Top 10 takeaways by Advanced Legal Certificate Students sitting in on a Contracts class

Professor Kayalyn Marafioti, a former Restructuring Partner at Skadden Arps who has a Certificate in TESOL from The New School and teaches the Reading Legal Texts course in the St. John’s Law Advanced Legal English Certificate Program (aka ALDA), recently brought her students to sit in on a Contracts class in the law school. This is something Prof. Marafioti or I have done each year with the ALDA Certificate students in connection with the Lefkowitz v. Great Minneapolis Surplus Store case, which serves as the basis for the Reading Legal Texts course.

The idea is that, after digging into and deconstructing Lefkowitz from various angles in order to learn to read, brief, and discuss cases, students get a chance to sit in on a large Contracts class on the day that Lefkowitz is actually discussed in order to see, hear, and feel what they need to be able to do with these cases that they read.

In the wake of this year’s “field trip” to Contracts class and subsequent debriefing with her Advanced Legal English Certificate students, here are the Top Ten Takeaways that Prof. Marafioti reported based on her student’s reactions:

StudyLegalEnglish.com interviews Stephen Horowitz (podcast)

StudyLegalEnglish.com recently published a podcast interview with me (“E81-LL.M. Legal Writing Tips with Stephen Horowitz“) conducted by Louise Kulbicki, the British-born, Italy-based founder of StudyLegalEnglish.com. It was my first time ever interviewed for a podcast, and it turned out to be a lot of fun!

Topics covered included:

• Legal English LLM programmes for non-native speakers
• Legal English writing challenges and tips
• Using IRAC – Issue, Rule, Application, and Conclusion
• Understanding categorization
• Legal English resources

Impressively, Louise also created study materials to go with the interview. That is, she turned the interview itself into a teaching and self-study tool. She created a transcript, a lesson plan and a vocabulary list. Though you need to become a member to access the latter two.

Here’s the podcast version of E81-LL.M. Legal Writing Tips with Stephen Horowitz:

• https://cdn.podigee.com/podcast-player/javascripts/podigee-podcast-player.js

And here’s the video version of the podcast:

Using Apples to Apples (the game) in legal English teaching

I wish I had thought of this sooner, but this semester I finally started using Apples to Apples (the game) in my Legal Writing & Analysis class for the LLM students in St. John’s Advanced Certificate for Legal English program.

Why am I doing this? And how did this happen? It was sort of by accident. And perhaps sort of not. But either way, very glad I arrived at this place with my students.

First, about the game: I realized a year or so ago that it’s an ideal game for legal English. Because in it, one person is a judge and everyone else is essentially a lawyer trying to analogize and persuade. In the game, in each round one person is a judge. And the judge picks a green card which has an adjective on it. And everyone else has a hand of red cards, which are all nouns and noun phrases of various sorts (e.g., Woody Allen; My Love Life; Mice; Ginseng; Roman Numerals; Body Piercing; Tornadoes; Oprah Winfrey; etc.) From their hand, they pick a card that they think is the best match for the adjective on the green card. They submit their card face down so the judge doesn’t know who submitted which card (to ensure impartiality.)

Next, the judge turns over each card and then renders a decision. But the fun (and culturally and linguistically interesting) part is that as the judge turns over each card, she comments on it and shares some of her reasoning out loud in order to justify her eventual decision. And while she is doing this, other players interject their own comments and reasoning in an effort to sway the judge one way or another. At the same time, they try to do it in a way that doesn’t blow their cover (or sometimes does.) (If it’s still not clear, here’s a short youtube video that explains and demonstrates the game.)

I first taught the game to students a few years ago, as an end of the semester activity. They really enjoyed it. And from a language learning perspective, games are a great way to lower students’ affective filter (i.e., make them relax) and also provide excellent motivation as well as opportunities to practice oral communication in a low stakes environment.

Fast forward to August 2019, the week before classes. I was running an optional intro class for my Advanced Legal English Certificate students and decided to introduce them to a series of games to get them using more English and also to get them to bond and feel more comfortable together as well as learn a little something related to American culture.

Complicating the situation was the fact that I had promised my 9-year-old daughter that she could come to work with me that day. An additional complication popped up that morning as my colleague informed me that she was bringing her 9-year-old and 6-year-old daughters to work that day because they wanted to see my daughter. (Thus, history recorded what may have been the first Bring Your Children to Legal English Work Day. Though if you know of others, please don’t hesitate to let me know!)

Video: Practical ways for LLM students to use the iWeb Corpus for legal English help

Here’s a 15 minute video I recently created for my LLM students at St. John’s Law that explains what the iWeb Corpus is along with several practical ways it can help LLM students (or any non-native English speaking students) with vocabulary.

