Units

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Sample subject outline - 6 Week Teaching Period - 1 2013

Note: Subject outlines often change before the semester begins. Below is a sample outline.

Rationale

The Australasian Professional Legal Education Council (APLEC) and the Law Admissions Consultative Committee LACC) have published standards for the pre-admission practical training of Australian legal practitioners (APLEC & LACC (2000) Practical legal training: competency standards for entry level lawyers). Those standards have been adopted in Queensland as part of the admission rules for the legal profession. This unit covers the core areas of ethics and professional responsibility, solicitors' trust accounts and file and risk management.

Aims

The aim of this unit is to equip you to demonstrate competence in ethical understanding and knowledge of solicitors' trust accounting and file and risk management at the level required for admission as a legal practitioner in Australia.

Objectives

On completion of this unit, you should be able to demonstrate competency in the areas listed below, at the level required for admission as a legal practitioner:

1. Ethical legal practice and professional responsibility


2. Solictors' trust accounting


3. File and risk management

Content

This unit consists of training in:

• Ethical understandings relevant to the practice of law and professional responsibility as it applies to legal practice


• Solicitors' trust accounting


• File and risk management

QUT expects graduates will have developed graduate capabilities of a kind and level appropriate to their award. This unit aims to develop the capabilities that are identified below within the context of the unit content.

Attitudinal skills
Ethical orientation
Social justice orientation

Cognitive skills
Problem solving
Discipline knowledge
Ethical knowledge

Communication skills
Written communication

Relational skills
Work independently
Team work
Diversity appreciation

Approaches to Teaching and Learning

This unit will involve you in attending a short attendance school (which may include weekends) to participate in briefing sessions, group work, workshops and skills performance activities such as interviewing.

The unit also relies on 'learning by doing' which in this context means that you learn by working through a series of problems that simulate real legal transactions or proceedings, or parts of them. Advice on how to approach each problem and hints to help you complete the problem are built into the problem materials. You will receive further assistance at the intensive weekends and on-line.

Because this unit forms part of your pre-admission training for the legal profession, you must participate in all prescribed teaching and learning activities and you must make a satisfactory or pass attempt at all the problems set for assessment.

Assessment

You undertake assessment in the context of working on the type of problems that you might encounter in real-life legal practice. You should expect to spend the equivalent of approximately 6 hours per week over a 13 week teaching period working on these problems. The problems are realistic legal tasks that will require you to demonstrate one or more of the following:

• an understanding of ethics and professional responsibility as they relate to the practice of law;


• the basic principles and rules of Solicitors' trust accounts; and


• work and risk management techniques.

You will be provided with a unit work schedule that will indicate that some assessment tasks are assessed on a satisfactory/not satisfactory basis. These are formative assessment items. The assessment statement will show that other problems are assessed on a 'graded' basis. These are summative assessment items.

Formative assessment (Satisfactory/Not satisfactory assessment items)

• workshops;


• individual comments on your work;


• peer review


• on-line feedback either to you individually or to the whole student cohort.

Although no marks are attached to these items, you must complete them all to a satisfactory standard to pass the unit. If your first attempt at one of these items is not satisfactory, you will be asked to redo it. The criteria for determining a satisfactory standard of performance is contained in the GradDipLegalPrac assessment policy.

Date Due: Multiple dates throughout the semester;
Weight: 0%.

Graded assessment

These items are marked according to criteria which are set out in the 'Marking Criteria' section of relevant problem materials.

Date Due - Multiple dates throughout the semester
Weight - 100%.

Assessment name: Laboratory/Practical
Relates to objectives: N/A
Weight: 100%
Internal or external: Internal
Group or individual: Individual
Due date: multiple dates

Academic Honesty

QUT is committed to maintaining high academic standards to protect the value of its qualifications. To assist you in assuring the academic integrity of your assessment you are encouraged to make use of the support materials and services available to help you consider and check your assessment items. Important information about the university's approach to academic integrity of assessment is on your unit Blackboard site.

A breach of academic integrity is regarded as Student Misconduct and can lead to the imposition of penalties.

Resource materials

We will provide you with electronic copies of the problems that you have to work through for the unit, via QUT Blackboard.

You will be able to access other resource materials via the QUT Library or internet.

Risk assessment statement

There are no extraordinary risks associated with this unit.

Disclaimer - Offer of some units is subject to viability, and information in these Unit Outlines is subject to change prior to commencement of semester.

Last modified: 19-Dec-2012