From Lecture Hall to Policy Desk: A Science-for-Policy Session for Law Students

Key features in a nutshell

• This format introduces law students and early-career legal researchers to academic policy engagement through two short scenario-based exercises embedded in a regular spring school programme
• The first exercise trains participants to quickly extract key messages from academic and policy publications under real-time pressure, role-playing as parliamentary staffers preparing a same-day briefing
• The second exercise uses Roger Pielke Jr.’s ‘honest broker’ framework to help participants critically reflect on the different roles researchers can play when advising policymakers
• Both exercises require minimal preparation from facilitators and participants alike making this an easy addition to existing curricula – legal or otherwise

How did the format work?

Step 1: Conceptualization and Curriculum Design

Together with colleagues from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa and Basel University, the authors organised the Spring School ‘Criminal Law and the Anthropocene: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives and Critical Approaches’ in Pisa in May 2026, for Master’s and doctoral students.

The Spring School comprised legal and interdisciplinary lectures, panel discussions, and writing workshops. The organisers deliberately sought to integrate a dedicated Science-for-Policy session for two key reasons:

1. Lack of formal training: Although legal scholars frequently advise policymakers, they rarely receive formal training on how to communicate their expertise effectively or reflect on their role as science advisers.
2. Careers in policymaking institutions: Many law graduates pursue careers in policymaking institutions. When drafting legislation on complex issues like climate change, they must seek expertise from natural scientists whose technical terminology and publication formats differ significantly from legal scholarship. These differences make it challenging for both sides to understand each other.

Since we had already collaborated with the ENGAGEgreen project at Goethe University, we knew the team was developing a Policy Engagement Toolkit, including teaching and learning materials. We approached the ENGAGEgreen team and presented our idea for a science-policy session; they provided descriptions of two exercises for us to use.

Step 2: Run the science-for-policy Session

The one-hour session was structured around two practical exercises followed by plenary discussions:

• Exercise 1: Assessing publication acessibility (The eight-minute challenge)

Participants were assigned the roles of busy parliamentary staffers tasked with briefing an MP on salient policy issues (natural disasters and pesticide taxation). Working under extreme time pressure, participants had just eight minutes to scan four academic and policy-oriented publications to extract key messages and judge their readability.

• Exercise 2: Reflecting advisory roles (The honest broker)

Participants analysed a scenario involving an interdisciplinary research team on nutrition asked by a mayor’s office for policy advice. Working in small groups, participants matched fictitious statements from team members with ideal-type advisory roles as conceptualised in Roger Pielke Jr.’s The Honest Broker (Pure Scientist, Science Arbiter, Issue Advocate, and Honest Broker).

Both exercises concluded with an interactive plenary discussion; twenty students and early career researchers participated in the session.

Step 3: Evaluation and participant feedback

Participant feedback was very positive. For many students and early-career researchers, working with concrete policy scenarios was a completely new experience. The session proved to be a highly effective, light-touch way to introduce academic policy engagement. While no formal evaluation results are available, the final discussion highlighted a productive controversy between the scientification of politics and the politicisation of science – an ambivalence we had deliberately addressed. Students engaged actively in this discussion, reflecting on the need to develop a self-understanding as researchers while recognising the limits, fallibility, and contingency of scientific knowledge in policy advice. The fact that this space for self-reflection emerged spontaneously in response to students’ contributions was positively received afterwards. The session can easily be integrated into standard university law curricula, or doctoral training.

Tasks and resources: Brief description of the tasks and resources needed by scientists, knowledge exchange officers/research managers and policymakers

Workshop facilitators

It took us approximately 3–4 hours to prepare, run, and evaluate the session. The teaching materials provided by the ENGAGEgreen project team were very helpful and easy to use.

Participating researchers and students

Participating doctoral researchers and students did not need to prepare in advance. They simply needed to bring a laptop to take part in the two exercises.

Policymakers

This was the first time we ran this session, and we deliberately kept it simple: we did not invite external policymakers since the spring school took place in Pisa, away from our usual Frankfurt-based networks. In hindsight, we do see clear added value in including policy professionals in future iterations, particularly junior policy professionals, who might be just as interested in sharing their own expertise needs with doctoral researchers and Master’s students as the students are in learning from them. For institutions replicating this format outside their home city, our advice would be to reach out to local or regional policy contacts at the host institution early on.

Sources and further reading

• Erasmus+ project ENGAGEgreen, accessed on 20 August 2026.
• Spring School Criminal Law and the Anthropocene. Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives and Critical Approaches, accessed on 20 August 2026.
• ENGAGEgreen exercise: “Assessing the Accessibility of Policy Publications“, accessed on 20 August 2026.
• ENGAGEgreen exercice: “The Nutrition Guide Dilemma“, accessed on 20 August 2026.

Pictures

Do you want to know more about the policy engagement toolkit?

Do you want to share your experience in policy engagement? Do you think about contributing to the policy engagement toolkit? Feel free to contact Tome Sandevski via science-policy@pvw.uni-frankfurt.de