Teaching Transactional Law – a Case Study from Australia with Reference to the Us Experience

This paper considers the international trend towards the development of a transactional law focus within law schools by examining a subject taught in an Australian law school as a case study and with reference to the US experience. Key questions under examination include whether there is more that law schools can do to make law graduates practice-ready or practiceaware and, if so, what law schools should do to achieve this objective. The findings from a student survey are consistent with much of the US experience in terms of revealing the benefits of making more of the conventional materials and incorporating a broader range of teaching methodologies. The findings are also consistent in terms of confirming the challenges that transactional law subjects present across the range of relevant issues, including the design of the conceptual framework, the selection of appropriate teaching materials and the management of student expectations around assessment. This paper concludes by arguing that law schools are ideally placed to meet the challenges in this regard; in particular, they are ideally placed to use substantive law as the primary context in which to explore the relevance and application of law from a transactional perspective, providing students with greater insights not just into legal principles and doctrine, but also into transactions skills and the broader commercial context in which transactional lawyers operate.