Feeley , B T --- "Training field supervisors to be efficient and effective critics of student writing" [2010] LegEdDig 3; (2010) 18(1) Legal Education Digest 8

• Training field supervisors to be efficient and effective critics of student writing

---

Training field supervisors to be efficient and effective critics of student writing

B T Feeley

Clinical Law Review Vol 15, No. 2, 2009, pp 211-237

Most externship clinicians agree that the benchmark of a good field placement for law students is the quality of supervision provided by the field supervisor. Literature in the externship community emphasises the importance of good supervision to an educationally sound experience. Yet many, if not most, field supervisors are not trained educators, are not exposed to the scholarship and pedagogy of helping novices perfect lawyering skills, and have limited time to help students improve their writing skills in particular. In-house program supervising attorneys are usually either full or part-time clinicians who are employees of the law school, knowledgeable about learning theories and effective methodologies of supervision, and are equally vested in both the educational training of the law students and the quality of legal services to the clinics’ clients.

In the normal course, externship clinicians encourage field supervisors to provide guidance and feedback to students on legal writing projects. This article suggests specific techniques, borrowed from legal writing pedagogy, on how to provide that guidance and feedback in an effective and efficient way.

Many law schools provide a wide range of externship placement opportunities for law students in judicial offices, government agencies, legislative offices, legal services offices, private law firms, and corporate legal departments’. While students are exposed to a wide range of legal skills in these different settings, nearly all are asked to produce legal writing.

Improving an aspiring attorney’s legal writing skills will improve the future effectiveness of that lawyer, regardless of the lawyer’s ultimate area of practice.

The legal writing field in legal education has been transformed over the past 25 years. Legal writing programs have changed significantly since many field supervisors, and indeed many externship clinicians, were law students. Legal writing professors have developed a rich body of material and have been engaged in a national discourse on legal writing pedagogy. Nevertheless, there remains an underdeveloped potential for collaboration between legal writing and clinical law school faculty.

Much has been written in the legal writing and clinical fields of legal education about critiquing and supervision, but the practising bar has little exposure to the methodologies used by legal writing and clinical faculty. Although practitioners recognise that a law student or new lawyer continues professional development well beyond law school, some have indicated that they feel this professional development emerges ‘more often as a by-product of work’ rather than an ‘as an objective which was designed and discussed as a regular part of the supervisory experience’.

Even in the context of a for-credit externship program where externship clinicians emphasise to field supervisors the importance of guidance and feedback, there are many understandable reasons why law students do not receive meaningful individual guidance and feedback about their writing from field supervisors. It is time consuming. Field supervisors may assume that students have already been taught how to write. Students may have different learning or working styles than their field supervisors, and field supervisors may not know how to recognise or address the differences. Field supervisors may feel that they can best improve student writing by simply providing good examples.

Providing effective critique on student writing, however, is important to help the novice develop as an attorney. Legal writing experts believe that individual feedback and critique is of critical importance to improving legal writing skills.

This section provides ten concrete techniques for legal writing critique that externship clinicians can provide to their field supervisors.

These ten suggestions will be most helpful if field supervisors understand the underlying principle that assessing a student’s individual ability to hear and process information is crucial to succeeding as a teacher. Most people think of writing and analysis as ‘skills’, but do not recognise listening as a skill that must be developed and can be improved. Field supervisors can benefit from understanding the techniques used by experienced legal writing professors to help students digest criticism of their written work.

Set a tone for learning up front: An important initial step in the supervision process is for field supervisors and students to discuss their shared goal of improving the students’ legal writing.

A successful technique used by some legal writing professors is to tell students, before submission of the first writing assignment, that they should expect extensive critical feedback when their writings are returned. This helps diffuse anxiety that students may feel about the extent of written comments they might receive on their drafts. Also, it should help students understand that even the best writers benefit from editors who are willing to put time and energy into constructive criticism.

Asking students to critique their own writing is another approach that helps to set a positive tone. This encourages students to reflect on their own writing process and develop a framework for improved performance. It also may help the process of acknowledging that, as novices, they can benefit from a more experienced perspective.

