Tag: Best Legal English Programs

Law school, learning issues and LLM students

Posted by Stephen Horowitz, Lecturer of Legal English

Law schools in the US have become increasingly aware of and attuned to the range of cognitive learning issues that law students may deal with. I remember how counter-intuitive that seemed to me the first time I learned about this topic several years ago: “How could someone even get into law school if they have cognitive learning issues?” my brain naively wondered.

And the answer is that learning issues include things like ADHD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder), neurodivergence (e.g., autism), and dyslexia. And perhaps it even overlaps with anxiety, which often can present in the form of various learning issues.

In the context of foreign-trained lawyers and law students in LLM, JD and MSL programs in the US, the topic of course can be particularly tricky. In part because of cultural differences in attitudes towards and awareness of learning issues. And in part because it’s much more difficult to identify or diagnose issues when someone is operating in a second or third or fourth language. Is a student’s struggle with reading a function of language or of a learning issue? It’s hard to know. And in the case of dyslexia, there’s even a case to be made (in this TikTok video clip by @etymologynerd) that the nature of written English may cause more problems for people with dyslexia than other written languages do. So it’s possible that a foreign-trained law student in the US could struggle with dyslexia studying in English when it was not an issue for them studying in their home language.

I’m not aware of any specific solutions or research or discussion related to the intersection of learning issues and foreign-trained lawyers and law students in US law schools. But I think if nothing else, it’s helpful and important to bring awareness to such students, as well as to faculty and administrators who work with them, that these issues are out there and are very much on law school’s radars these days in a way they were not at all back when I was a law student in the 1990s.

Here’s a Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode (474) titled “Thriving in Law School with ADHD (w/ Rawi Nanakul.”

In this episode they discuss:

  • >Rawi’s personal journey and ADHD diagnosis
  • >Identifying ADHD signs
  • >The difference between the help provided by a doctor, a therapist, and an ADHD coach
  • >A few specific scenarios that might play out for students struggling with ADHD
  • >The importance of self-care and professional help

Resources:

Note from the Law School Toolbox Podcat:

If you enjoy the podcast, we’d love a nice review and/or rating on Apple Podcasts (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/law-school-toolbox-podcast/id1027603976) or your favorite listening app. And feel free to reach out to us directly. You can always reach us via the contact form on the Law School Toolbox website (http://lawschooltoolbox.com/contact). If you’re concerned about the bar exam, check out our sister site, the Bar Exam Toolbox (http://barexamtoolbox.com/). You can also sign up for our weekly podcast newsletter (https://lawschooltoolbox.com/get-law-school-podcast-updates/) to make sure you never miss an episode!

Thanks for listening!

Alison & Lee

Note: The Georgetown Legal English Blog has no affiliation with the Law School Toolbox Podcast or its parent organization JDSupra. We just thought this was a helpful episode to share.

Wordrake Plain Language Series: An Interview with Prof. Stephen Horowitz

In connection with International Plain Language Day (which is a real thing), Wordrake recently published an interview with Georgetown Legal English Prof. Stephen Horowitz, who teaches in Georgetown Law’s Two-Year LLM Program, in which they asked him questions such as:

  • “What prompted you to combine Law and English as a Second Language?”
  • “What connections do you see between writing for lawyers, linguistics, English as a Second Language, and the plain language movement? How do you see these fields working together to promote clarity and equity?”
  • “How can other lawyers help clients who speak English as a second language? What should lawyers know about ESL processing that would help them better serve clients?”
  • “How can professors help students who speak English as a second language?”

Below are some quotes from the interview:

  • “In Japan I encountered so many situations and behaviors that felt uncomfortable and at times even irrational. I learned to stop myself and consider the possibility that it actually was rational if you’re working from a different set of assumptions. And I learned to question and evaluate my own assumptions about how things should work before I fell back on a judgmental view or comment. It’s led me to a passionate curiosity for trying to understand why people do things they do.”
  • “The plain English movement is a reaction to a sense that the writing of lawyers and judges had become unnecessarily complicated and was acting as a barrier to access to justice. Although not stated explicitly, the plain English movement seems to me to assume native English speakers as its primary users and consumers. Legal English, on the other hand, is a catch-all term relating to the approach and curriculum for helping lawyers and law students from other language backgrounds study or work with US (or UK, Canadian, Australian, etc.) law or contracts in English.”
  • “The primary overlap [between Plain English and Legal English] is probably with regard to input. In the case of plain English, if you simplify language and use fewer words, then there is less information to process, both in volume and complexity. That should work to the benefit of non-native English speakers. In other words, using plain English makes a text closer to the idea of “comprehensible input.” Of course, it’s also possible that even a text that meets plain English standards could still be challenging for a non-native English speaker to understand for a variety of reasons, including vocabulary, grammar, and cultural knowledge gaps. And of course among non-native English speakers, there will also always be a wide range of facility with English.”
  • “However, it seems to me that plain English and legal English begin to diverge regarding output. This is because plain English can often be conveyed as a series of prescriptivist rules and principles for how to use and not use language. Whereas in legal English, the priority is generally learning to communicate one’s ideas accurately, with style a little lower down the priority list depending on the student. From a legal English teaching perspective, we want the students to learn to feel confident in expressing their ideas.”

Below is a link to the full interview.

Wordrake Plain Language Series: An Interview with Professor Stephen Horowitz

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