成人大片

Co-coordinators:

Dr Beth Nosworthy
Room 309 Ligertwood Building
t: 8313 5543
e: beth.nosworthy@adelaide.edu.au 

David Wright (weeks 6-12)
Room 328 Ligertwood Building
t: 8313 4447 (work)
e: david.wright@adelaide.edu.au                       

Course Website:           

In this course, each student will receive two (one hour) lectures plus one (one hour) seminar per week.

All lectures will be held in Barr Smith South Lecture theatre.

The Legal Practitioners' Education and Admissions Council (LPEAC) sets rules for the academic requirements for admission to legal practice in South Australia. Students must demonstrate a satisfactory level of understanding and application of 11 core areas of legal knowledge (also known as the Priestly 11). This course teaches the following topics within these core areas: history and nature of equity, fraud in equity (including undue influence, equitable fraud, unconscionability, mistake, misrepresentation and estoppel), express trusts, resulting trusts, fiduciary relations, constructive trusts and remedies.

The Priestly 11 constitute the subjects that must be satisfactorily studied if the student wants to be admitted by the courts to work as a lawyer.  Equity is one of the Priestly 11.    The Priestly committee requires certain topics must be in the taught in the law degree.  These are:

1 (a) The nature of equity

(b) Equitable rights, titles and interests

(c) Equitable assignments

(d) Estoppel in equity

(e) Fiduciary obligations

(f) Unconscionable transactions

(g) Equitable remedies.

AND

2) Trusts with particular reference to the various types of trusts and the manner and form of their creation and variation. The duties, rights and powers of trustees should be included, as should the consequences of breach of trust and the remedies available to, and respective rights of, beneficiaries.

OR

Topics of such breadth and depth as to satisfy the following guidelines.

The topics should cover the elements of trust law, equitable doctrines apart from those relating to trusts, and equitable remedies. The following aspects of trusts law should be dealt with: various kinds of trusts; the rights, duties, powers of trustees; the consequences of breach of trust. Apart from trusts, the following equitable doctrines might be covered, for example, fiduciary obligations, equitable assignments, unconscionability and confidential information. The remedies of specific performance, injunction, declaration and damages in equity should be included.

This course has been structured to reflect these requirements.  Essentially the course is structured in line with second alternative.  So, the course will cover the elements of trust law, some equitable doctrines (in addition, to those relating to trusts, and equitable remedies).

In addition to the description of the Priestly 11 components of the course above, a student who has successfully completed Equity will have:

1. Knowledge and understanding of the content and techniques of the Law of Equity at advanced levels that are internationally recognised.
2. The ability to locate, analyse, evaluate and synthesise information from a wide variety of sources in a planned and timely manner.
3. An ability to apply effective, creative and innovative solutions, both independently and cooperatively, to current and future problems.
4. Skills of a high order in interpersonal understanding, teamwork and communication 
    

The required textbook for this course is:

Radan and Stewart, Principles of Australian Equity and Trusts (3rd edition, LexisNexis, 2015-2016).

Other useful academic texts:

Dal Pont and Cockburn, Equity & Trusts: In Principle (3rd edition, Thomson Reuters, 2013)
Heydon, Leeming and Turner, Meagher, Gummow & Lehane's Equity: Doctrines and Remedies (5th edition, LexisNexis, 2014)

The Dal Pont and Cockburn book is brief, but extremely useful as it has problems with solutions.  It cannot be used as a replacement for the required casebook, due to its nature as a 'summary' book, thanks to its length.  In order to keep it short, it has to make generalisations about the law, which are accurate, but lack the relevant detail required by this course - a lot of equity is about the details.  Rather, it is should be considered as a supplement to the required textbook.

A more difficult but also very useful text is Meagher, Gummow & Lehane's Equity: Doctrines and Remedies.  It suffers from the other extreme - almost too much detail - and it assumes that you already know equity.  It is a very useful reference book with a high level of discussion, but perhaps not the book for students to first go to find out about an area of equity.

It is the intention of this course to record all lectures and place them on MyUni.

The approach to learning and teaching for this course is by both lectures and seminars. The relationship of these is that lectures will be supported and more fully developed by problem-solving seminars, so as to develop material introduced in lectures and aid students understanding of the concepts.

Seminars will be held weekly, beginning in Week 2.  Seminars will both consolidate material covered in earlier lectures and canvas new material which will not be addressed in lectures.  Seminars are an important component of the student’s learning in this course. The communication skills developed in seminars by regularly and actively participating in discussions are considered to be most important by the School and are highly regarded by employers and professional bodies.