Another technique that can be used to set a positive tone up front is for field supervisors to initiate discussion with students, at the beginning of the internship and/or before a writing project begins, about the students’ thoughts on their goals for improving their writing and their thoughts on what the field supervisor can do to assist them in improving their writing skills.

In a perfect world, field supervisors would have a thorough understanding of the different learning styles and preferences of each of their students. But, it is not practical to believe that supervisors will be able to ascertain learning preferences of students who are working part-time for a three or four month externship.

Field supervisors should be encouraged to share stories of their own journey to improve as writers. The goal is to make students want to hear comments that will help them improve, and each of these suggestions aims to do just that.

Provide guidance before and during assignments: The field supervisor should provide guidance and feedback before and during a writing project, not just when problems arise or when a written product is produced. This will provide a more positive learning experience for the student, and may have the added benefits of saving time and producing a better final product

When first assigning written work, field supervisors should provide context by explaining how this writing assignment fits into an overall case or project, the status of the overall case or project, and what the field supervisor hopes to achieve with the writing assignment.

Field supervisors also should communicate their own personal writing style preferences. Providing this overview will help the novice better understand the goals of the assignment.

In addition, when assigning the written work, field supervisors should share their suggestions on how to approach the assignment. This advice will include providing tips on research strategy, suggesting appropriate resources, and anticipating stumbling blocks.

Once the writing begins, it might be helpful for the field supervisor to comment orally or in writing, or a combination of both, on a first draft. Most legal writing programs today use a ‘process’ method of teaching legal writing in which professors intervene in the students’ writing before the final draft. Under this method, professors comment on first drafts and students revise their work based on the comments. In sum, an ongoing dialogue should be encouraged throughout the writing process.

If a student’s work needs improvement in many areas, it might be helpful for the student to do several redrafts. Set priorities for the first redraft. Additional redrafts can focus on other aspects of the writing.

Give an overall assessment of work before assessing details: Whether field supervisors provide oral or written critique, they should give students their overall assessment of the work before discussing details. Providing students with an understanding of the overall critique will help diffuse anxiety and allow students to better digest the more detailed comments.

If commenting in writing, the supervisor should provide a summary of comments at the beginning or end of the work. If commenting orally, the supervisor should begin with general overall comments.

Before beginning a critique of specific problem areas, the supervisor should give the student an overview of points that will be covered in the critique: the quality of research, explanation of the rules, organisation, analysis, and grammatical/style issues. By doing this, the student will better understand the overall critique and better digest the detailed comments.

Comment on organisation: Field supervisors should critique the overall organisation and paragraph structure of students’ work.

Many law school writing programs teach some from of ‘IRAC’ organisation for discussion of legal issues. ‘IRAC’ is an acronym for issue, rule, application and conclusion. Such an organisation starts by stating the issue to be discussed, followed by the rules or law that apply to the issue, which might require synthesising authority and/or providing an explanation of facts and results from prior cases. At times supervisors may find it useful to follow this format, and at other times may want to point out the reasons why this format should not be applied to the particular document being written.

Good paragraph structure can assist the reader in following the writer’s thought process and analysis.

In addition, some legal writing professors emphasise other methods to clarify organisation such as writing a strong introductory summary paragraph, using transitions such as ‘in addition’, ‘by contrast’ and ‘in the alternative’ to help make logical relationships between ideas, and, in persuasive writing, addressing strongest points first.

Comment on analysis: The field supervisor should provide feedback on the analysis and conclusions reached by the student. Some novices may believe they have sufficiently articulated their analysis by stating the issue to be resolved, the rule of law that must be applied, the facts of their case that are relevant to the issue, and then the conclusion prefaced by words such as ‘and so therefore ...’. Articulating analysis is commonly a difficult skill to learn.

Recent scholarship provides helpful suggestions to help novices develop legal analysis. For example, Sarah E Ricks and Jane L Istvan provide the following tips to help novices better articulate their analysis in a legal brief: repeat the language of the legal test when applying the law to your client’s facts; make analogies and distinctions between your client’s facts and the facts of prior cases explicit and easy for the court to grasp; make it easy for the court to see that your position is consistent with the policies underlying the results of binding precedent; and address weaknesses in your argument rather than ignore compelling counterpoints of the other side.

