(Part II)
Adapting to law school from college life is difficult enough in the best of times. Doing it via distance learning can multiply the difficulties. All the parties – the law school, the faculty and the students must therefore take steps to adjust to ease the transitional pains.
The incoming freshmen are the most vulnerable in this regard; senior students already have the benefit of experience while the school and the faculty can easily breeze through the opening of a new school year, the challenges of distance learning notwithstanding. The incoming freshmen, on the other hand, are starting from scratch.
A basic adjustment for freshmen is to recognize that they are not simply entering college, fresh from high school. They are now college graduates admitted to law school because they are Bachelor’s degree holders who should be able to fend for themselves as graduate students.
They must be able to study, research and learn on their own with some guidance and direction from the faculty. The fully prepared college graduate understands this; the less prepared may read this cautionary advice with a sense of dread.
A second reality to accept is that law schools do not generally impart the means and methods of approaching the study of law. While these means and methods have been established through the years, adjustments have to be made under distance education where the internet is the indispensable communication medium.
As a rule, there is no “introductory” or “how to” seminar on how to approach the study of law. Some (but not many) law schools provide for a one- or two-week introductory or bridging course, but this introduction is never enough. On the contrary, this period may even terrorize freshmen because of the volume of “introductory” study materials that they will meet.
Whichever may the case be, law school freshmen should not be surprised if immediately after day one, they are already thrown into academic waters to test their preparation to swim and survive under pressure, and to adjust to their new environment.
Classes usually start with the teacher’s introduction of the subject, the needed materials (the prescribed textbooks, the codals, etc.), and starting instructions on how to undertake research, especially for jurisprudence. Reading assignments may easily add up to 100 pages or more for all the three law subjects in any given class day.
Notably, these may be far more than the assignments that college students faced in their daily college readings. The order of the day in every class day is to mentally digest the previous day’s lectures and discussions using the students’ own class notes; to read and absorb the assigned readings for the day; and thereafter, to participate in class lectures and graded recitations.
A sound preparatory step for every freshman is to acquaint himself with the basic subjects confronting him – Criminal Law I; Persons and Family Relations; Constitutional Law I, among them. The most convenient way of introducing oneself to these subjects is through the general cure-all when lost in law school – Google it.
Googling Constitutional Law I, for example, will give the reader an idea of what it is all about (Structure of Government) and how it differs from Constitutional Law II (the Bill of Rights). Separately from lectures and explanations from the teacher, googling can lend a lot of meaning to the course syllabus that every responsible law teacher should provide and explain to students. The course syllabus is the teacher’s written road map for the course.
A serious law student must equip himself with the prescribed book for each subject to ensure that he can cover and keep up with the assigned daily readings. Given the chance, he may find it useful to examine the prescribed textbook in advance, in light of the syllabus and his google results. This preliminary look may give him a good sense of the subject’s contour – the coverage, the starting and endpoints, and the components in between. He will thus have a good sense of what he would be doing day-to-day when he reads his daily assignments and dose of cases.
A second important step for freshmen is to make sure that he has a working computer, preferably a notebook or at least a tablet, to allow him to keep up with distance learning. Guidance and direction from the teacher shall come via talks, lectures, or the favorite among the better law schools – recitations. Cellphones may be good for person-to-person communications and monitoring, but may not be enough to keep up with lectures, research, recording and submission of class materials; and to effective participation in recitations and class discussions.
Computers, by themselves, are not enough, however; they must be linked to the Internet to access the classroom and needed class materials. To state the obvious, Internet access is most needed at home from where the distance-learning student lives and operates.
Without fast and reliable internet access, a student is effectively on his own; he may have the prescribed materials (such as textbooks, codals and cases), but he would miss the guidance and directions from teachers. He will not fully be part of a participative class engaged in learning the law. This is where self-learning and active class participation may beneficially come in as a component of distance education.
An awareness that inevitably dawns on every law student is the volume of materials that he must read and absorb. Thus, among the first skills he must master is how to read productively, i.e., how to read with the highest comprehension and absorption rate.
Unfortunately, this is not a skill that is acquired or learned overnight. It is a skill that is best learned if the student develops a system and perfects this through repeated practice.
For lack of space, discussion shall continue next week in Part III.