Musings from week 1

Pencil cases are not important

I am not the oldest here, in fact I am only the third oldest in my tutor group.

I am older however than all the tutors I've met so far. (Either that or they've had really easy lives or they own a painting in their attic that is doing the aging for them)

...and yes, the party was as bad as I expected. I hovered around until the tutor came to our group. We had our small talk for a few minutes and after he made his excuses and had moved away to see another group I was out the door...

So what actually have I learned this week?
Although you are told about and are prepared for the nature of the course, it still takes you by surprise that there is so little law. You are assumed to know it. Not all of it of course but you are expected to know the basics and the mechanics of how the thing works. All that time learning and discussing theory, all those long well crafted essays debating points, structuring arguments are all so much waste products now. This course is about practise plain and simple.

After the frenetic rush that is registration, the hernias involved in picking up the set books and the general nerve stretching stress of some many new things being dumped on you in a short space of time-the time comes to settle back and appraise what you are doing.

a) the first couple of weeks are spent in taking in the pervasive subjects, i.e. those that will crop up on a continuous basis throughout and in every section.

These are professional conduct, legal writing and drafting, legal research and interviewing. There are a sprinkling of other things to be taken in (library use/work management courses/ brief intros to things that will develop later) but the focus is on those four.

1. Professional conduct When must a solicitor not handle a case? What are the limits to client confidentiality? (my own favourite-if a client tells you that they have a full proof plan to steal the Crown Jewels and do so you can say nothing. But if they plan to hit someone to knock them out to steal their wallet you can inform the police...) What happens when two clients wish you to act for them-either on a common course or in opposition?
   
2. Legal writing Oh boy-I thought that I knew how to write, spell and use grammar correctly. I guess that I was wrong there...Legal writing stresses clarity and succinctness (hard to believe for those that I have letters from solicitors before), logicality, appropriateness of tone/familiarity/level of legal language. Letters are to be written in the active and not the passive (a personal nightmare)
3. Legal research Although I started off well here because we started with computer based research, I know that I will do badly when it comes to doing the same thing with books. OU legal research is all computer based-it starts from the first few units and is used all the way to the end. The only time that you are near a law library is for the complusory visit during the first and last courses. In truth, the OU are none to helpful here; now if they could send you a library of say, 300-1000 books when you apply to do a law course then they could certainly sort out that oversight. To me, this course is about rectifying your weaknesses and building on your strengths so I will have to get some serious library time in-starting tomorrow. I have noticed however that I'm always starting things tomorrow **embarassed cough**. The focus will develop to problem solving and not just information finding .
4. Interviewing I'm not due to start this until this coming Friday.
   

b) The vast majority of exams ('assessments' is the gentler term used here) are open note exams.
You can go in with text books, tutor made notes, hand made notes, aide memoirs- anything you like. But as I once learnt to my cost, all that is totally pointless if you don't understand what the notes are about. Some subjects are only tested in specific exams but others are tested throughout (like conduct-although there is a conduct exam, some 40% of the marks are earned through 'sneaky' intrusions into other assessments

c) Points are learnt through practise. Exercises are completed at home and then brought in to be discussed during the workshop. Fresh exercises are then set and you are expected to work through these either singly or as a pair or in your 'team'. After the workshop, other exercises are either given to you or set out in the subject materials.

This is not a theoretical course.
Understanding is gained through doing.

That's not to say that there is no reading involved-so far we have probably have been expected to cover about 150 A4 pages but less emphasis is put on making notes. I'm not to sure if I've even made a note yet...

d) In addition to the pre/post class exercises we will be set either single or group assessments during the year that will count to the overall pass/fail. The first of these will be set sometime during the 3rd week of term.

e) Then there are the exams-there are a lot of these.....(sob)

f) If I want to make the most of my time here, I would be well advised to get involved in pro bono work and the public legal services options. This will increase my work load for little or no physical return. What I hope that it will give me is

• Some practise with the interviewing/writing and advising parts of the course.
• A weeny bit of a social life, not much-I don't want much but the chance to bitch and moan in a pub would be good...
• Some really good credit for my CV.
  

g) The College stresses that those students who put the work in do the best. The choice is up to me.

This is dead easy to answer in week 1, let's see how I feel on week 25 (or even week 2!)