Skip to main content
Queen Mary Academy
  1. Queen Mary Academy
  2. Educators
  3. Resources
  4. Graduate Attributes
  5. All case studies
  6. From Theory to Practice: Using a TED-Style Talk Competition to Embed Sustainability and Innovation in Clinical Legal Education

From Theory to Practice: Using a TED-Style Talk Competition to Embed Sustainability and Innovation in Clinical Legal Education

QLegal
Profile Photo of Szabina Horvath

Szabina B Horvath

Lecturer of Law

Future of Law: Green Talks (“GT”) is a TED-style competition for postgraduate law students delivered by qLegal, the pro bono commercial law clinic at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies. As an extracurricular initiative, it complements the formal curriculum through practice-oriented and interdisciplinary learning.

Responding to a need

The project was initially piloted as a competition open to both students and alumni and has since been embedded within qLegal programmes to support the scalable delivery of practical learning experiences.

As set out in QMUL’s 2030 Strategy, there is a growing need to equip students with the skills and knowledge required to open doors to opportunity and enhance employability outcomes.

Students seek opportunities to connect legal education with real-world impact, particularly on climate and environmental issues. However, within traditional legal education, opportunities to explore the intersection of law, sustainability, and innovation in an applied, skills-based context remain limited.

GT was developed to address this gap by creating a space where students can:

  • engage with real-world sustainability challenges
  • explore how innovation across sectors influences legal frameworks
  • develop professional skills aligned with employer expectations [1]

Objectives

GT was designed to support QMUL’s ACE (Active Curriculum for Excellence)  Education Approach and considered the World Economic Forum’s ‘The Future of Jobs Report 2025’ through two interrelated objectives:

Educational

  • Develop interdisciplinary understanding of law in the context of sustainability and innovation [2]
  • Encourage systems-based thinking and critical engagement with global challenges [3]

Professional (aligned with employer expectations)

  • Build confidence in public speaking and storytelling [4]
  • Strengthen commercial awareness and sector understanding
  • Facilitate engagement with legal professionals and career pathways
I used to dread public speaking, but my confidence has grown tremendously. Having spoken in front of Ropes & Gray and Bloomberg professionals at their offices, I now feel able to speak anywhere.
— Learner

Approach used

GT is a competition in which students develop six-minute, TED-style talks exploring how innovation across sectors, for example technology, business and policy, may shape legal responses to sustainability challenges.

The programme includes:

  • Induction and onboarding: introducing qLegal, the rules of the participation, the competition theme and expectations. Students receive training on future-focused skills, including AI for lawyers, self-reflection, and feedback, etc.
  • Team work: unlike a traditional TED Talk format, students in GT work in pairs, fostering collaboration, joint decision-making, and the ability to manage timelines and coordinate competing commitments.
  • Mentorship: connecting students with external legal professionals including legal practitioners from organisations such as Ropes & Gray (R&G), and Bloomberg and alumni peer mentors.
  • Workshops by qLegal: supporting idea development, structure, and delivery. This includes a speed-networking session, during which students discuss their topic ideas one-to-one.
  • Dress rehearsal and feedback from mentors, refining both content and presentation style.
  • Final showcase event: where students present to a panel of external expert judges from R&G and Bloomberg, at R&G’s office and receive feedback.
  • Reflective practice: students attend an in-person reflection session and are encouraged to apply Gibbs' Reflective Cycle to critically reflect on their learning and experience.

Stakeholder collaboration is supported through:

  • targeted recruitment and matching processes
  • clear communication, guide documents, and structured timelines
  • ongoing support and feedback mechanisms

This collaborative model enhances both the learning experience and the professional relevance of the initiative.

Innovation and Pedagogical Approach

GT reflects a distinctive, evidence-informed approach to education, grounded in:

  • Experiential learning[1], enabling students to apply knowledge in a practical context
  • Interdisciplinary thinking, integrating law with technology[2], business, and sustainability[3]
  • Real-world problem solving[4], focused on contemporary global challenges

 The TED-style format plays a central pedagogical role, requiring students to:

  • translate complex ideas into clear, accessible narratives
  • engage diverse audiences
  • communicate with confidence and precision

Peer learning: Students learn from one another by working in pairs and engaging with peer mentors.

Gamification:

  • The competition format introduces an element of gamification, increasing student engagement and motivation.
  • Awards and recognition also provide students with achievements they can highlight on their CVs.

This approach supports the development of skills that are essential but often under-emphasised in legal education, including persuasion, storytelling, and public-facing communication. By situating law within a broader ecosystem shaped by innovation and societal change, GT promotes a more connected and future-facing understanding of legal practice.

Impact

The GT initiative has contributed to enhanced student engagement, skills development, and professional readiness through an interdisciplinary, practice-based learning experience.

Data collection and analysis: Evaluation drew on participation data, student feedback from reflection sessions, informal discussions and emails, alongside mentor feedback and judges’ observations. Quantitative responses were summarised descriptively, while qualitative feedback was reviewed thematically to identify recurring themes and triangulate findings across different perspectives.

