The Challenges in the Reading of Legal Cases: Lecturers' Perspective

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INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE CONFERENCE (ILC) 2014 1

THE CHALLENGES IN THE READING OF LEGAL CASES: LECTURERS’ PERSPECTIVE

Adlina Ariffin1

International Islamic University Malaysia

Center for Languages & Pre-University Development (CELPAD), International Islamic

University Malaysia (IIUM), 53100 Jalan Gombak, Selangor.

[email protected]

Ratnawati Mohd Asraf2

International Islamic University Malaysia

Institute of Education (INSTED), International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM),

53100 Jalan Gombak, Selangor.

[email protected]

Abstract

The ability to read legal cases is one of the most essential skills for law students to be

successful in their discipline. It is particularly fundamental since case law is one of the main

sources of law. Christensen (2007) in her research entitled "Legal Reading and Success in

Law School: An Empirical Study" shows that students who are able to read judicial opinions

effectively and efficiently are more successful in their studies. Upon realizing the fundamental

role of this legal skill to law undergraduates, a study was conducted to look at the

pedagogical and methodological perspectives in the teaching of this skill at a law faculty in a

Malaysian public university. Among the aims of this research were to uncover the problems

related to the teaching process as well as illuminate some practical suggestions to enhance

the quality in teaching this particular legal skill. This study which adopted an in-depth case

study design obtained the data through interview sessions with six law students and three

law senior lecturers. The major findings are divided into two categories- lecturers‟

perceptions on law students and lecturers‟ perceptions on the management of the legal skill

courses.

1 Adlina Ariffin is an English lecturer at the Centre for Languages and Pre-University Development

(CELPAD) at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). She obtained her Bachelor and Master degrees in TESL from University of Malaya. She completed her PhD in Education specializing

in ESP from Institute of Education, IIUM. She possesses 16 years of teaching experience. 2 Ratnawati Mohd Asraf is Professor of Education at the Institute of Education, International Islamic

University Malaysia. She has published numerous articles on second language acquisition, reading and literacy, and the use of statistics in research.

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Keywords: language for specific purposes, legal English, reading legal cases, case reading.

1 INTRODUCTION

Throughout the formal legal training and legal apprenticeship of any law students,

they are required to read a variety of documents such as statues, judicial opinions, journals,

casebooks, textbooks and law magazines, to name a few. However, one of the most

essential skills for law students to be successful in their discipline is their ability to read legal

cases. This skill is most paramount since case law is one of the major sources of law, the

other being statutes. Christensen (2007) in her research entitled „Legal Reading and

Success in Law School: An Empirical Study‟ shows that students who are able to read

judicial opinions effectively and efficiently are more successful in their studies than those who

are less capable.

Despite its importance, she claims that many law schools merely provide minimal

training on how to read legal texts competently. The most common assumption is that

students would have possessed this skill when they enroll in a law school. This attitudinal

fallacy is referred to as „skills deployment assumption‟ (Stratman, 1990). Stratman highlights

that legal educators have erroneously made the assumption that law students who enter law

schools are fully equipped with sufficient literacy skills which are readily transferred to the

legal texts.

Yet in truth, reading legal texts proves to be an arduous task to most of the law

students. Krashen (1981) identifies this situation as a „transition problem‟ which refers to a

perceived gap in the English language and study skill abilities of learners who have passed

through traditional language classes, and those required for study purposes in the different

disciplines. He argues that content-based English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses can

impart both subject knowledge and language competence at the same time. In fact, sufficient

training on the reading of legal cases is deemed to be of utmost importance due to the

linguistic complexity of the legal language and the inherent intricacy in the process of

legal reading particularly in the reading of legal cases which requires strategic reading by

the learners.

1.1 Legal language

Legal language or in this context, legal English, with its unique structure, has always

created a lot of confusion and difficulties to not only laymen but also law students. To a great

extent, it leads to a lot more incomprehensibility than a good understanding of the legal texts.

