LEARNING STUDIO

Law can become overwhelming very quickly in college. There are statutes, sections, judgments, principles and textbooks explaining all of them. A student can spend hours reading and still wonder how everything connects.

I prefer to begin with the problem the law is trying to address.

A section makes much more sense when you understand the dispute in which it is being applied. A judgment becomes easier to read when you first identify the facts, the question before the court and why the court reached the conclusion it did. Sometimes changing one important fact can change the entire legal answer.

That is where law becomes interesting.

The idea is not simply to remember enough law to write an examination. A law student should gradually become comfortable reading a provision, questioning it, connecting it with facts and understanding how it may actually operate when those facts change.

Depending upon the subject and the student's requirement, discussions may include legal concepts, reading judgments, statutory interpretation, answer writing, research and legal and corporate-law subjects.

There is a considerable difference between reading a case in law school and receiving an actual case file.

The file does not arrive with the important facts highlighted. There may be hundreds of pages of agreements, emails, invoices, notices, pleadings and annexures. Somewhere inside those pages is the story you first need to understand.

What should I read first? Which document matters? How do I prepare a chronology? What exactly am I researching? How do I brief another lawyer without making them read the entire file? How do I know whether the judgment I have found actually supports my proposition or merely appears to because I have only read the headnote?

And then there is drafting.

A legal notice does not become better because it is twenty pages long. A pleading does not become persuasive because it contains difficult words. The facts have to be clear, the legal point has to be understood and the person reading the document should be able to see what you are asking for and why.

These things are learnt slowly through practice.

The same is true inside a courtroom. Knowing the law matters, but knowing your file matters just as much. A judge may ask something you had not expected. A client may tell you one fact during a conference that changes your understanding of the entire dispute. A judgment that appeared perfect during research may turn out to have completely different facts when you read it properly.

For young lawyers, I want the Learning Studio to create room for these conversations and for practical learning that develops with experience.

This may include file reading, preparing chronologies, practical drafting, legal research, understanding pleadings, reading contracts and correspondence, preparing briefs, case strategy and client communication.

I have never liked the idea of an internship where a student spends a few weeks doing routine work, receives a certificate and leaves without really understanding anything about the matters that passed through the office during that time.

An intern is a student. I don't expect an intern to already know how legal practice works. That is the reason for being there.

Depending upon the nature of the matter, confidentiality involved and the student's level of understanding, interns may have an opportunity to assist with legal research, document review, preparation of chronologies and research notes, reading contracts and correspondence, and observing different aspects of legal practice.

There may be a research question that initially appears very simple and becomes more complicated once you begin reading. There may be a contract where one clause changes your understanding of another. There may be a file where simply arranging the dates properly tells you something that was not obvious when the documents were lying separately.

I want interns to notice these things.

I also value curiosity. If you don't understand something, ask. If you don't know the answer, say that you don't know and then find out. I would prefer an honest question to a confident answer that has not been researched.

I do not expect a junior advocate to know everything.

I do expect a willingness to read.

Practice teaches slowly. A file has to be read before the case can be understood. Dates have to be checked. Annexures cannot be ignored merely because the petition has already summarised them. A proposition has to be researched before it finds its way into a draft. And sometimes a draft has to be rewritten several times before it says exactly what it needs to say.

A junior working with me should therefore expect to participate in the work rather than simply observe it.

Depending upon the matter and the junior's experience, this may include reading files and preparing chronologies, legal research, reviewing agreements and correspondence, assisting with pleadings and notices, preparing briefs, attending client conferences and participating in court, arbitration and mediation-related work.

I don't believe responsibility should be the same on the first day and six months later. It should grow with the junior's understanding, confidence and ability.

I have learnt a great deal in my own professional journey because, at different stages, people trusted me with responsibilities that required me to do something I had not done before. There is a difference between being given responsibility and simply being left to manage something alone. The first can teach you. The second can merely overwhelm you.

I would like a junior working with me to have the former.

There will be corrections. There will be drafts that need to be done again. There will be days when we think we have found the answer and then discover a judgment that makes us reconsider it. And there will certainly be questions to which neither of us immediately knows the answer.

Then we read.