Impact on Students

  • Increased confidence in public speaking and presentation, particularly when communicating complex ideas to non-specialist audiences. During post-programme reflection sessions, 11 of 12 students reported increased confidence as a result of their participation.

Improved ability to structure and deliver clear, concise, and persuasive arguments. Student pairs developed and delivered a TED-style talk, 

  • presenting to a panel of judges and receiving consistently strong feedback on both content and delivery.
  • Professional exposure, career insights: Enhanced commercial awareness, including understanding how legal practice is shaped by developments in technology, business, and sustainability. The 12 students had the opportunity to visit the judging law firm’s office. External mentors provided insight into legal practice to all students, with six students visiting mentors’ offices and four receiving additional career support, including CV and interview advice.
  • Student feedback during reflection sessions indicates high levels of engagement and satisfaction, with participants highlighting the value of:
    • real-world challenges: Students addressed contemporary sustainability challenges, including green FinTech, sustainable fashion, aviation, green investment, the role of lawyers in sustainability, and intellectual property in advancing the SDGs.
    • structured feedback and rehearsal opportunities
  • Development of teamwork, time management, and project coordination skills through paired working.
  • Career impact: three students reported interest in sustainability-related careers, while two used the experience in job interviews and reported improved interview performance.

Impact on the Learning Environment

  • A scalable model for embedding sustainability and innovation within legal education – used the structure to set up another, similar thematic competition
  • Strengthened engagement with external stakeholders, including alumni and legal professionals
  • Contribution to an inclusive, peer-led learning culture through the involvement of peer mentors

Wider and Instiutional Impact

  • Supports the employability agenda through the development of career-relevant skills, and students who win awards may stand out more
  • Embeds sustainability and interdisciplinary thinking within the student experience
  • Enhances the visibility of practice-based initiatives

Recommendations

Key Learnings

GT demonstrated that students value interdisciplinary, real-world challenges, while mentorship, professional interaction and skills development can strengthen engagement and learning. Based on these insights and the challenges experienced, future organisers should:

  • Prioritise in-person engagement: Build in face-to-face student meetings and, where possible, mentor office visits.
  • Establish clear coordination: Set agreed timelines, responsibilities and communication channels for all stakeholders.
  • Provide structured preparation: Use targeted guidance and rehearsals while allowing students creative freedom.

Recommendations for educators

The GT model can be scaled and adapted across disciplines through two approaches:

  • Discipline-based delivery: departments can replicate the model within extracurricular activities or existing modules, adapting the sustainability challenge to their discipline while retaining the core elements of practical competition, teamwork, external mentoring, skills development, presentation and reflection.
  • Cross-disciplinary collaboration: departments could partner with qLegal or other disciplines to create shared sustainability challenges, bringing together students from different fields (e.g. law and technology) to develop interdisciplinary responses, supported by relevant external experts.

Both approaches provide a practical way to embed sustainability and future-ready skills across the wider curriculum.

 

We realised that the law can achieve far more than we initially imagined, and we appreciated that the judges engaged with our idea as though we were colleagues, offering thoughtful feedback and discussion.
— Learner

References

  • World Economic Forum (2025) The Future of Jobs Report 2025. Geneva: World Economic Forum. Available at: The Future of Jobs Report 2025 (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

  •  

    Jane Holder, ‘“Doing the Sustainable Development Dance”: Tracing a Critical Route from the Education for Sustainable Development Movement to Environmental Justice in Legal Education’ (2012), Current Legal Problems, 65(1), pp. 145–176. https://doi.org/10.1093/clp/cus012

  •  

    World Economic Forum (2025) What are the most essential skills in the workplace of tomorrow? [Video]. Available at: World Economic Forum (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

  •  

    World Economic Forum (2025) Skills gaps are the biggest barrier to business transformation around the world [Video]. Available at: World Economic Forum (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

  • [1] Richard Grimes and Jasper Gibbons, ‘Assessing Experiential Learning – Us, Them and the Others’ (2016) 23(1) International Journal of Clinical Legal Education 107 https://doi.org/10.19164/ijcle.v23i1.492 accessed 17 August 2026.

  •  

    [2] Lucia Otoyo, Alan Russell, Kim Silver and Andy Unger, ‘Legal Education Meets Computer Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Teaching LawTech’ in Ann Thanaraj and Kris Gledhill (eds), Teaching Legal Education in the Digital Age: Pedagogical Practices to Digitally Empower Law Graduates (Routledge 2022) 131. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429351082-11

  •  

    [3] Jane Holder, ‘“Doing the Sustainable Development Dance”: Tracing a Critical Route from the Education for Sustainable Development Movement to Environmental Justice in Legal Education’ (2012), Current Legal Problems, 65(1), pp. 145–176. https://doi.org/10.1093/clp/cus012

  •  

    [4] Cath Sylvester, Jonny Hall and Elaine Hall, ‘Problem-Based Learning and Clinical Legal Education: What Can Clinical Educators Learn from PBL?’ (2004) 4 International Journal of Clinical Legal Education 39 https://doi.org/10.19164/ijcle.v4i0.110

Back to top