For instance, Badger (2003, p.251) states that “law reports have unusual vocabulary and

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complex syntax” whilst Christensen (2007) describes her first experience of reading a judicial

opinion as confusing, mystifying and unfamiliar. Tiersma (1999), in his book Legal Language,

provides a thorough elaboration on the stylistic features of the language which he describes

as “ponderous, arcane and obscure” (p.5). Among the features that contribute to the

complexity and ambiguity of the language are the “antiquated vocabulary”, ”anachronistic

verb forms”, “wordiness and redundancy”, “negation”, “impersonal constructions”, unlimited

use of “binominal expressions” and use of “passives and nominalizations”. Moreover, the fact

that the language is loaded with Latinised words and concepts does not make the case for

comprehensibility any easier for the law students. It has also been acknowledged that the

verbosity of the legal language added with the lengthy and peculiar sentence structures and

other strange linguistic features have made it perplexing, burdensome and incomprehensible

(Goodrich, 1987 in Tiersma, 1999 ; Phillips, 1987; Habermas, 1996 in Phillips, 2003;

Tiersma, 1999; Phillips, 2003; Haigh, 2009) . Thus, due to the labyrinthine traits of the

language, it has alienated itself from ordinary language that it is perceived as regal, formal,

unintelligible and impenetrable by ordinary minds (Mellinkoff, 1963 in Tiersma, 1999;

Goodrich, 1987 in Tiersma, 1999; Phillips, 1987; Phillips, 2003).

1.2 Legal reading

The reading of legal texts with its convoluted sentence structures becomes more

demanding for it comprises specific legal terminology. In order to fully capture the meaning of

these legal jargons, students must possess adequate background knowledge. They need to

be able to bring in „real world‟ knowledge into the legal texts (Deegan, 1995) in order to

interact with them. Besides that, textual knowledge of legal texts will also ease

comprehension in reading this genre. Bhatia (1993) introduces four moves in the textual

structure of a legal case. They are Move 1: Identifying the case, Move 2: Establishing the

facts of the case, Move 3: Arguing the facts of the case, and Move 4: Pronouncing the

judgment. Knowledge on these moves will definitely help students to read the text more

efficiently. In addition, grammatical knowledge will “help the readers understand the

relationship among concepts within a sentence” (Dewitz, 1997, p.225). However,

Christensen (2007) cautions that understanding the grammatical and syntactical structure of

legal texts may pose such a challenge to novice legal readers due to its intricate and

complex nature. And finally, knowledge on reading strategies has also proven to be of great

importance for it allows readers to “set a purpose for reading, self-question, search for

important information, make inferences, summarise and monitor the developing meaning”

(Dewitz, 1997, p.228).

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1.3 Reading legal cases

What does reading legal cases mean? Reading a case constitutes a “creative

enterprise” (McLeod, 2007, p.148) because it is not a straightforward process as when one

reads magazines or newspapers. When students read a case, they should be able to make

connections between previously decided cases with the cases they are presently reading.

Simply put, they need to be able to see how the legal principles were used in the previous

cases and how they are applied in the present case that leads to the decision. This ability to

locate and analyse the ratio decidendi or the principles of law is important for law

students because as future lawyers they need to be critical, analytical and sharp in providing

their arguments for or against a case. At the same time they have to consider the issue of

bindingness of those cases by referring to the hierarchy of the courts.

Besides that, they also need to have the structural knowledge of cases such as the

name of the case, the court, headnote, summary of the case, material facts, judgment, cases

referred etc. Hence, the researcher strongly believes that effective teaching on the reading of

cases should not only make the students better readers but more importantly better thinkers

in deciding the best choice among variety of possibilities.

Upon realizing the complexity in reading cases and its importance to law students,

this study aimed to investigate the teaching and learning process in the reading of legal

cases at the Ahmad Ibrahim Kulliyyah of Laws (AIKOL). Specifically, it sought to unravel

some of the problems faced by law lecturers in teaching this fundamental skill to the learners.

2 METHODOLOGY

2.1 Setting

At the IIUM, the skill of reading cases for law students is taught by the law school

itself via its Legal Methods (LM) and Compulsory Mooting (CM) courses. This legal skill is not

being catered for in an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course or English for Academic

and Legal Purposes (EALP) course, unlike in some other universities such as the National

University of Malaysia.

Thus, Ahmad Ibrahim Kulliyyah of Laws became the main focus in this case study. It

was one of the oldest Kulliyyahs or schools formed during the initial establishment of

International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) in 1983. The school started off by offering

degree courses in Civil Law and then slowly included Shari‟ah Law into their programmes. At

present the Kulliyyah offers degree programmes, from Bachelor to Postgraduate studies, in

both Civil and Shari‟ah laws. Initially the kulliyyah comprised of 3 departments – Public Law,

Private Law and Islamic Law. However, from June 2011 onwards the kulliyyah went through

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some transformation of its departments. The newly reorganized departments were Civil Law,

Islamic Law and Legal Practice.

