Winter semester does not have to be this bad
January sucks. The holidays are over, the skies are grey, and, if you are a U of T Law student, there’s a good chance you have class bright and early on the Monday morning after New Year’s Day. This one-week, one-credit intensive class was the bane of many law students’ existence until final papers were due around a month later on February 1.
I have no issue with the law school offering intensive courses. In fact, I think they’re a great idea. They allow students the opportunity to be introduced to an area of law or policy to which they might otherwise not be exposed and, as the law school advertises, “to learn from some of the best legal scholars, jurists and policy-makers in the world.” Intensive instructors have included past and current jurists from both within and outside Canada.
However, the intersession period as currently implemented does more harm than good. In an already busy month—filled with mooting deadlines, clerkship applications, and new classes—having a 3000-word graded paper is the last thing any law student wants on their to-do list. And yet, students graduating from U of T since 2021 are required to complete the winter semester from hell in either their second or third year.
Speaking with friends who were in intensive classes this past term, we agreed that while the content was interesting, the timing was far from ideal. One person even commented that since the majority of intensive classes are graded, students are incentivized to choose a class with material they’re already familiar with—this way, they have a better chance of getting a higher grade. But this defeats the purpose of intensives, which are meant to broaden students’ scope of study. Other students commented that having the paper due a month after the intensive class ended, and after their other classes started, led to subpar work since it was difficult to recall what was taught. Sure, they could have written the paper on the weekend before regular classes started, but cramming a paper into a weekend is also not ideal. Especially for students with mooting deadlines, that weekend was already packed.
Intersession does not have to be carried out in this way. While intersession at U of T Law only started in 2020, the concept has existed at other law schools for many years and in a notably different format. For example, Harvard Law, the supposed basis for our intersession period, gives students three weeks to devote their time to studying, researching, or participating in a legal clinic. Closer to home, Western Law offers a January intensive period where students have practically a month (January 9–27) “to study advanced and specialized topics without the distraction of other courses” and, for students participating in a moot, “the opportunity to concentrate their efforts on preparation and practices.” The University of Ottawa also has a similar “January term” where students can even opt to be graded on a “Satisfactory/Non-satisfactory” basis.
While these other law schools give students time to actually reap the benefits of the intensive course and focus on their other commitments, U of T Law forces students to somehow do it all at once. At the very least, other schools allow students to be graded on a pass/fail basis that removes some of the unnecessary stress caused from having an additional class outside one’s area of expertise. Alternatives clearly exist, so it is unclear why U of T has chosen the route that causes the most unnecessary stress for students.
These concerns were raised years before the intersession period was even implemented. In 2017, the Moot Court Committee released a statement expressing their concern over the effect of the intersession period on the competitive mooting program. At the same time, Ultra Vires also reported on students’ concerns about the intersession, which covered its potential negative impact on mooting, clinics, and Law Games. It seems, however, that the Faculty rushed to implement the intersession period without giving adequate time and consideration to the raised concerns. When the 2017 Students’ Law Society president voiced concerns that there was inadequate student consultation to implement this change, former Dean Edward Iacobucci was reportedly “unfazed” and “reiterated that the decision was ultimately Faculty Council’s to make.”
In 2014, Professor Benjamin Alarie remarked that, “[the] beauty of [a] Legal Intensive course is you have it for two weeks—then you’re done. And your course load is one course lighter.” This would be great if it were true. Almost ten years since this statement, intensive courses are here but they are far from ideal.
