Challenges of teaching law to non-law students

In this article from the Summer 2005 issue of Directions Alice Christudason (National University of Singapore) puts forward some solutions to the challenges of teaching law to non-law students.

This article is an abbreviated version of a paper presented at the 2004 Society of Legal Scholars Conference.

Degree programmes offered by law schools are generally geared to foster analytical and critical grounding in the theory, principles and philosophy of law, the broader functions of law and the practical efficacy of present legal systems, as well as analysis of case law. They also aim to develop oral and argumentative skills and techniques of legal drafting and writing. Their main objective is to prepare students for roles within legal practice, the judiciary, government and other public service, academia and business.

An altogether different set of objectives applies to non-law faculties, which nonetheless embed law subjects within their degree programmes. Many professional courses require students to take law modules as only part of their course requirements, but nevertheless require sound legal knowledge. In the Department of Real Estate at the National University of Singapore students are required to study the Law of Contract, Tort, Agency and Land Law and Conveyancing, Landlord and Tenant as integral parts of the curriculum over their four year degree programme. Students’ exposure to law subjects in non-law degree programmes can therefore be not only very real, but also substantial.

Teaching law subjects to non-law students presents a unique set of challenges. This may seem like stating the obvious, but the first difficulty a law teacher faces in such circumstances is that the students are not ‘pure’ law students. The student cohort may arrive from varying backgrounds, such as the Humanities, ‘hard’ Sciences, Combined Sciences or Commerce. Many may not posses the linguistic competence to handle law subjects.

The second factor is that such students are not being prepared for the legal profession. My students graduate to proceed to careers in diverse sectors of the real estate industry, such as valuation, property and facilities management, estate agency, property research and consultancy and real estate brokerage.

In the midst of this myriad of difficulties the law teacher’s role is not just to assist students to gain content knowledge. To make students’ learning more meaningful and in keeping with the shift in paradigm from teacher-centred to student-centred learning, the teacher should aim to:

• assist students to apply their knowledge
• inculcate the skills of legal analysis to some extent, so that students can recognise the process and attributes of legal analysis in the context of their likely professions
• help students to assimilate their learning of law subjects with their learning of other subjects
• enable students to see how law subjects are going to be relevant to them in ‘real life’, in my case in their careers in the real estate and construction industries

As a step towards enhancing student learning I have found it particularly useful to gain an understanding of the theory of student learning styles. If the individual student’s style of learning is accommodated the result can be improved attitudes toward learning and an increase in thinking skills, academic achievement and creativity. The teacher must recognise that there is a positive correlation between specific student cognitive styles and the need for teachers to expand their instructional model repertoire.

Adopting a variety of instructional modes appeals to a broader spectrum of students and results in a greater level of engagement. This offers students opportunities to experience reactions to complex and ‘real’ problems they may face later in their careers in a reasonably ‘safe’ and unconstrained context, while perhaps being evaluated by another group and/or the teacher.

Strategies to promote learning:

1. Buzz groups – divide a large group of students into smaller groups of 4-5 during class time to consider the issues surrounding a problem. After say 20 minutes of discussion, one or two members of each subgroup present the findings of the group to the whole group.
2. Affinity groups – groups of 4-5 students are assigned particular tasks to work on outside of formal contact time. At the next formal meeting with the teacher, the group, or a representative of the group, presents the group’s findings to the whole tutorial group.
3. Solution and critic groups – one subgroup is assigned a discussion topic for a tutorial. The other groups constitute ‘critics’, observing, offering comments and evaluating the subgroup’s presentation.
4. Teach-write-discuss – at the end of a unit of instruction students have to answer short questions and justify their answers. After working on the questions individually, students compare their answers. A whole-class discussion subsequently examines the array of answers that still seem justifiable and the reasons for their validity.
5. Role play and debates – allow a simulation of real life situations and adoption of different interest groups’ value systems in a relatively safe context.

These methods focus more on the process than the solution, and also enable the reaping of the more generic benefits of group dynamics, including collaborative and peer learning, social interaction, teamwork, task allocation and confidence building. Most importantly, the learning frameworks of cases and problems used are developed in consultation with staff members teaching other (non-law) subjects, giving me the opportunity to weave in issues from the students’ other courses.

This collaboration with colleagues provides a better perspective of the connection my subject has with the overall discipline and also facilitates the incorporation of other issues, enabling students to see the link between and across subjects they study. For example, an integrated case study can straddle issues of valuation and property management in addition to the legal issues. Attempting such a case study provides for students a more valuable learning framework than studying a module in isolation or as a standalone subject.

Last Modified: 4 June 2010