Upon enquiry to the kulliyyah, the researcher was made to understand that the

formation of the Legal Practice department was deemed crucial in order to improve and

sharpen the law students‟ soft skills and lawyering skills which were found lacking among

them. This positive development is undoubtedly a major step in enhancing students‟ doctrinal

knowledge and legal skills knowledge which are very crucial in producing competent legal

practitioners. This move is not without any empirical evidence. A study by Christensen (2008)

clearly accentuated the importance of incorporating mastery-oriented goals in the curriculum

of any law school as it led to tremendous improvement in their legal studies.

2.2 Participants

2.2.1 Law undergraduates

The main criteria for selection were:

a) The students were in the intermediate achievement category in their legal studies.

Justification: In order to capture the common practices of the majority of the Law students,

focus was given to those in the intermediate category rather than the excellent or the weak

ones for these two were the extremes whilst the intermediate represented the huge number

in between these extremes. Furthermore, the students in the intermediate group were

perceived to reflect the idea of commonality of practice, which was the focus of the first

phase of the research, rather than exceptional attributes.

b) The students were in their second year of studies.

Justification: These groups of students were deemed to be most suitable for this research

since they would have had some exposure to the content of the legal discipline.

2.2.2 Law lecturers

Initially, two lecturers were involved in this study. The main criteria in the selection were:

a) The lecturers were teaching civil law.

Justification: In AIKOL, there are two types of law being taught – Civil Law and Islamic Law

or Syariah Law. Since this research involved cases from the inherited British legal system,

information were obtained from those teaching Civil Law.

b) The lecturers have been directly or indirectly involved in the teaching of the legal

skills courses.

Justification: There are two categories of lecturers in a law school – those who teach the

legal doctrines and those who teach the legal skills (Christensen, 2008). In AIKOL, the skills

on reading case law are catered for in the Legal Method course which is a part of the training

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on legal skills. Thus, valuable information shall be obtained from those lecturers who have

had the experience teaching this legal skill course. These lecturers are considered the

specialist informants in this research.

Nevertheless, as the study progressed, the researcher noticed that the students kept

praising the teaching style of another law lecturer, Dr Addin. Albeit he was teaching Criminal

Law and not any of the legal skill courses, he was able to teach students the effective ways

in reading legal cases. An interview session was then held to gain his insights. With this new

addition, the eventual number of teaching staff interviewed in this study was three people.

2.3 Data Collection Technique

2.3.1 Semi-structured interview

This was the main technique used in this research. According to Kvale (1996) in Nik

Suryani (2008, p.2), interviewing is a process of “understanding the world from the subjects‟

point of view, unfolding the meaning of peoples‟ experiences, and uncovering their lived

world prior to scientific explanations”. It is a method of enquiry that enables the researcher to

access the participants‟ worldview (Patton, 1987). To ensure consistency and systematic

coverage of major issues during the interviewing process, an interview guide was prepared

by the researcher. The interview guide was developed by taking into consideration and

combining the types of interview questions as categorized by Patton (1987) and Rubin &

Rubin (1995 in Gubrium, 2002, p. 86). Patton classified the questions into six types which are

experience/behavior, opinion/belief, feeling, knowledge, sensory and

background/demographic; while Rubin & Rubin (1995) in Gubrium (2002, p. 86) divided them

into “main questions that begin and guide the conversation, probes to clarify answers or

request further examples, and follow-up questions that pursue the implications of answers to

main questions”.

