to develop critical thinking and analytical skills. Law is changing from time to time so, we should teach students to use, interpret and analyze legal norms. For this, it is important to use the open-book method. The main challenge of the lecturer is to identify the content and goals of the course and build the methods that will be most appropriate for the course.  For giving theoretical knowledge it is effective to use: working on literature, discussion, demonstration, etc. For teaching practical skills, it is better to use various types of simulation, drafting documents, analyzing documents, using movies/videos while teaching, etc. The paper includes several parts:

• Main challenges of law teaching;
• Building strategy for teaching various law courses;
• Methods of teaching law and their potential results;
• Conclusion (recommendations)