In this course, each student will receive two (one hour) lectures plus one (one hour) seminar. It is essential to realize that the University expects full-time students (that is, those taking 12 units per semester) to devote a total of 48 hours per week to their studies. As Equity is a 3 unit subject, a student should devote approximately 12 hours to it a week (obviously this is an average figure, as some weeks will be very busy with the assignment or preparing for the exam, while other weeks will be less busy). As students can see, the total contact hours per student totals 3 hours per week. Therefore, a student in this course would be expected to do approximately 9 hours work per week for this course in addition to the lectures and seminars times. It is very important that students begin working on their own (in addition to attending lectures and seminars) from the very start of this course. Without doing this, students are compromising their own learning outcomes.

Schedule of Topics

Week 1	History and Nature of Equity
Week 2	Express Trusts
Week 3	Express Trusts (cont.)
Week 4	Resulting Trusts
Week 5	Fraud in Equity
Week 6	Fraud in Equity (cont.)
Week 7	Fiduciary Relationships
Week 8	Fiduciary Relationships (cont.)
Week 9	Constructive Trusts
Week 10	Constructive Trusts (cont.)
Week 11	Remedies
Week 12	Summary and Revision

Assessment Item	% of final mark	Due date	Length	Redeemable	Learning Objectives
Case Analysis	20%	Case Analysis 1 2pm Friday 11th March	n/a	Yes (provided the mark is a passing one)	[1-4]
		Case Analysis 2 2pm Thursday 24th March
Casenote	20%	2pm Monday 18th April	1500 words	Yes (provided the mark is a passing one)	[1-4]
Final Exam	60%, 80% or 100%	Take Home Exam 2pm Tuesday 14th June	800 words	No	[1-4]
		Exam June Exam Period	1 hour (plus reading time)

It is NOT compulsory to attend lectures and/ or seminars. However attendance is strongly advised.The mark(s) a student receives for the casenote and/ or the case analysis is redeemable by the exam provided that the mark is a passing one. That is, the exam may count for 100% of the mark for this course, provided the mark for the casenote/ case analysis is greater than or equal to 50%.

The mark for the exam is NOT redeemable.

The best way to understand this assessment scheme is by examples:

• Example 1: say the student receives 60% for the case analysis, 90% for the casenote and 80% for the exam, the mark for the case analysis will be discarded and only the marks for the casenote and the exam will be counted.
• Example 2: say the student receives 90% for the case analysis, 60% for the casenote and 80% for the exam, the mark for the casenote will be discarded and only the marks for the case analysis and the exam will be counted.
• Example 3: say the student receives 80% for the case analysis, 90% for the assignment and 90% for the exam, the mark for the case analysis, the mark for the casenote and the exam will be counted.

1  Case Analysis
20% - Due 2pm Friday 11th March and 2pm Thursday 24th March

The case analysis is compulsory.  This case analysis is in two parts.  Each part will take the form of an online quiz.  Each part will focus primarily on one case, the identity of which students will be told in advance. This quiz is to enhance the student’s case reading ability. This ability is an extremely important skill for a good lawyer. In a court like the High Court frequently there are many judgments. Even within the majority judgment there may be multiple judgments, demonstrating subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) differences in judicial reasoning. It is imperative that students have the skill to emphasis both the similarities and divergences in the judgments in the one case.
The content of the law (that is, what the laws is) is NOT the focus of this case analysis. So although this is an Equity case, the case analysis will not be a test of your Equity knowledge. Rather, it will examine the ability to grapple with multiple judgments in one case.
Each part is worth 10% of the overall grade.  So in total this online case analysis will constitute 20% of the student’s final mark. It is redeemable, provided the total mark achieved is a passing one.

2  Casenote
20% - 1500 words - Due 2pm Monday 18th April

The casenote is compulsory.  The mark a student receives for the casenote is redeemable by the exam provided that the casenote mark is a passing one.
The casenote involves a case relating to Express Trusts (Topic Two).
The substance of the casenote question (the relevant part of Topic Two) will NOT form the focus of any examination question, although it may arise in the examination in an indirect and minor way. 

3  Final Exam
60%, 80% or 100% - Examinations Period

There will be two parts to the final exam, and each part will contain one question.  Both must be attempted.  The first part will be a Take Home Exam, while the second part will be a regular exam held in the regular exam period of June.  The two parts will have equal weighting and will each be worth 50% of the mark for the final exam. 

To be clear, both parts of the final exam are compulsory. 

Regarding the take home exam, there will be one question.  All students are to attempt this question.  The word limit for the take home exam is 800 words.  The question will be distributed at noon (or just before) on Friday 10th June via MyUni and student email.  It is due at 2pm on Tuesday 14 June.

Regarding the regular exam, the usual exam criteria apply.  There will be one question.  All students are to attempt this question.  This exam will go for one hour (plus reading time).  It is an open book examination, so any material (except library books) can be taken into the exam.     

Reminder: It is very important to remember that the University requires students to be available for exams as scheduled.  This applies to both the Primary and Supplementary/ replacement exams.