Dornyei (2007) expounds that before researchers are able to conduct a semi-

structured interview, they need to have a firm grasp of the phenomenon under study. This

prior knowledge will assist them in developing appropriate, meaningful and significant

questions pertinent to the research. In light of this admonition, it must be mentioned that prior

to embarking on this research endeavour, the researcher in the present study has spent

considerable amount of time familiarising herself with the academic activities and educational

environment at the law school. For instance, in 2007 she was given the chance to pilot a new

course - English for Law - at AIKOL. She was given one semester for this purpose. This

opportunity was taken to its full advantage because it was then that the researcher made

contacts with the law lecturers and other law students. Her casual conversations with them

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provided much of the necessary input. She tried as much as possible to be accustomed to all

the inherent domains in legal studies. For instance, she attended a few mooting sessions

and observed the students develop their „bundle of cases‟. Furthermore, her experiences in

teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course to groups of Law students were also

very valuable in that they revealed to her some of the typical intellectual activities related to

legal studies. Thus, it could be safely deduced that her formulation of the interview questions

was considerably comprehensive but not exhaustive in that they encompassed all the crucial

aspects related to the focus of the research.

The combination and adaptation of these aspects in developing the interview guide

was deemed most apt in achieving the researcher‟s objective to generate insights into the

practice of the reading of legal cases at AIKOL. It enabled her to explore students‟ varied

experiences in practicing it. The interview guide was also essential in delimiting the issues

asked, ensuring consistency of information retrieved and ascertaining the smooth-running of

the interview (Patton, 1987). In the same vein, Dornyei (2007) accentuates the significance

of the guide in a qualitative research whereby it is used to determine that all essential

aspects of the questions have been covered by each interviewee; the wordings of the

questions have been suitably phrased; and examples of probing questions, opening

statement and general comments are readily available if the need arises. All the information

gathered during the interview sessions was digitally recorded. And since this research was

done in an L2 context, the participants were allowed to provide their feedback in their mother

tongue so as to remove any forms of language barrier which may affect the essence of the

information.

3 FINDINGS

To ease the deliberation of this component, the overall findings of the study is divided

into two main categories:

a. Lecturers‟ perceptions on law students

b. Lecturers‟ perceptions on the management of the legal skill courses

3.1 Lecturers’ perceptions on law students

3.1.1 Lack case reading skills

One of the problems which really baffled the lecturers was the fact that despite

receiving the training on reading cases, some students still lacked these important skills.

According to Dr Jayidah, she noticed that one of the major problems faced by learners was

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the difficulty in finding the ratio in a case and applying it to a hypothetical case. A similar

comment was made by Dr Addin who mentioned that:

the problem you know which most of the students to be honest especially now and

aa… some of the students who I should be encouraging you know… to develop the

lawyerly skills in the way that they apply the law to the material facts in the

questions… some are lacking in that [Dr Addin/DU14].

Dr Aminah, who was very worried with this situation, related her frustration and perplexity.

She just could not fathom why some students failed to acquire the skills even in the final year

of their legal studies. And when she was queried on her opinion whether all the students

knew how to read cases after the training given, her terse reply was “no definitely no…” [Dr

AminahP2/DU245].

Another problem highlighted by the lecturers was the students‟ inability to understand

the law and the legal principles. Dr Addin related that:

I realize that most of time aa… much as they claim to have understood but when it

comes to explaining, articulating, responding to the questions, it‟s either aa… you

know they have problem with that because of language or aa… they thought that they

have understood but sometimes it is also clear that they have understood wrongly [Dr

Addin/DU10].

He also highlighted that at times students‟ understanding of law was very superficial in

nature, lacking depth and essence. His concern was concurred by Dr Aminah who realized

the same difficulty among learners especially those lacking motivation in studying law.

Besides that, the lecturers also admitted the students‟ dilemma in remembering

cases. This was mainly due to the fact that students were taking a few subjects per semester

and each subject required them to read a reasonably huge number of cases. According to Dr

Aminah, as a result of this situation, many students tended to get the cases mixed up

especially during exams. Her statement was attested by the confession of one of the student

respondents. Sofia admitted that her main weakness in reading cases was actually to

remember them. She acknowledged that although lecturers kept telling them that memorizing

cases was not really important, “but sometimes if you can‟t really remember those names

and then you mix it up with another case it‟s it gets kind of confusing basically it‟s a lot of

memorization basically the memorisation is baffles me la” [DU114].

On this issue, Dr Aminah stressed that this was indeed an unavoidable problem

which students need to work hard and work smart to tackle it. One of the ways suggested

was for students to focus on landmark cases. She also pointed out that more often than not,

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during exams, lecturers did not impose strict regulation on students‟ recollection of the cases;

mere mention of the first names would suffice.

