York University's Osgoode Professional Development (OsgoodePD) is revolutionizing legal education with the launch of SIMPLE (SIMulated Professional Learning Environment), a cutting-edge digital case management platform. This innovative tool adds to Osgoode's array of experiential learning methods, aiming to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and real-world legal practice.
Simulation is a powerful way of learning in any profession, and in legal education is typically designed around moot court and trial advocacy courses. However, most legal work revolves around client files and client-centred work, which is often overlooked in simulation-based education.
To address this gap, OsgoodePD has partnered with U.S.-based simulation developers Forio to create SIMPLE which offers a form of simulation that is relatively new to Canadian professionals.
Paul Maharg
Paul Maharg, a consultant to OsgoodePD who created the first instance of SIMPLE in the U.K., led the project. The platform will be used in a range of courses, including the capstone module of the Professional LLM in Canadian Common Law, and will be included in other learning opportunities.
"SIMPLE complements legal learning by giving students the opportunity to apply what they have learned to simulated legal problems and interacting with simulated clients," says Victoria Watkins Phibbs, executive director of OsgoodePD and assistant dean at Osgoode Hall Law School.
The platform enables instructors to deliver multiple legal problems and "clients" at once, replicating the experience of legal practice. Unlike legal clinic work, it also enables instructors to embed legal problems and ethical issues into their simulations.
"It is a more structured way of learning lawyering in a low stakes and supportive environment," says Watkins Phibbs.
SIMPLE comprises two elements: a case management system and a simulation engine. The case management system enables learners to practise "transactional learning," where learners can be immersed in cases that range from very straightforward client actions (such as writing a single letter to a client) to representing a client in a complex case with multiple fictional players and nested tasks, and can span several weeks or longer. The simulation engine makes the simulation work under the hand of a facilitator. It also helps simulation authors to create a simulation, upload resources, test the simulation, run it, archive it and retrieve it for future use.
SIMPLE enables learners to work individually or in virtual firms to: practise legal transactions; discuss the transactions with supervisors, other professionals or each other; obtain feedback; and be assessed on their work in an environment that is safe from malpractice and negligent representation. It can also be used with other forms of simulation, such as simulated clients.
The platform's simulation engine allows authors and designers the flexibility to work on multiple transactions simultaneously, and a simulation designer can plan these across a span of time, from a few days to a few months. This helps learners gain experience in pacing a transaction, while learning the value of case review, preview, client communications and managing the arc of a transaction. Student lawyers working in virtual firms learn the values of collaboration, and the need for trust among the group of lawyers.
Watkins Phibbs says SIMPLE can also be used to help firms train articling students and associate lawyers, using simulations developed specifically for individual firms. With the emergence of artificial intelligence, many of the tasks done by new lawyers will be done by technology. Firms will need to develop new training tools for new lawyers to take on more complex tasks, more quickly.
"It is a big leap from new lawyer' to trusted advisor' and we believe that simulation will have an important role in that process," says Watkins Phibbs. "Osgoode graduates who experience SIMPLE will be better prepared for practice."
This story was originally featured in YFile, York University's community newsletter.
