Episode 67: Teaching Law the Student-Friendly Way with Sampo Mielityinen

As law schools are places for the development and betterment of society, shouldn’t they also foster creativity and innovation? Is law actually a design science? Should learning empathy be part of the law school curriculum? Is being student-friendly still a revolutionary act for law school teachers? And lastly, why should all lectures begin with a brief mindfulness session? We explore these questions and more in this episode with Sampo Mielityinen, a law teacher and developer of legal learning. Sampo is currently the head of the master’s program in legal design at Laurea University of Applied Sciences. Before this, Sampo worked as a teacher and teacher trainer at several Finnish universities, where he earned a reputation as an exceptionally innovative and student-friendly law school pedagogue. Sampo shares how he manifests his core values of teaching—creativity, playfulness, and presence—in practice, and how he sees the role of design in enhancing learning experiences. We also discuss what design can offer for legal education in general: various new models and tools to create something new, and perspectives on the human experience, to mention a few. Furthermore, Sampo talks about the legal design master’s program at Laurea and what he has learned about legal design during his first six months as the head of the program. We also hear some initial results from a survey conducted among the program's alumni and learn how students who have graduated from the program view its impact on their careers. Tune in to hear more!