3.1.2 Students’ excessive reliance on textbooks

Due to their lack of skills in reading cases as elaborated above, students tended to

prefer to use „short-cuts‟ in their reading of the judicial opinions. Instead of reading the

original cases they would rather read the textbook version of the cases. This was clearly

illustrated in the statement made by Laila who mentioned that:

We are told to look for the important things so we just read the material facts, the

head notes but… but ya…obviously the lecturers will prefer for us to read the whole

case but it… it‟s much easier for us because in the text book itself they already

summarized the case, the principle case the… so sometimes we don‟t… we don‟t

even refer to the original case we just read from the text book because everything is

already there [Laila/DU22].

She also admitted that “you still have to refer to the original case if you want to know more to

know detail and lecturer they always advise us to go and to go back to the original cases”

[Laila/DU34].

The lecturers opined that this was indeed a very unhealthy habit because as future

lawyers it is obligatory upon them to learn and master the art of reading legal cases as cases

are one of the sources of law. Furthermore, as pointed out by Dr Jayidah, “text books are not

binding authority, you can‟t bring text books to court” [DU40]. Dr Jayidah further elucidated

that students‟ heavy reliance on the textbooks would restrict their interpretation of the issues

in the cases to that of the authors [DU36]. As a result, they would not put on their thinking

cap but regurgitate the authors‟ opinions. More importantly, this practice would hamper their

ability in searching for the right cases and using them effectively in delivering their arguments

to settle a particular problem.

She also mentioned that another danger of relying too much on textbooks was that

since the cases mentioned in the textbooks were the abridged version of the original

judgments, the legal authors may only relate certain legal issues and the related ratios in the

cases. Thus, students only get a myopic view of the case. It means that they will only be able

to understand and appreciate the cases better if they were to read the original judgment.

Dr Addin, who was aware of this trend among learners, also mentioned on the

restrictiveness of the textbooks. According to him, in order to check students understanding

of a particular case he would pose a few „right questions‟ which would enable him to

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differentiate those who read the original cases from those who relied on the books [DU30].

He noticed that due to the limited coverage of the cases in the textbooks the latter group was

not able to fully grasp the legal issues and the topic he was teaching. And worse still, he

noted some of them did not even know „the art of reading textbooks‟ [DU32]. Hence, he

strongly advocated the reading of original cases among learners as this would be a vital and

fruitful practice for their future in the legal fraternity.

Dr Aminah went a bit further into this issue by emphasizing that a legal author may

commit an error when writing a textbook. She actually went into great length in explaining her

suspicion on how the author of a textbook on Malaysian Law of Contact may have erred in

explicating a particular legal principle. The author has misconstrued the judge‟s obiter

statement as the ratio [P2/DU64]. This situation clearly denotes the importance for students

not to rely excessively on textbooks. It does not mean that they should not read the books at

all, but they need to go to the original cases prior to reading the textbooks. In doing so, their

thinking skills shall be enhanced by developing their own interpretations of the case rather

than relying on the authors and at the same time they may also be able to identify any legal

mistakes in the textbooks.

3.1.3 Students’ attitude

Another problem which was of great concern to the lecturers was the students‟

attitude toward their studies. In relation to LM, Dr Aminah noted that students tended to take

the course for granted. Since this skill course did not impose any final examinations at the

end of the semester, some students merely treated it as a course which they could get by

with minimum effort. They failed to realize the importance of the skills learnt in LM to their

legal studies and to their future profession [Dr AminahP2/DU189&201&215].

As a result, students did not put in sufficient effort in mastering the skills taught. For

instance, they would use short-cuts in „preparing‟ their notes by resorting to the notes

inherited from the seniors. And worse still, they would even go to the extent of requesting a

copy of the power point notes prepared by the lecturers. And yet, Dr Addin highlighted that

preparing one‟s own notes was indeed a crucial training for law students for it involves the

activation and manipulation of many cognitive skills such as analytical and critical thinking

skills.

The lecturers also noted that due to this factor some students were having problems

with their attendance especially among the weak learners. LM, which relied heavily on

coursework (about 90 percent), required a lot of participation from the students. Hence, when

students keep missing classes, they were limiting their participation in the activities which

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aimed to hone their legal skills. Eventually, not only were they not acquiring the legal skills

but more importantly, they had “a tendency to fail” the course [Dr Jayidah/DU120].

