At the Faculty Council meeting on February 12, a strong majority of the Council voted to approve the recommendations in the Final Report of the Standing Curriculum Committee (the “Committee”). This vote arrived after 6 months of research, consultation and discussion by the members of the Committee. In this article we aim to explain what was approved, the process that was employed, and areas that will require continued advocacy.
What is Changing?
There are four main curriculum changes as a result of the Faculty Council vote: (1) Administrative Law is becoming a mandatory Upper Year course; (2) Legal Research and Writing is becoming a 2-credit course for first year students; (3) a Legal Methods intensive course will be offered for two weeks before the start of the core first year courses; and (4) the core first year courses will be offered on a semestered basis, with each student’s small group course continuing to be offered on a year long basis.
First Change: Administrative Law
Administrative Law is being removed from the 1L program and will become a mandatory Upper Year course. The course can be taken in either 2L or 3L, but will become a pre- or co-requisite for appropriate Upper Year courses. Based on the feedback received from students and professors, this was an uncontroversial proposal.
Second Change: Expanded Legal Research and Writing
LRW will become a graded 2-credit course offered in the fall semester of 1L. In the Committee’s consultations with students, enhanced LRW instruction emerged as the most widely desired curriculum change. The Committee also heard loud and clear that the current first year LRW program suffers from a variety of issues that can be rectified under the proposed approach. Based on the feedback received from students and professors, this was an uncontroversial proposal.
Third Change: Legal Methods Intensive Course
After a review of the current academic orientation program, the Committee felt that students were not receiving an adequate introduction to the legal skills and foundational techniques necessary to succeed in law school. This course will be structured as a two-week intensive introduction before Labour Day. The course will be ungraded (it will be offered on a credit/no credit basis), but each student will receive individualized feedback on a practice exam written at the end of the course.
This proposal was more contentious than the previous two, as it will require 1L students to begin school in August rather than September. This will undoubtedly impose burdens on some first year students (for example, lost summer income, increased childcare needs, and the cost of another month’s worth of rent). However, we believe students will benefit from this change overall. First, the Legal Methods course is filling a curricular need and standardizing our approach to inculcating foundational legal skills in the first year program. Second, students will also benefit from having more total instruction in first year while at the same time having less instruction per week. (When compared to a variety of law schools in North America, UofT Law’s annual instruction hours are low whereas our weekly instruction hours are high.)
The Financial Aid Committee will be incorporating the increased costs associated with potentially moving a month earlier into the 1L financial aid considerations. As discussed below, the SLS will continue to advocate for increased accommodations for first year students as a result of this change.
Fourth Change: Semesterization
The largest change to the 1L curriculum is the move to a semestered model. There was a large amount of research and debate that went into the consideration of a semestered format for 1L courses, with many points raised both for and against the model. Some of the main trade-offs concerned the benefits of intellectual pluralism versus increased focus on a smaller number of subjects; and the length of time it takes for some students to effectively learn how to study law versus the distribution of the exam burden at different times of the year. After extensive consultation, the Final Report endorsed a semestered model that incorporates a year-long small group.
Students will have two final exams in December and three final exams in April, resulting in more preparation time between exams. When 1L students finish their first semester, their Statement of Grades will contain four reported grades: 2 core courses, LRW, and small group. Please see Figure 1 for a visual depiction of the new format of the 1L curriculum and an indicative academic calendar.
Figure 1 – New Format of the 1L Curriculum
The Process
The process leading up to the Final Report involved extensive consultation and discussion, reaching back over a number of years. The Committee consulted previous reports put together by Dean’s Committees and the SLS regarding the 1L curriculum, LRW program and student workload. The SLS members of the Committee conducted focus groups in November, solicited email feedback regarding perceived curricular gaps in the 1L program, and helped host a Town Hall on the proposed changes. The Committee also hosted two Faculty-specific Town Halls and received oral feedback on the Interim Report at the January Faculty Council meeting. An extensive discussion also took place at the February Faculty Council meeting.
The Final Report was voted on at Faculty Council in two segments. The first segment, comprising the first three changes, passed almost unanimously. The second segment, comprising the semesterization question, passed with roughly 75% support.
The Road Ahead
Our work is not done simply because the changes have been approved at Faculty Council. The SLS will continue to work on the appropriate implementation of the changes. Specifically, the SLS will take an active role in developing the Legal Methods and LRW courses. Now that December practice tests will no longer be offered, innovation will be required to ensure students feel prepared for their two final exams in December. Further, the SLS will advocate to ensure students arriving in August will receive sufficient support, and that all changes are closely monitored.
We believe that these changes will improve the 1L program and student experience, and we hope that next year’s SLS will continue to take an interest in ensuring our first year program is the best it can be.
