scholarly journals SOME FEATURES OF THE SOCRATIC METHOD APPLICATION TO TEACHING LEGAL ENGLISH REASONING WRITING TO LAW STUDENTS

2017 ◽  
pp. 44-48
Author(s):  
Inna Zaiarna
Keyword(s):  
Communication Skills ◽  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Teaching Tool ◽  
Socratic Method ◽  
Thought Processes ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Writing Assignments ◽  
Models Of Teaching ◽  
Good Writing

Background: Although the Socratic method, in some form or another, has been the dominant teaching tool for teaching legal reasoning and analysis in most U.S. law schools, it is not generally thought of as a tool for the teaching legal English reasoning writing to Ukrainian law students, and relatively little has been written about its use in that context. Purpose: The purpose of the analysis is to determine some features of the Socratic Method application to teaching Legal English reasoning writing to law students. Results: Good writing results from good thinking. It makes sense, then, that tools used to teach good thinking should be combined with tools used to teach good writing when law students are learning how to conduct written legal analysis.Socratic Method is the style of teaching through cases and questions. The professor never explains anything, but instead challenges the student’s explanation by questioning the student. If the professor is doing his job well, the questions will further and further refine the student’s thinking, exploring nuances that the student didn’t initially realize existed. Integrating Socratic Method with the writing process can make the process of teaching legal English reasoning writing the most effective while combines training of both analytical and written communication skills. The teacher can first follow writ­ing process principles and require the students to complete their writing assignments in a series of focused drafts. Next, the teacher can intervene in the students’ thought processes by responding to early drafts with Socratic questions that prompt the students to formulate their thoughts precisely. Discussion: This study reveals some features of the Socratic Method application to teaching Legal English reasoning writing to law students and creates the necessary background for further research, particularly in terms of developing new models of teaching legal English reasoning writing to law students.

scholarly journals Mini-essays: Using Writing for Fun and Creativity

HortScience ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 432F-433
Author(s):  
N.K. Lownds
Keyword(s):  
Communication Skills ◽  
Real World ◽  
Fourth Graders ◽  
Ornamental Plant ◽  
Written Communication ◽  
Plant Identification ◽  
Writing Assignments ◽  
Student Responses ◽  
Writing Students ◽  
Good Writing

Good written communication skills are essential for the success of our graduates. To promote good writing, students in Ornamental Plant Identification classes have been required to write mini-essays, one-page responses to real-world scenarios. Student's responses have been good and their writing has been very acceptable. The mini-essays were, however, just assignments to complete. In an attempt to get students truly involved and passionate about their writing, assignments were designed to illicit creative, fun responses. Students were asked to explain concepts to fourth graders. This brought responses that ranged from exercises where kids were to stick out their tongues to imitate humming birds, to a short play demonstrating the importance of plant nomenclature. Another assignment asked students to complete a story about the famous detective, Hortus paradoxa. Student responses were incredibly creative, and some of the best writing I have ever seen. In addition, students had fun. It seems clear that, if students know that it is OK to be creative, they will greatly exceed your expectations. Just be prepared to have lots of fun while learning. Samples of the assignments, responses, and what is next will be presented.

The Jessup Mooting Competition as a Vehicle for Teaching Public International Law

1979 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 332-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Brown
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Teaching Tool ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
Meaningful Interaction

The Philip G. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition is now well established as an annual event on the calendar of Canadian legal education. It may seem trite, therefore, to assert that the competition is a worthy pursuit for law students, that it should be preserved, and that a greater number of law schools should be encouraged to participate in it. The Jessup has great potential both as a teaching tool and as a basis for meaningful interaction among students from across the country and an attempt should be made to realize this potential. In this note, some suggestions are made for doing so.

scholarly journals Keeping international law international, a reflection on Anthea Roberts’ “is international law international?”

