The working game was based on a guided approach to problem solving developed by Dr Marton Ribary (RHUL) and Dr Antony Starza-Allen (Surrey) and discussed in a paper forthcoming in the Legal Education Review. The working game focused on the fourth stage of the five-stage approach where students construct legal advice from pre-processed and categorised informational building blocks such as concepts, rules, case law, and logical frameworks.
A portmanteau representation of the problem question answer about the revoked offer for returning a lost cat called Puddles, created by one of the groups at the LEGENDFest Lego© working game at the University of Leeds on Tuesday 5 September 2023
The working game was held at the inaugural LEGENDFest organised by the Legal Educational Games: Evaluation, Network, Dissemination (LEGEND) network at the School of Law of the University of Leeds on Tuesday 5 September. Following the basic structure of the Lego© Serious Play© method, the working game started with a warm-up exercise where participants were asked to “build a duck” from no more than seven Lego© pieces.
The activity then progressed to a basic group build where participants were asked to “build a representation of contract”. This activity was carried out in three groups: one had access to Lego© bricks only, another also had some more complex shapes, while the third group had Lego© figures and other sophisticated pieces on their table. We wanted to see how the range of available Lego© pieces affect the way the three groups represent the conceptual structure of a contract.
The concluding complex group build was carried out in the same three groups. Participants were asked to build a representation of a problem question answer in response to a basic problem scenario related to the topic of contract formation (unilateral contract with a hint of revocation). The problem scenario included a cash reward offered for returning a lost cat called Puddles only to be revoked when the owner decides to replace Puddles with a dog. Participants were given a list of structured case law notes in which facts, rules and concepts, as the building blocks of a problem question answer, were all spelled out.
We expected that an abstract, analytical approach would be used by at least the one group which had access to Lego© bricks only. To our surprise, all three groups created a narrative representation. One produced a static 3D construction of the constituent elements of the problem scenario, another created a highly sophisticated portmanteau, while the third group (the one with Lego© bricks only) played out the problem scenario with what could have been recorded as a stop-motion animation.
The participants were reflective and playful legal educators themselves, so it is no surprise that the working game was not just a huge success, but also one which generated an exciting discussion how the activity could be developed further. Marton and Antony will continue adjusting the working game to shepherd students of a future workshop towards an abstract and conceptual approach which engages more with the building blocks of problem solving. One workshop will be held at the University of Surrey in November 2023, and another is planned for Royal Holloway, University of London in the spring of 2024. A corresponding paper will be drafted for a special issue of The Law Teacher on the topic of “New trends in teaching contract law” scheduled for the summer of 2025.