When I’ve demonstrated the iWeb Corpus to students in my office in connection with specific language/vocabulary problems, they’ve responded in amazement that such a tool exists. But when I demonstrate it in class in a more general context, then the response is more muted. So I finally decided to (1) create a short video that demonstrates some practical applications and then (2) require all of the students to watch the video as part of their orientation and then (3) demonstrate they have watched and understood the video by taking a short quiz which is really a series of tasks designed to get them to take the iWeb Corpus for a test drive and share their results with me. (See full quiz below.)

By the way, this is my first attempt at really flipping the classroom as a way to teach specific legal English skills that I don’t have time to teach in my classes. I think and hope it will work well. But wish me luck anyway. And let me know if you have any suggested improvements for the video and/or quiz.

Additionally, please feel free to use this video with your students if you think it would be helpful. And feel free to use the text and ideas from my quiz to re-create your own version of the quiz as well if you think it would be helpful. (Because if you give them the link to my quiz, then all the results will go into my Google Sheets file and you won’t be able to see them unless I keep forwarding them on to you, which is not a particularly convenient process for either of us.)

Additionally, here are some prior or related posts I’ve written in connection with the iWeb Corpus.

• A simple yet sophisticated vocabulary trick for getting to know a legal English word
• Language and grammar strategies for non-native English speaking JD law students – Part 1
• Summary of April 12 NY Academic Support Professionals Workshop at New York Law School

And, finally, here’s the quiz:

Letters from a Nut: A great book for helping LLM students with the MPT?

A year or two ago I saw some books left out in a box on a Brooklyn stoop for anyone to take. And from that box, I picked up the book Letters from a Nut by Ted L. Nancy (with introduction by Jerry Seinfeld) and added it to my LLM reading library.

The book is–and stay with me here–a series of actual letters written by Nancy to various businesses that express absurd problems or concerns with the business’ products or services, and the reply letters from said businesses attempting to grapple in a serious manner with said absurd problems or concerns. (Here’s a link to Jerry Seinfeld explaining it and reading from it on the Jay Leno Show.)

In other words, from my legal English perspective, it’s a linguistic corpus of business letters–hundreds of actual business letters written by real people using real-life business letter language, punctuation and formatting. None of that phony sample business letter template from Mr. Jones to Ms. Smith at ABC Co. on 123 Main St. that you get when you Google “sample business letter.”

New tool by Harvard Law lets people explore language usage in caselaw

Thanks to my colleague Prof. Rebecca Lowry for passing on this article from the ABA Journal (“New tool by Harvard Law lets people explore language usage in caselaw” by Jason Tashea) about “Historical Trends,” a free online tool created by the Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab which allows the public to explore the use of language over 360 years of caselaw in a corpus (linguistic database) consisting of 6.7 million federal and state cases and 12 billion words!

In what ways is it useful for LLM students (or any law students)? I’m not sure yet. If you figure one out, please let me know by posting in the comments or e-mailing me. But it’s fun to type in terms like “internet” and “res ipsa” and “synergy” and “irregardless” and “Lefkowitz” and then see the resulting graph covering 360 years of that word or phrase’s usage in American caselaw.

Encyclopedia Brown and the Public Defender

I’m a big fan of The Moth Storytelling Hour podcast and also of the Encyclopedia Brown series. In fact, I often encourage my LLM students to read Encyclopedia Brown stories as a form of extensive reading and a way to build some cultural background knowledge and think critically and creatively. (I keep a few of the books in the Reading Library outside my office.)

So, I was very excited this past weekend when I was listening to an episode of The Moth Storytelling Hour (a great resource for extensive listening, by the way), and the first story was by a public defender telling about finally having an Encyclopedia Brown moment in his legal career. My favorite line was early on when he observes that while Encyclopedia Brown is known for solving cases, the job of public defenders is actually to unsolve cases and put the mystery back in them.

Alan Gordon, public defender, telling of us Encyclopedia Brown moment.

Here’s a link to the episode if you’d like to listen: https://themoth.org/radio-hour/bible-bucks-meatballs-and-big-brothers

Side note: Lest you think that Encyclopedia Brown is uniquely American, I learned that Chinese popular literature actually has a sort of equivalent character named Judge Dee based on the historical figure Di Renjie, county magistrate and statesman of the Tang court.

LLM students as a law school asset: Collaboration activity for JD and LLM students

I’m very fortunate to work at a law school that not only talks the talk of LLM students as an asset but walks the walk. In that vein, thanks to some cross-program collaboration and interaction among our faculty, we recently devised an effective yet simple (and easily replicable) activity to facilitate interaction between LLM and JD students that proved eye-opening and beneficial for all involved.

The activity: An email exchange between the 33 students in Professor Rebecca Lowry’s LLM legal writing classes and the 33 students in Professor Rachel H. Smith’s JD legal writing section regarding a Title VII issue that Professor Smith’s JD students had already been working on.

