Does the Traditional Seminar Paper Make Sense?
Returning to my curricular musings, I want to discuss a mainstay of the law school curriculum: the seminar paper. The American Bar Association requires law students to complete a “rigorous writing experience after the first year.” Most law schools satisfy this requirement by mandating that students write a research paper before they graduate. Students typically write these papers as part of a seminar or independent research project, and many schools require these papers to be of “publishable quality,” similar to a student note in a law review.
I will start by confessing that I have not taught a traditional seminar, although I have supervised many independent studies. I will also confess that I have often been disappointed with the results of these independent studies. Maybe I just lack the crucial skills necessary to help my students blossom in this area, but I have talked to other professors at a variety of schools who have had similar experiences. These discussions raise two questions in my mind.
First, are we setting students up for failure by requiring them to write a traditional seminar paper? These requirements are premised on the belief that students can identify a cutting-edge legal issue, research it, and write an insightful analysis of thirty or so pages, all in approximately fourteen weeks. And of course, students have to juggle all of their other coursework at the same time, often receiving only two or three credits in the seminar. One of my colleagues commented that he wasn’t sure he could meet this requirement—indeed, professors often take a year or more to write an article, and we are well-versed with the underlying law and the writing process. Our articles are longer and more involved, but it still may be no surprise that we are so often disappointed with the ultimate results.
Second, why do we want our students to write the equivalent of a student note as a condition of graduation? I definitely understand the importance of writing in the law school curriculum (more on that in my next post), but is the seminar paper the best way to teach legal writing? Most of our students do not want to be academics, and they may never write another scholarly paper in their lives. I imagine that legal employers would much rather have their incoming associates spend their time improving their brief-writing or transactional skills as opposed to writing a scholarly paper.
On the other hand, the seminar paper may be the one time that students have to research a legal topic from start to finish and really wrestle with the policy choices underlying the law. It is valuable for students to understand how the law is made and think hard about future developments in their chosen area of the law. This critical thinking is part of the bundle of skills that will be important long after they have learned the basics of brief writing and contract drafting. Additionally, law school is a graduate school, not a trade school, so perhaps requiring a scholarly paper is appropriate even at the expense of more practical training. I don’t know that I am persuaded by these arguments, but they are certainly important points to consider.
It was a revelation to me that the ABA does not require students to write a research paper before graduation. As noted above, the ABA only requires a “rigorous writing experience,” a requirement that gives law schools tremendous flexibility (unless there is some interpretation of the standard that I don’t know about). Law schools put the scholarly paper gloss on this requirement, perhaps as a way of making clear that they were not trade schools. In researching law school requirements around the country, I have noticed that at least a few schools have started to broaden this requirement. At these schools, a wide variety of courses satisfy the upper-level writing requirement, from traditional seminars to practicum-style courses. I increasingly believe that this is the right approach, but I would welcome other thoughts as well.