Fake it till you make it : using Second Life to teach practical legal skills

Legal educators have the opportunity to embrace major online developments to complement existing teaching and learning initiatives. One of those developments is Second Life, an interactive, virtual world or ‘metaverse’ in which users interact as avatars in a similar way to real, or first, life. Avatars can buy things, build houses, run businesses, meet people and develop personal and professional relationships. In an educational setting, Second Life presents significant opportunities for real-time interaction and engagement between students and teaching staff. This paper explores the potential for using Second Life to teach practical legal skills. It draws upon the authors’ various experiences in teaching practical legal training and mooting. The authors explain how Second Life works, covering both live interactions between avatars and recorded ‘machinima’, and examine the practical and pedagogical rationales for using a virtual world such as Second Life for teaching and learning. It is well established that law students benefit from the opportunity to practise legal skills before using them in real life. Practice involving avatars in Second Life allows students to ‘fake it’ in the virtual world until they ‘make it’ in real life. While there is real pedagogical potential for using Second Life in legal education, there are also some important issues and constraints. This paper examines a range of practical, technological and access issues that need to be addressed to ensure that using Second Life advantages all students in the cohort, not just those with ready access to high-speed computer resources. The paper also sets out plans for a pilot of Second Life in the School of Law at the University of Western Sydney. These plans include construction of a virtual moot court, development of simulations for practical legal skills, such as negotiation and client interviewing, and the use of Second Life as part of training law students for volunteer clinical practice in the Parramatta Community Justice Clinic.