Developing legal analysis is a crucial part of improving legal writing. Thinking and writing are interrelated. Rather than revising the student’s work or directing the student how to revise the work, they use a series of questions to help the students spot holes in their analysis and better articulate their analysis.

Students will learn how to develop and articulate analysis better if they learn how to correct mistakes rather than just follow directions on how to rewrite a certain section. The way in which supervisors point out flawed or inadequate analysis can affect a student’s ability to learn how to better articulate analysis in the future.

Mix positive comments with constructive criticism: Field supervisors should mix positive comments with constructive criticism in oral and written critique.

Most people, in any situation, will have a difficult time focusing on improvement if they receive only negative feedback. The field supervisor should point out both the weaknesses and the strengths of student work.

Sometimes students do not realise that they have done something well and, if pointed out, they can use it as an example for future work. Positive feedback also has the added benefit of helping develop positive mentoring relationships.

Use good writing samples to illustrate points, including the student’s own work: Providing models of prior work by the field supervisor or other attorneys can help students understand what is expected. Remember that students may not have prepared a particular type of written product before, and may have no familiarity with it whatsoever.

This may provide the additional benefit of teaching the student the importance of reading material from the perspective of a reader who may not be as familiar with the issue as the writer.

If the field supervisor wants the student to improve one section of the writing, pointing to another part of the writing where the student did well can be a powerful and positive learning device. This not only illustrates the point to students, it also infuses confidence that they are capable of making the changes well because they already know how to do it.

Don’t fix everything: Although editing and/or rewriting portions of students’ work can be an effective learning tool, field supervisors should not edit the entire work.

The ultimate goal is to teach students how to become competent writers, readers, and editors of their own work. An effective way to achieve this goal in an efficient manner is for field supervisors to edit a portion of the work, explain the reasons for the edits, and then have students edit the rest of the work.

After pointing out the errors and explaining the corrections, allowing the student to edit the rest of the work will reinforce the lesson for the student. The goal is not only to fix one particular assignment, but to help the novice develop as a self editor.

If a writing has many different types of errors that need correction, legal writing professors suggest that supervisors’ comments should concentrate first on the major areas of concern. This might require students to rewrite the document several times, concentrating on different priorities for each draft. Some suggest focusing first on analytical problems and development of ideas, then organisation, and then on more surface-level concerns such as grammar and conciseness.

Comment on grammar and conciseness: Despite exposure to a law school education, some law students and new attorneys use poor grammar.

If students’ errors are a result of inadequate editing, pointing out the errors and referring students to a good grammar book may quickly set them in the right direction. An emphasis on the need for attention to detail can help. A writer should understand that correctable, careless mistakes reflect poorly on the writer and suggest a casual attitude toward high quality work.

If students’ errors are caused by a failure to understand grammatical rules, field supervisors should employ some of the critiquing techniques previously discussed.

The same can be said for conciseness. Field supervisors should impress upon students that conciseness is valued in the legal profession. Methods for writing more concisely include editing out weak arguments, avoiding legal jargon or legalese, using active voice, and breaking up lengthy sentences.

Remember a little experience can make a big difference: There can be a wide gap of knowledge between law students and those who have been practising for even a short time. One comment frequently made by new professors of first year law students is how they have to remind themselves that even the most basic concepts need to be explained.

Rather than mocking or nagging at a student’s confidence, the supervisor’s goals should be to improve a student’s writing skills and to help develop a confident and capable young lawyer.

Externship students will benefit if field supervisors have been exposed to the scholarship and pedagogy of legal writing professors. Externship clinicians can facilitate the critiquing process by educating field supervisors on ways that they can effectively yet efficiently provide meaningful guidance and feedback to students on their writing.

Externship clinicians are uniquely positioned in law schools to collaborate, not only with the practising bar, but with other members of the faculty. Collaboration with legal writing faculty and other faculty will benefit students enrolled in our externship programs and help fulfil our responsibilities to promote excellence in the legal profession.