However, the biggest problem quoted by the lecturers was laziness among students.

All three of them agreed that this was the syndrome that needed to be arrested in order for

students to excel in their studies. For example, Dr Addin noticed that in training the students

to read criminal cases, there were some students who were good while there were those

who were lazy. This latter group would neither make any extra effort to ask questions nor

would they read the cases prior to coming to tutorials. These were the students who were

likely to fail his course because their understanding of the cases was very superficial.

Besides that, Dr Aminah also detected that this syndrome was becoming rampant

since the senior law students were also making the same complaint of their juniors. They

shared their disapproval with her that the younger students were not making serious effort in

their studies, preferring to use „short-cuts‟ instead [DU58].

And to the researcher‟s amazement, the student respondents also admitted to this.

For instance, in the reading of cases, Saiful mentioned that despite the great demand placed

by the course on the students and the huge number of cases they had to read, students‟

laziness compounded the whole matter [DU65]. It impeded their progress in acquiring and

mastering the skill of reading cases. More importantly, he also highlighted that although

students had been given sufficient training on this crucial skill, some of them were not

ulitising it due to laziness. He also mentioned that should students be given lesser cases to

read, they may not actually do so for the simple reason that they were lazy [DU91].

Another respondent, Syukri concurred with Saiful when he stated that majority of the

law students always use short-cuts in their studies. They were unwilling to put in additional

effort and work harder as they perceived the additional work as boring, time consuming and

tiring [DU97].

The lecturers opined that another possible cause for the attitude problem among

learners was their lack of inclination toward practice. They contended that this group of

students was not motivated to do their best in their studies merely because they were not

interested in law. They joined the school because their parents made them do so. According

to Dr Aminah, this factor was the most prevalent reason given by those students on the

dismissal list [P2/DU264]. Their lack of interest in law was also inhibiting them from grasping

the skill of reading cases effectively. Dr Jayidah commented that for these students they had

a lot of difficulty in finding the ratio, and applying it to the hypothetical problems [DU50].

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3.2 Lecturers’ perceptions on the management of the legal skill courses

3.2.1 Lecturers’ resistance in teaching LM

Besides highlighting the problems they faced with the students, the specialist

informants also shared with the researcher some of the challenges they faced in managing

LM.

According to Dr Aminah, at the beginning of every semester, she would always get

new lecturers teaching LM. It would never be the same faces. This was mainly because most

of the law lecturers were not enthusiastic to teach the course which they considered very

demanding. The fact that LM was essentially based on coursework required the lecturers to

do a lot of preparation for the classes, constantly monitor the students‟ work and assess the

students continuously throughout the semester. All these activities became a huge burden on

their existing overbearing responsibilities. Furthermore, Dr Aminah also postulated that the

strong emphasis on research work by the university may also become another reason for the

lecturers‟ lack of interest in teaching LM – a course they considered demanding. She even

made a strong assertion that students‟ failure in their course maybe due to the lecturers‟

being too engrossed with their research that teaching was no more their priority.

Adding to the issue, Dr Jayidah stated that the frequent turnover of lecturers for LM

made it difficult for any of them to master teaching the skill courses. She mentioned that:

when you change legal method instructors, most of them don‟t know what to do or they know

what to do tapi macam they are not sure, they know that this is something that they have to

teach but they are not sure about the methodology of teaching it you know I think that‟s one

problem [Dr Jayidah/DU136].

As the course coordinator, Dr Aminah admitted wanting the same people to teach the

course, however, her hands were tight. And she stressed that for one to fall in love with LM,

one needed to have the interest and dedication to master the skills and impart the skills as

effectively as possible to the learners, and all these required a long-term relationship not a

short stint with LM.

3.2.2 Lackadaisical attitude of LM instructors

If getting staff to teach LM was already a problem, managing those who were

teaching the course presented another hurdle to the specialist informants. Dr Jayidah

particularly noted that “some instructors don‟t care, some instructors they just go through the

motion so long as they will finish the syllabus” [Dr Jayidah/DU132] and “like whether the

students get it or not; that‟s not my problem” [Dr Jayidah/DU141-142]. This issue was akin to

the concern voiced by Dr Addin. While acknowledging the important role of LM in providing

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proper legal training to the students, he was also hoping that the instructors would also do

justice to the course and the learners. He said:

I just hope that lecturers teaching the subject is not because they have to cover the

syllabus and mark the scripts and ensure many will pass… I just hope that is not

happening… because to me that is where you really train them… you should really

train them and if they do not you know… meet the standard you know… if they have to

fail them… then fail them by all means [Dr Addin/DU42].