Exam period: Semester 1

Submission process:  You will be informed of all submission procedures when the assessment question is distributed.  Where possible, students will be requested to submit a copy of their assignment through Turnitin on MyUni.  By submitting a copy of your assignment through Turnitin you are agreeing to the following: (a) I declare that all material in this assessment is my own work except where there is clear acknowledgement and reference to the work of others. I have read the Policy on Cheating in Examinations and Related Forms of
Assessment. I have also read the University's Plagiarism Policy; (b) I give permission for my assessment work to be reproduced and submitted to other  academic staff for the purposes of assessment and to be copied, submitted and retained in a form suitable for electronic checking of plagiarism.

Late Submission: 5% of the total mark possible will be deducted for every 24 hours or part thereof that it is late, including each day on a weekend.  For example, an essay that is submitted after the due date and time but within the first 24 hour period, and that has been graded at 63%, will have 5% deducted, for a final grade of 58%.  An essay that is more than 24 hours late will lose 10%, etc.  Hard copy submissions made after 5.00pm on a Friday will be assumed to have been submitted on the next business day (i.e. Monday) and will be penalised accordingly.

Word Length:  Assignments which exceed the allocated length (word length) will be subject to a penalty of 5% of total marks possible per 100 words or part thereof. For example, with a word limit of 3,000, an essay graded 63% will have 5% deducted if it is 3001 words long, for a final grade of 58%, 10% if it is 3101 words long, etc.  Word length is calculated including all footnotes and headings within the text, but excluding cover page information and a bibliography, if supplied.  Quotations and all referencing information are included in the word count.

Extensions:  Extensions will be granted only for unexpected illness, hardship or on compassionate grounds in accordance with University Policy. Work commitments, travel, holidays or sporting engagements are not unexpected circumstances.  If you require an extension, you will need to use the on-line application form available on as soon as you are aware of the need for an extension, and before the due date of the assignment. The course coordinator will reply by email, determining whether an extension is warranted, what evidence is required to verify the student’s incapacity, and the length of the extension.  Evidence of the incapacity must be submitted with the assignment, and must be consistent with details in the email requesting the extension. If the details of the request for an extension, and the medical or other evidence verifying the extension are not consistent in all respects, the extension is nullified, and the assignment may be penalised. 

Style of written work: All written work in the Law school is required to comply with the approved Law School style guide, the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (available electronically at: ).

Feedback:  The casenote will be returned, having been marked and comments provided, three weeks after the due date.  The final exam will be returned after the Board of Examiners meeting in late July/early August.

Courses for which a result of conceded pass has been obtained may not be presented towards the degree requirements for the Bachelor of Laws or the Honours Degree of Bachelor of Laws programs, or any postgraduate law program, nor to satisfy prerequisite requirements within any law course.

The University Writing Centre provides academic learning and language development services and resources for local, international, undergraduate and postgraduate coursework students enrolled at the 成人大片.

Practical advice and strategies for students to master reading, writing, note-taking, time management, oral presentation skills, referencing techniques and exam preparation for success at university through seminars, workshops and individual consultations.

For more information please check out the Writing Centre website at  

Lex Salus Program

Lex Salus was founded in 2013 by Adelaide Law School Wellbeing officers Ms Corinne Walding, Ms Kellie Toole and Dr Mark Giancaspro. Lex Salus is an initiative of the Adelaide Law School aimed at raising law student awareness of the importance of mental, physical and nutritional health across all year levels of the degree, and of the various counselling, disability and equity services both within and outside the University that can provide help. Research shows that law students, both in Australia and in many jurisdictions around the world, experience the highest levels of stress, anxiety and depression out of any other discipline. Many do not get enough sleep, maintain a healthy diet or achieve a realistic work/life balance. Making matters worse, they are unwilling or afraid to speak up for fear of feeling 'weak' or because of the negative stigma that attaches to seeking help. Lex Salus is dedicated to tackling these problems head-on.

Counselling Service

The University Counselling Service provides a free and confidential service to all enrolled students. We encourage you to contact the Counselling service on 8313 5663 to make an appointment to deal with any issues that may be affecting your study and life. More information is available at /counselling_centre/. 

 

Further information regarding the Law School Policies and Procedures in relation to Supplementary Assessment, Extensions, and Remarks etc can be found at:

Plagiarism and other forms of cheating

Plagiarism is a serious act of academic misconduct. All students must be familiar with the Adelaide Law School Enrolment Guide, and should note in particular the sections relating to plagiarism, grievance procedures and academic conduct within the Law School and the University.

Plagiarism is a serious matter and is treated as such by the Law School and the University. Please be aware that “academic dishonesty” (which goes beyond plagiarism) can be a ground for a refusal by the Supreme Court of South Australia to refuse to admit a person to practice as a legal practitioner in South Australia.

Academic honesty is an essential aspect of ethical and honest behaviour, which is central to the practice of the law and an understanding of what it is to be a lawyer.