Associate Professor in UL's School of Law, Dr Laura Cahillane has won Legal Educator of the Year at the Irish Law Awards.
The Irish Law Awards recognise excellence in the legal profession in Ireland, and a number of achievements led to Dr Cahillane’s award including her research-led teaching: “I'm at the coalface of constitutional law in Ireland. I've advised the Oireachtas and government departments on a number occasions. I've been involved in cases before the courts, including the big one last year, the Heneghan case, which has led directly to legal changes.
“Being involved at that level of legal change is a massive advantage to your teaching in terms of being able to discuss the reality of the law with your students and being able to make it real for them so that it's not just something that they're hearing about in a classroom, but they're actually seeing it happening and you can bring that reality to them.”
Dr Cahillane has introduced innovative teaching methods to UL including developing a module for Masters students on advanced constitutional law using a version of the flipped classroom.
“This approach is somewhat different for law, giving students readings and other sources in advance and then I facilitate the discussion in class. After class students complete a diary entry account of their experience in the class and reflect on how they can improve their critical thinking and their contributions for future classes.
“The class aims to develop the students, not just looking at content, but developing the students themselves as critical thinkers, as concerned citizens, and as people who will look at the law in a critical way to decide whether change is needed, and how do we bring change about.”
Dr Cahillane has also been involved in a number of student activities over the years including assisting with mooting competitions and running workshops with the Plassey Law Review student editors, as she herself is the editor of the Irish Judicial Studies Journal.
An educator since 2012, Dr Cahillane reflects on the joy of teaching: “One thing I find really enjoyable is when we start tackling a difficult area and at the start, you can see the students are a little bit frustrated. When it's something that's really tricky, hard to understand, but as we start working through it, when you see that it clicks with them, they start to get it.
“I love that moment when you can actually see on their faces that they're so delighted with themselves and now it makes sense, they can understand it.”
She currently teaches a number of constitutional law modules and also modules such as research methods, methodologies for LLM dissertations.
Dr Cahillane said it felt surreal to win Legal Educator of the Year surrounded by her peers: “It validates a lot of the work that you do, and it is lovely to feel that your work is appreciated. As academics, I think we put a huge amount of time and thought into our teaching and how to make it as good as we possibly can, but sometimes things are so busy that you don't always stop and reflect on what you're doing.”
Crediting her “great colleagues” in UL’s School of Law, she added: “It's a very supportive environment for teaching and learning, and good teaching, I think, comes from being in a good collaborative teaching environment.”