Upon close scrutiny of this situation, the study strongly believes that this lackadaisical

attitude among some of the instructors may be due to their disinterestedness and impartiality

toward LM as elaborated above. This behavioural manifestation could be perceived as their

form of retaliation in being „forced‟ to do something contrary to their inclination. However, it is

very sad to know that they are doing this at the expanse of the students‟ future.

To address this problem, Dr Jayidah suggested that the law school needed to train a

group of lecturers who shared the aspiration of LM in equipping the students with the

fundamental legal skills including reading cases. She strongly felt that the sincere dedication

from these instructors would be very fruitful in ensuring that “at least majority of the students

will you know get a good grasp of it [the skills learnt]” [DU144].

3.2.3 ‘Lay the blame’ syndrome

Another challenge faced by LM was the fact that other lecturers would be very quick

to throw strong criticisms at the course when students were not able to read cases properly.

According to Dr Aminah, rather than looking at this task as a shared responsibility, these

lecturers would conveniently lay the blame on LM. Dr Aminah acknowledged that there were

some students who were not able to fully grasp the skills but others could do it very well.

However, she made a very good point that students‟ passing the LM course was not a

guarantee that they were going to be successful lawyers or good students throughout their

legal studies. The legal skills that they have acquired in LM including reading cases needed

to be reinforced and further enhanced by other lecturers teaching other branches of law.

On a similar note, Dr Jayidah argued that the basic foundation of the legal skills which

had been laid down in LM during the first year should not be left unattended by lecturers in

the second, third or final year. These lecturers must always remind students to read cases

and they also need to develop questions which probe students‟ understanding and challenge

their thinking abilities.

In short, rather than laying the blame on LM per se when students are not able to

read cases well, lecturers should have a more concerted effort to help the learners because

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they need to realize that LM only provides the basic skills. They are responsible for a more

complex undertaking of those skills as they are teaching different branches of law. Thus, to

echo Dr Jayidah and Dr Aminah, efforts need to be made to reinforce the skills of reading

cases throughout the learners‟ legal studies by making sure that every subject – from the

second to the final year of the legal studies – does incorporate this fundamental skill.

4 CONCLUSIONS

This study strongly suggests that law students must empower themselves not only

with the right legal skills but more so with positive attitudes toward their studies. They must

realize that they are carrying a huge „amanah‟ on their backs that actually does not permit

them to be lazy, lackluster, inferior and unmotivated. They must be willing to make sacrifices

by allocating more time for their studies, putting extra effort to achieve success, setting their

priorities right and managing their time effectively. Students must also remember that it is

only through constant practice in the reading of cases that they will be familiar with the

structure of the legal language and the legal terminologies. Furthermore, they are also able

to sharpen their skills in identifying the material facts, ratio and the legal issues;

differentiating between ratio and obiter; and understanding the application of the legal

principles in the judgments

Besides that, the study also suggests that the law school should train a pool of

dedicated instructors to teach the legal skill courses in order to arrest the problem of the high

turnover faced by the courses every semester. It is strongly believed that this approach will

indirectly instill the passion in teaching the skill courses and elevate the instructors‟ level of

commitment in discharging their responsibilities.

Indirectly, once the task of training the learners with legal skills particularly the case

reading skill is accepted as a shared responsibility with higher level of commitments among

the educators, the study reckons that it will help to reduce problems among the lecturers.

Those problems that have been identified in this study are resistance in teaching the skill

courses, lack of enthusiasm and seriousness among instructors teaching those courses and

tendency to lay the blame on others for students‟ incompetence in utilizing the legal skills.

This study strongly believes that all the academic staff at the law school should take equal

responsibility in nurturing the students with the necessary lawyerly skills. It is not sufficient

and more so impossible if they were only to rely on the skill course which is taught in the first

year. A more concerted effort is needed to ensure that the skills are constantly polished and

reinforced by continuously applying them throughout the students‟ academic life.

3RD


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Documents

The Challenges in the Reading of Legal Cases: Lecturers' Perspective