Facing the Challenge of Improving the Legal Writing Skills of Educationally Disadvantaged Law Students in a South African Law School

Abstract

Many first-year students in the School of Law at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard College, who have been disadvantaged by a poor primary and secondary education, exhibit poor legal writing skills. Over a period of four years, in order to address this urgent need for legal writing instruction, the School of Law introduced two successive legal writing interventions. The first intervention was the Concise Writing Programme, followed by the Integrated Skills in Context Programme. The Concise Writing Programme focused on English writing skills and grammar in the hope that first-year law students would be able to transfer these generic writing skills to the more specific legal discourse within which they were learning to operate. The Law School reviewed the success of this initial programme and found that students who took part in the programme not only lacked the motivation to learn generic English writing skills, but that they also did not find it easy to transfer these skills to the more specific legal writing environment. The Law School then implemented a second legal writing intervention -The Integrated Skills in Context Programme. This programme acknowledged the fact that legal writing has a multi-faceted nature, encompassing legal analysis and application, as well as logical sequencing and argument, all of which could not be taught in a vacuum, particularly when most of the student base was largely unfamiliar with any form of legal discourse and many had English as a second language. This paper recognises that there is no silver bullet to improving the legal writing skills of these students. The reality is that it will take hard work as well as financial incentives to make a difference to these students' legal writing skills. Our students need intensive one-on-one attention by qualified academics, and this means that those doing the instruction must be recognised and adequately compensated.

Facilitating skills transfer: a collaborative writing centre intervention for undergraduate Law students

“…Although both types of approaches have certain advantages and disadvantages (Flowerdew, 2016), it seems that there is an increasing tendency to situate literacy interventions, especially at South African tertiary institutions, within the context of the discourses of specific academic disciplines (Boughey, 2002;Butler, 2013: 71;Clarence, 2012;Goodier and Parkinson, 2005;Parkinson, 2000;Van Schalkwyk et al, 2009). Regarding law student training in particular, Crocker (2018) confirms the potential inadequacy of generic writing instruction and interventions. In a study where firstyear law students at the University of Kwazulu-Natal were initially only exposed to a generic writing intervention, it was indeed found that they "not only lacked the motivation to learn generic English writing skills, but that they also did not find it is easy to transfer these skills to the more specific legal writing environment" (Crocker, 2018: 1).…”

“…Despite its importance, the general feeling among academics is that the writing skills of law students and practitioners leave much to be desired (Campbell, 2014;Crocker 2018;Kosse & ButleRitchie, 2003;Louw & Broodryk, 2016;Snyman-Van Deventer & Swanepoel, 2013). This state of affairs is worrying, given the fact that effective writing in law involves the ability to communicate clearly, precisely and fully (Broodryk, 2014: 454).…”

“…Common problems pertaining to the writing skills of new law graduates include lack of focus, failure to develop overall theme or case theory, inappropriate use of composition rules, and difficulty in writing persuasively (Kosse & ButleRitchie, 2003). Crocker's (2018) research highlights challenges such as poor critical thinking, weak and illogical argumentation, and a lack of a general frame of reference within which to address legal problems. There is therefore a need for joint efforts between writing and legal experts to address graduates' legal writing skills if improvements are to be made in the practice of law.…”

Writing Anxiety: The Case of Law Students

“…Additionally, "lawyers make their living through the effective use of words" (Vinson, 2005, p. 507-508). Nevertheless, in one study, first-year law students at the University of Kwazulu-Natal exemplified the lack of the motivation to learn general English writing skills (Crocker, 2018). A study by Campbell (2014) indicated that many matriculants in South Africa lacked language and literacy skills to embark on legal study, and the incompetency in these basic skills resulted in the low completion rate of Bachelor of Laws.…”

Reimagining Writing Centres Practices: A South African Perspective

“…are attempting to develop student writing (for example,Swanepoel and Snyman-van Deventer 2012; Clarence, Albertus and Mwabene: 2013;Broodryk 2014 Broodryk , 2015Crocker 2018;Gottlieb and Greenbaum 2018;Snyman-van Deventer and van Niekerk 2018;Bangeni and Greenbaum 2019; and Crocker 2020, 2021).…”