Introduction

Welcome to “Learning in Place: A Living Landscape of Practice” (3rd ed). The name of this text is drawn from the book Learning in Landscapes of Practice: Boundaries, Identity, and Knowledgeability in Practice-Based Learning  by Etienne Wenger-Trayner, Mark Fenton-O’Creevy, Steven Hutchinson, Chris Kubiak and Beverly Wenger-Trayner (New York: Routledge, 2015). As they wrote,

“If the body of knowledge of a profession is a living landscape of practice, then our personal experience of learning can be thought of as a journey through this landscape.”

Lawyer’s personal experiences and embodied knowledge are always adding to the interpretation of law, mediating clients’ experiences, and impacting daily practice inside the firm, clinic, business, courtroom, tribunal, mediation, community meeting space, and the many other places law practice touches. That personal and community relationship with the practice of law is part of the landscape – one that changes over time and the changing seasons. Law students are typically exposed to a certain slice of that landscape in their doctrinal courses. They are exposed to an entirely different part of the landscape during a work-informed learning experience. This book focuses on the wider scope of practice, and the lawyer’s personal relationship with that practice, in (usually) one of law students’ first encounters with law “on the ground”.

Initially written for students in externship, internship and co-op placements, this text has expanded to include clinic students and students-at-law. New lawyers – particularly those who did not take part in work-informed learning – will find parts of this text useful. The reader will note that most references in this text focus on one Canadian province (Ontario) but similar materials and resources are typically available in other provinces and territories.

Conceptually, this book brings together a wide array of resources – from more traditional texts to online and informal resources, art, and memes. The heart of this text lies in the written contributions from law students (many of them now lawyers). Each term, students from Windsor Law and the College of Law, University of Saskatchewan, submit reflections of their choosing to augment the text. Their insights contain many powerful messages to their future colleagues about what many seasoned lawyers take for granted – from the operation of law offices (why don’t lawyers eat?) to experiences of disclosing disability in the workplace.

Because this text is open source, it is updated frequently. The text can be exported and printed at any time. Students who choose to print the text should check back with the text regularly to ensure they are using the most recent version.

All errors remain the primary author’s.