Role
Jane is a qualified solicitor and the Professor of Professional Legal Education at Nottingham Law School, working with colleagues in the Centre for Legal Education, of which she is the director. In 2019, she received the NTU Vice Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Academic Practice in recognition of her work.
She supervises and examines LLM, PhD, EdD and D Legal Practice students working on projects in legal and professional education. She is also a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy; was a Visiting Professor at the University of Limoges; and a member of the International Advisory Board of the International Journal of the Legal Profession. She is currently a member of the Education and Membership Committee of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators; the Education and Training Committee of the Nottinghamshire Law Society and the steering group of the Legal Education Research network.
Career overview
Jane qualified as a solicitor in 1990, working in private practice as a commercial and general litigation lawyer. She has also worked as a teacher of English as a foreign language in Spain. She joined Nottingham Trent University in 1993.
Research areas
Jane's PhD was on the learning of early career litigation solicitors. Jane has worked on projects for legal and educational regulators and professional bodies in, to date, more than 20 different countries (Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Dominica, England and Wales, Grenada, Guyana, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Mauritius, Mongolia, Montserrat, Republic of Ireland, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago). This includes the influential Legal Education and Training Review in 2011-2013, the most comprehensive review of legal education in England and Wales since 1971.
She has presented at conferences in Australia, Hong Kong, Italy and Turkey as well as in the USA and UK.
Her ORCID ID is 0000-0002-9815-8804
External activity
Jane's memberships are as follows:
- Advance HE (formerly the Higher Education Academy)
- Association of Law Teachers
- British Educational Research Association
- Law and Society Association
- Law Society of England and Wales
- Legal Education Research Network
- Society of Legal Scholars
- Society for Advanced Legal Studies
- Society for Research into Higher Education
- Socio-Legal Studies Association
Sponsors and collaborators
- Asia Foundation
- Bar Standards Board
- Canadian Centre for Professional Legal Education
- Chartered Institute of Arbitrators
- CILEx Regulation
- Council for Licensed Conveyancers
- IMPACT Justice, Caribbean Law Institute Centre
- Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (University of London)
- Law Society of Hong Kong
- Northumbria University
- Solicitors Regulation Authority
- Tertiary Education Commission of Mauritius
- University of Limoges
- University of Mauritius
- University of Nottingham
- University of Warwick
- US State Department
- Yerevan State University
Jane has also worked with a number of law firms, reviewing, designing and delivering in-house education programmes for practitioners.
Publications
CHING, J., FERRIS, G. and JARMAN, J., 2022. 'To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger': the vulnerability of the young lawyer in ethical crisis. Legal Ethics. ISSN 1460-728X
CHING, J., 2020. Solicitors' rights of audience, competence and regulation: a responsibility rights approach. Legal Studies. 41(4) pp. 585-602 ISSN 0261-3875
CHING, J. and MAHARG, P., 2020. 'Complicitous and contestatory': a critical genre approach to reviewing legal education in the global, digital age. In: Modernising legal education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 239-257. ISBN 9781108475754
CHING, J., 2018. Multiplicity and mutability in professional legal education in England and Wales. In: Jahrbuch der Rechtsdidaktik 2017. Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, pp. 279-324. ISBN 9783830538400
CHING, J. and HENDERSON, P., 2016. Pre-qualification work experience in professional legal education. Nottingham: Nottingham Trent University.
CHING, J. and HENDERSON, P., 2016. Pre-qualification work experience in professional legal education: appendices. Nottingham: Nottingham Trent University.
CHING, J., 2016. Pre-qualification work experience in professional legal education: literature review. Nottingham: Nottingham Trent University.
WEBB, J., CHING, J., MAHARG, P. and SHERR, A., 2013. Setting standards: the future of legal services education and training regulation in England and Wales: the final report of the Legal Education and Training Review independent research team, June 2013. Legal Education and Training Review.
Press expertise
Jane can offer expertise on the education of legal practitioners, particularly post-classroom, and the regulation of legal education as well as on learning in the workplace and reflective learning.