Grundtvig learning partnership project
Thirty delegates from 10 European countries met in London on 20th April as part of the EU Grundtvig funded Legal Learning Partnership.
Hosted by Law for Life, this was the second meeting of the partnership. The presentations and workshops provided a valuable opportunity to share information and ideas across Europe.
Law for Life presented a conceptual framework for legal capability and Advicenow described an awareness-raising project on equalities and discrimination. There was an overview of basic evaluation practice and an interactive session in which participants described their own evaluation experiences.
A conceptual framework for legal capability
Martin Jones from Law for Life presented a conceptual framework for legal capability. Martin had prepared a paper bringing together what we mean by legal capability and what key principles can be applied.
‘Legal capability isn’t just about knowledge of the law. It is also about knowing how to go about dealing with an issue, where to go, and what to do, and crucially how to do it.‘
Martin described the conceptual framework jointly developed with the Personal Finance Research Centre at the University of Bristol and the four legal capability domains. Participants worked through several rights scenarios to test the applicability of the capabilities and the strengths and weaknesses of evaluating legal capability in their own project environments.
Read the paper accompanying the 
presentation (221 KB) and more about the evaluation framework.
Best practices in public legal education
Clare Shirtcliff of Advice Services Alliance Advicenow described a project funded by the EU, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Public Legal Education Network to run an awareness-raising project on equalities and discrimination issues. The successes and failures of the project and the lessons learned were usefully discussed. Read more about Advicenow's awareness-raising project. Clare referred delegates to the evaluation report completed at the end of the project in November 2010.
Clare also spoke about ‘Five minute masterclass’ set up on the Is that discrimination? website, inviting other European organisations delivering equality PLE to post information about their work. Organisations from Iceland, Hungary, Croatia, Finland and Bulgaria had contributed case studies illustrating some of their PLE activities.
Evaluating Capabilities
John Seargeant, a Trustee of Law for Life and an experienced researcher and evaluator provided an overview of basic evaluation practice. John described the peculiarities of evaluating legal capability (arising from law-related education activities). He provided an interactive session in which participants described the evaluation experiences that they had. Read John's paper to accompany his presentation (238 KB).
Participants were also referred to a full report about the principles and practice involved in evaluating public legal education. Read researching and evaluating public legal education.
Grundtvig Learning Partnership Project
'Demanding fundamental rights: Law-related education in adult learning' is an important two year project funded through the ‘Grundtvig Partnership’ programme.
The 'Grundtvig Partnership’ programme is part of the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme and brings together adult education organisations from across seven European countries. All the partners are engaged in law-related adult education with diverse learner communities. This partnership project facilitates exchanges in knowledge, best practice and assesses experiences and strategies in designing, delivering and evaluating law-related adult education. Read more about the Grundtvig learning partnership project.
The meeting was sponsored by The Law Society.
The theme of the next partnership meeting will be on LGBT Parenting. It will be held in Athens on 7th and 8th June 2012 and coincides with Athens Pride.
For more information about the project, contact Martin Jones or Lisa Wintersteiger at Law for Life.
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