The problem lies not in its material, but in its inconsistent delivery
When I talk to other students about their experiences in the first semester of law school, Legal Research & Writing (LRW) is the course I get the most diverse range of opinions on whether they enjoyed the class and what they learned from it.
In 2020, LRW was the subject of debate and scrutiny in the March Faculty Council meeting discussing proposed changes to the 1L curriculum, with faculty members expressing a range of opinions regarding its efficacy. Some faculty members considered LRW the most important class in the 1L curriculum, while others considered it the worst.
In 2020, the Curriculum Committee proposed to shorten the year-long small group into one semester and extend LRW into the second semester, adding a 1L moot to the course to give students a chance to practice oral advocacy and incorporate elements of Legal Process. This proposal was ultimately put on pause given the COVID-19 pandemic, and has yet to be implemented.
However, I suggest that the issues with LRW lie not in the scope of its content nor its length, but in its implementation both within and across the different class sections.
There’s no doubt that the material taught in LRW may be the most applicable to students’ first legal experiences as summer students. Its main goal, as stated by Professor Katherine Vitale Lopez, is to train students to “think like lawyers” by “engaging in problem-based, practical legal research and writing.” By the end of LRW, students should have acquired a basic ability to do the following:
- Read and comprehend applicable primary materials (cases and legislation) and understand how they relate to each other;
- Use secondary sources in legal problem solving;
- Find and note-up case law and legislation (including judicial consideration of legislation) using commercial and free databases;
- Prepare and organize a legal analysis (in memorandum form) with issue identification and formulation and application of rules;
- Write succinctly and clearly; and
- Cite authorities using the McGill Guide.
These skills are not explicitly taught in doctrinal courses, making LRW all the more important. Unlike in doctrinal courses, the aim of LRW is to walk away with a set of skills—a way of engaging in problem-solving. Since the purpose of LRW is not to acquire substantive legal knowledge, I feel that there’s a lot of potential to improve the class by simply implementing student feedback on what is actually helpful in learning these skills.
Here are my two cents on why LRW may be the “worst course we have in the first year” for some students. This list is not exhaustive.
Not Enough Opportunities to Write
Fievel Lim (1L) expressed that he wished the first case comment assignment was a legal memo with a pass/fail element. He noted that the first case comment assignment fell short in preparing him for writing a legal memorandum.
He commented that, “the second memo is the final assignment and I felt like I didn’t really have the chance to reflect and improve on my mistakes from the first memo. Overall, it felt like the first memo was a complete shot in the dark, and the final assignment was just the one redemption, with only feedback from the first memo’s comments.”
Moreover, for many of us, LRW is our first exposure to legal memo writing. However, the first memo counts for 30 percent of our final grade. I witnessed a lot of stress and anxiety among peers because of the uncertainty over what constitutes good legal writing and general confusion about how to write a memo.
Legal Methods is a course that intends to set students on equal footing prior to the start of law school by allowing them to learn how to read and brief cases on a pass/fail basis. Shouldn’t the same principle be applied to LRW? It may be beneficial to have at least one pass/fail or low-weighted memo assignment to ease the pressure of writing a perfect memo on our first attempt.
Lack of Standardization
Professor Vitale Lopez is the coordinator of the first-year Legal Research & Writing program. In response to how she has attempted to standardize the implementation of LRW, she stated that, “LRW instructors share a basic syllabus that contains legal research and legal writing topics we all must cover, such as synthesis, case law research, writing an analysis, researching secondary sources, etc. Instructors teach the material in different ways depending on what they emphasize and how they structure their classes. Each section also has the same number/type of assignments that are weighted the same and due around the same time.”
Giving instructors the relative freedom to decide how to teach the material has both pros and cons. For example, practitioners who teach LRW can incorporate their expertise into the course material and provide opportunities for students to learn about the instructor’s practice area.
“I was lucky to have an instructor who was knowledgeable and passionate about [their] field … it was a neat opportunity to enrich my educational experience,” said Dongwoo Kim (1L). However, he also noted that “while it’s neat to have current practitioners, as opposed to tenure-track professors, as instructors, this could potentially lead to inconsistent quality of instruction and what students ultimately learn from the course.” The wide range of student experiences and opinions about LRW at least suggest that this may be an issue.
While teaching experience is not necessarily related to the quality of instruction, professors have the opportunity to evaluate student feedback at the end of every semester and incorporate it into future courses. Instructors teaching a law course for the first time would not have had the same opportunity.
The inconsistency in student learning is also compounded by the lack of standardization on how to teach the material and structure the classes.
My experience in LRW felt dramatically different to what I saw my peers in other sections learning. With the exception of the first assignment, the second and third assignments dealt with my instructor’s practice area. While it was valuable to gain exposure to this area of law, this substantially changed the content of what I learned from the course. For instance, while in the 1L LRW curriculum students are taught objective legal writing skills, one memo required us to engage in persuasive writing. This writing method is usually taught in Advanced Legal Research and Writing, an upper-year course.
Nevertheless, some students have positive experiences in LRW, suggesting that there are methods of instruction or lessons that students find particularly effective.
Annecy Pang (3L) commented: “I’m probably in the minority of students, but I enjoyed LRW. Along with Legal Process, it was one of the most directly applicable courses to my experience as a summer student. I understand a student’s experience might depend on which section they’re in, but my professor presented the material clearly and provided helpful feedback.”
Lim identified the classes during which tutorials on Westlaw and Quicklaw were given as being the most helpful, stating: “I felt that I learned enough from the course so that it wasn’t a complete waste, but I do feel like there were certain parts that weren’t as useful as others.”
If the goal is to help all students walk out of the class feeling confident about their writing, research, and problem-solving abilities, more effort should be put towards identifying the valuable elements of LRW and ensuring they are implemented in the delivery of all LRW sections going forward.