2020 ◽  
pp. 6-17
Author(s):  
D. K. Labin ◽  
T. Potier
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Comparative Studies ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
To Come ◽  
Fragmentation Of International Law

INTRODUCTION. Occasionally a book appears which has a significant impact on the scholarly community. A fine example of this is the work considered here by the Australian international lawyer, Anthea Roberts. Until very recently, comparative studies on international law were rare. However, as international law further develops and widens, so special attention will need to be paid to ensure that international law students are, to a greater extent, taught the same material and in the same way. As municipal systems of law became more mature, so doctrine and jurisprudence began to diverge. International law has now entered such a phase in its development and, in this excellent book, Dr. Roberts asks a series of very important questions: exactly what is taking place, what are the factors that are driving these processes, is such to be welcomed, is it unstoppable and where do we go from here?MATERIALS AND METHODS. The article reflects on Anthea Roberts’ book “Is International Law International?” (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017). The authors of the article consider the contribution of the monograph to legal science, particularly with its interest in a revived Comparative International Law.RESEARCH RESULTS. The view of the authors of the article is that Anthea Roberts’ book is a work of profound significance, which will, hopefully, inspire additional research in the field of Comparative International Law in years to come.DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS. Comparative International Law is a relatively neglected field in International Law. Without question, the international legal academy (from the elite law schools of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council) emphasises different things both in its scholarly writings and pedagogy. This needs to be given greater attention, even if, at least for now, it cannot be entirely arrested; so that the much-feared fragmentation of international law into not only separate fields and standards, but also in terms of agreeing on its content and application, is minimised. 

scholarly journals Keeping up with change: no alternative to teaching ADR in clinic. An Australian perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Weinberg
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Resolution ◽  
Clinical Education ◽  
Alternative Dispute Resolution ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Client Needs

<p>Over the last 30 years alternative dispute resolution (ADR) has become more prominent in Australian legal practice due to the need to reduce the cost of access to justice and to provide more expedient and informal alternatives to litigation. As legal educators, we need to ask: how should we be preparing law students entering practice for these changes? How can we ensure that once they become lawyers, our students will not rely entirely on litigious methods to assist their clients but instead look at alternatives for dispute resolution?</p><p>In this paper, I argue that there is no alternative to teaching ADR in clinic in order to address client needs and to ensure that students engaged in clinical education are prepared for changes in legal practice today. I show that the increasing focus upon ADR in Australian legal practice represents a challenge for law schools, and that legal educators need to ensure they are educating students about ADR.</p><p>I argue that it is important to determine whether ADR is being taught to students undertaking clinical legal education in ways that will enhance their preparation for legal practice. I will show that there is a need to explore: whether ADR is being taught within clinical legal education, the strengths and weaknesses of existing approaches, and how the teaching of ADR within clinics can be improved.</p>

Scattering of journals cited in legal theses and dissertations

2021 ◽  
pp. 096100062110367
Author(s):  
Siviwe Bangani ◽  
Michiel Moll
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
The Core ◽  
Bradford’S Law ◽  
Master's Thesis ◽  
Doctoral Dissertations ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Theses And Dissertations

The study employed bibliometrics methods to analyse the scattering of 596 journals cited in legal master’s theses and doctoral dissertations in three South African law schools from 2014 to 2018. In addition, the study included an analysis of the extent of citation of different sources and examined the effect of use of non-legal journals by law students. It was found that students used 449.2 documents on average in writing a doctoral dissertation and 110.9 references per master’s thesis. Journals received more citations than any other document formats although 16 master’s theses were completed without citing a single journal. Generally, the journals cited in legal theses and dissertations conform to Bradford’s Law but they differ in their level of conformity by law school. There was a high degree of overlaps between Zone 1 journals in the three law schools. All journals in the core lists were available in all the law schools which was attributed to the strength of collections in these schools. The results support the application of bibliometric analyses to legal master’s theses and doctoral dissertations to make collection development decisions. In making those decisions, however, law librarians would have to look beyond the Zone 1 journals of their own institution for wider access. These results also serve as a caution to law librarians to look beyond the traditional law journals in de/selecting journals, as some of the non-legal journals in this study made it to the core list of cited periodicals. Furthermore, this study points to the strength of library collections in the top law school libraries in the country.

Teaching Law

2017 ◽  
pp. 318-330
Author(s):  
Sheela Jayabalan
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Cognitive Apprenticeship ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Case Method ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Traditional Methods ◽  
Lecture Method ◽  
Black Letter ◽  
Teaching Pedagogies

Traditional methods of teaching law such as the lecture method, Socratic method or the case method has become the predominant teaching pedagogies in most law schools. Emphasis is on teaching law students the blackletter law. However, when law students complete their formal undergraduate studies and move on to practice law, they face the crisis of being unable to cerebral the black letter law to real life situations. Applying doctrinal analysis and the observation of law teaching in Malaysia from the authors own experience as a law lecturer, the author explicates in this chapter that the reason behind this crisis is because the traditional methods merely imparts the knowledge of law to students but does not stimulate and ignite the cognitive skills which should be the ultimatum of teaching law students. Traditional methods of teaching law should be reformed. Law students should be taught to apprehend the law to real life situations or problems using the cognitive apprenticeship method. In other words, putting the learner in the driver's seat.