This was set up as a role-play in which the students all worked for the same global law firm, but in different departments and/or offices of the firm. The LLM students were told they are associates who have been directed by a senior attorney to learn more about Title VII in order to have a better sense of a company’s value that is involved in an acquisition transaction. The senior attorney has given the LLM student the name of another attorney in the firm (the JD student) who has recent expertise with Title VII. The JD students are given minimal information and told only that they will be receiving an email from a non-native English speaking attorney in the firm asking something about Title VII.

The goals: The idea for this activity first game up while chatting tangentially during one of our LLM Instructor Workshops (workshops I organize once or twice a semester to gather professors who work with non-native English speaking students). We already run a separate lawyer-client role-play in which my ALDA students act as clients and meet with Professor Kathryn Piper’s LLM Legal Writing students who act as lawyers. The LLM Legal Writing students interview their client in person and then follow up with a written letter summarizing the conversation and detailing next steps. This activity is a great chance to work on professionalism, formulating question, and client letter writing as well as legal substance.

Summary of April 12 NY Academic Support Professionals Workshop at New York Law School

On Friday, April 12 I attended (and presented at) a really wonderful Academic Support Professionals (ASP) workshop at New York Law School organized by Kris Franklin of NYLS and Rebecca Flanigan of UMass Law School. It’s the second year in a row that I’ve attended, and I continue to appreciate and learn from this extremely knowledgeable and supportive community.

Prior to attending last year’s workshop, I had always viewed myself as a “legal English” specialist. But now I’ve come to view legal English as a subset of academic support, and I’ve come to view myself as an academic support professional for LLM and non-native English speaking students, where language support is the primary–but not only–need for aiding success in law school.

I presented on the topic of “1.5 Gen. Students and “Sound Right” vs. Read-Right Grammar Strategies.” I talked about (1) the concept of 1.5 generation students; (2) using read-aloud strategies to improve students’ use of articles, prepositions, and -s endings in student writing; and (3) ways for students to use the iWeb Corpus as a proxy for what “sounds right” to help students figure out on their own if they’re using the right word or using a given word correctly.

But what was most interesting to me was the range of topics and perspectives and experiences shared by all the participants from all the different law schools. Here’s a link to a summary on the Law School Academic Support Blog of all the presentations at the NY ASP Workshop:

NY ASP Workshop Review

Posted: 26 Apr 2019 05:40 AM PDT

Myra Orlen was kind enough to put together a recap of the NY ASP workshop. Her report is below. Kudos to Kris Franklin of the NYLS and Rebecca Flanagan of UMass Law School for organizing a wonderful workshop at NYLS…(Click here to read the full post on the Law School Academic Support Blog.)

Language and grammar strategies for non-native English speaking JD law students – Part 1

This past week I had the opportunity to work on language issues with a non-native English speaking JD student who was referred to me by the student’s professor. The student, who came to the US when he was 18, is doing well in law school, but has some language-related quirks popping up in his writing that didn’t seem to be fixing themselves.

Prof. Paul Kei Matsuda

Coincidentally, the previous week I happened to attend a guest lecture by Paul Kei Matsuda, Professor of Applied Linguistics and Director of Second Language Writing at Arizona State University, who is one of the thought leaders in the field of second language writing. The main theme of his lecture was that it is essentially unfair to grade second language writers on their grammar, in the sense that language is acquired in ways and at a pace that is not necessarily within our control. He likened grading such a student on their grammar to grading them on how tall they grow before graduating.

This point reminded me and reaffirmed for me the notion that you can’t know what you don’t know. In the case of the JD student, he (like all JD students) was advised to read his papers out loud to help him catch his errors. And this strategy was helpful to him in some ways, but not with regard to identifying errors that he didn’t know were errors.

The student, in his embarrassment, actually attributed the issue to the fact that when he first came to the US, he learned a lot of English from watching videos and listening to music, and he fretted that that was a mistake since he didn’t learn proper English. I quickly pointed out to the student that this was not his fault. That his way of learning English was actually a great strategy and extremely important to his language development. I also explained the concepts of BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) and CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency) and how it’s much harder to acquire native level proficiency in academic English, in part because the frequency of use of and exposure to CALP is simply much lower in daily life, particularly with regard to output (i.e. speaking and writing.)

I commented that no amount of reading his writing aloud would change this. Because his ear and brain can only recognize the version of English that he knows. This explanation helped him relax a bit.

Next, I had him read his paper aloud to me so that I could assess which types of errors he could catch himself and which kinds he was not noticing. As we moved along, I began to introduce him to some strategies for the errors that he was not able to identify.

I noticed that articles, prepositions, and words with “s” endings were common issues in his writing. Sometimes he knew what sounded right, but other times he didn’t. The common denominator, I recognized, is that these are all parts of language that we as native speakers tend to learn by ear–not by studying rules–yet they are all parts of language that tend to be dropped or de-emphasized in speech which makes them harder to hear.