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Legal education, social mobility and employability: possible selves, curriculum intervention and the role of legal work experience

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Abstract

This article interrogates a number of assumptions underpinning the recent focus on employability and social mobility within legal education and the legal profession – in particular the capacity of legal work experience to support these policy objectives. It draws on research evidence to argue that a narrow focus upon the individual acquisition of skills and attributes fails to capture the fuller complexity of legal employability as a negotiated, situated process. It shows how the structuring properties of the field reduce the capacity of employability initiatives to disrupt the patterns of social and cultural reproduction that frame access to the legal profession. In this context, the potential of curriculum intervention to enhance employability is inhibited by the structural constraints upon the possible selves that law students are able to imagine. It suggests that students’ opportunities are not only shaped by their past, but are also constrained by their possible futures.

Acceptance Date May 6, 2015
Publication Date May 6, 2015
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Journal of Law and Society
Print ISSN 0263-323X
Publisher Wiley
Pages 173-201
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2015.00704.x
Publisher URL https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2015.00704.x

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