Elucidation of the Concept of a Law Clinic as a Prerequisite for Developing the Standards for Law Clinics in Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-139
Author(s):  
Zvonimir Jelinic ◽  
Adrian Koch
Keyword(s):  
Law Students ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
General Curriculum ◽  
General Acceptance ◽  
The World ◽  
Basic Understanding ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Law ◽  
Further Development

Teaching law in Europe and many other parts of the world is primarily and traditionally conducted in an ex-cathedra style of transferring knowledge. The emergence of law clinics and their integration into the law schools and the general curriculum of law students pose the constant question of what specifically defines a law clinic in contrast to other programmes. The authors therefore set out to answer the question of what is essential for a programme to call itself a law clinic as they deem it important for the further development of specific concepts and on a more general note for the general acceptance and movement of law clinics. For this, the article investigates the history of law clinics and the initial motivation of providing social justice as the reason of their formation. With that in mind and their basic understanding of a clinic as an institution that helps clients with specific problems, the authors take the position that a “law clinic” must render legal aid to people in need and therefore work with life-client cases. As the possibility of working on live-client cases with law students is thus defined a prerequisite of operating a law clinic, this must be checked for feasibility. In the following, the article compares different European national legal regimes on rendering legal aid and concludes that the proposed work with live-client cases isn’t only desirable but also viable.

scholarly journals Lawyers of the future: Creating aspirations, forging connections and facilitating professional links in rural and regional contexts

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sher Campbell ◽  
Katherine Lindsay
Keyword(s):  
Metropolitan Areas ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Professional Service ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Phase ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Program

In recent years, the Australian legal profession, government policymakers and the nation’s law schools have evinced concern about the future of legal practice beyond metropolitan areas. The issues and suggested responses have been debated in various fora amongst the stakeholders. This paper explores the way in which one regional law schoolwith a distinctive approach to legal education has responded to these issues from an educational and pastoral perspective. Newcastle Law School established its Lawyers of the Future program in 2009. Lawyers of the Future is a multi-faceted initiative, which promotes professional partnerships with the secondary education sector through the Schools’ Visit program, and partnerships with rural and regional professionals through active connections in those areas. The third phase of the Lawyers of the Future program will be the development of rural and regional legal placement sites for senior law students enrolled in Newcastle’s Professional program.Whilst the Lawyers of the Future program has three distinctive and interrelated elements and objectives, it is the placement program that provides the lynchpin. Such a placement program, which is innovative in itself, has a greater educational purpose: the experience of practice in rural and regional areas, together with the process of subsequent engaged and critical reflection, will contribute meaningfully to the development of students’ professional personae in ways which will support an ethos of professional service beyond the narrow confines of practice in the metropolis for the legal conglomerates. 

Does the Addition of Writing Into a Pharmacy Communication Skills Course Significantly Impact Student Communicative Learning Outcomes? A Pilot Study

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 525-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Lonie ◽  
Hamid Rahim
Keyword(s):  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Communication Skills ◽  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Reflective Writing ◽  
Final Examination ◽  
Patient Counseling ◽  
Writing Assignments ◽  
Retrospective Comparison ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Quasi Experimental

The objective of this study was to determine if the addition of a reflective writing component in a fourth year (P-2) pharmacy communication skills course would significantly affect 2 measures of learning: (1) objective multiple choice examination questions and (2) a patient counseling Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) score. Using a nonequivalent group quasi-experimental retrospective comparison design, 98 randomly selected final examination scores from students taking a nonwriting intensive (NWI) communication skills course were compared with 112 randomly selected final examination scores from students that took a communication skills course in which students engaged in several reflective writing assignments. In addition, 91 randomly selected patient counseling OSCE scores from a NWI course were statistically compared with 112 scores from students that took the writing intensive (WI) course. There were statistically significant improvements in multiple choice examination scores in the group that took the reflective writing communication skills course. There was not a statistically significant difference in patient counseling OSCE scores after students completed the WI course. Studying the effects of using reflective writing assignments in communication skills courses may improve the retention and retrieval of information presented within the course.

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