teaching legal writing online

Teaching Legal Writing Online

Larry Donnelly, NUI Galway Dr. Elaine Fahey, Dublin Institute of Technology Rónán Kennedy, NUI Galway Jennifer Schweppe, University of Limerick 4th Irish Legal Education Symposium University of Limerick 14 May 2010

Teaching legal writing is hard work!

o  “This teaching was the most demanding, and in some ways the most tedious, teaching I have ever done. It was tedious in the sense of grading individual papers for every student every three weeks and going over each one line-by-line with the students. . .”

But it’s extremely important. o  "Legal writing is one of the most

important courses in law school. It helps students develop analytical and writing skills that will be crucial to them, their clients, and the legal system. Simply put, good writing is essential to good lawyering."

Realities and challenges in Irish legal education

o  legal writing was not a part of the traditional curriculum

o  division – still persisting – between third-level legal education and professional schools

o  need to introduce practical skill training at an early stage

Realities and challenges in Irish legal education (cont.)

o  very large student numbers and limited resources

o  remedial help often needed o  extremely labour intensive teaching –

competing demands and pressures on academics

o  student attendance and engagement? o  lack of a distinctively Irish approach

to teaching legal writing

NUI Galway as case study o  approximately 270 students each year

across four degree programmes take a one semester or full year introductory legal research and writing module

o  continuously assessed – four minor and one major writing assignments (more assignments for students in the full year module)

o  LL.M. students also take an advanced legal research and writing module

Moving online: competing realities

o  “An online component has the potential to multiply the levels of learning in a course and enrich each student’s individual experience, as well as the collective work of the class.”

o  but. . . o  “As with all teaching methods and models,

it has to be used properly and be ‘the right tool for the right job.’”

Legalwriting.ie

o  Texts developed collaboratively using MediaWiki

o  Interactive web site under development using Moodle

o  Feedback will be obtained using Vovici

Legalwriting.ie Demonstration o Reading material o Self-assessment exercises o  Tutor-marked exercises o Automation of grading o Creating new exercises

A final thought. . . o  “Most members of law firms tell me

that the young men who are coming to them today cannot write well. I think the situation has reached epidemic proportions. . .”

o A speech by Dean William Warren of Columbia Law School in 1958

Bibliography o  Lawrence Donnelly, “Irish Clinical Legal Education Ab Initio:

Challenges and Opportunities,” (2008/2009) 13 International Journal of Clinical Legal Education 56.

o  Emily Finch and Stefan Fafinski, Legal Skills (Oxford, 2nd Ed. 2009).

o  James Gordon III, “An Integrated First-Year Legal Writing Program,” 39 Journal of Legal Education 609 (1989).

o  Roy Mersky, “Teaching Legal Research,” 2 Scribes Journal of Legal Writing 148 (1991).

o  Thomas O’Malley, Sources of Law (Dublin, 2nd Ed., 2001). o  Joseph Rosenberg, “Confronting Clichés in Online Instruction:

Using a Hybrid Model To Teach Lawyering Skills,” 12 SMU Science and Technology Law Review 19 (2008).

o  Kent Syverud, “Better Writing, Better Thinking: Concluding Thoughts,” 10 Legal Writing: The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute 83 (2004).