This fall, the incoming class of 1L students stepped into a new era of course structure at Osgoode Hall. Major transitions from the year prior included the shifts for certain course delivery styles, shortened course lengths, and new mandatory requisites for completion of the program.
The changes include the following:
- Legal Process I (LPI) has been changed to a full-year course called Introductory Lawyering Skills and Legal Process II (LPII) has been reformatted to a single Legal Process course in the second term.
- Ethical Lawyering in a Global Community (ELGC) was previously structured as a two-part intensive course that kicked off both the fall and winter terms but is now a full-year course held for two hours weekly.
- ELGC, Public and Constitutional Law (PubCon), and Introductory Lawyering Skills (ILS) run only for the first nine weeks, nine weeks, and ten weeks of the term, respectively for the fall term. Previously, all courses ran right up until exams.
- Administrative Law is now a required course for the incoming class to complete in their upper years.
The planning for changes came into effect following a March 2023 Faculty Council meeting where 10 recommendations for academic reform for the first-year curriculum were put forward by the Sub-Committee of the Academic Policy & Planning Committee (APPC). Their responsibility was to “identif[y] what is and is not working well in the first-year program and […] generate […] ideas for reform.” This article discusses specifically the changes above though the discussions of the Sub-Committee go beyond those listed.
Modified ELGC Delivery
The Sub-Committee discussed concerns with the previous style of ELGC delivery, which was a two-part intensive that occurred the first week of each term. They found that “some students [found] it challenging to grasp the ethical issues raised about a field and practice they know very little about” and that the course would lose momentum due to such a large gap between the two sessions.
It was with these concerns in mind that the Sub-Committee recommended “the intensive first week be eliminated and that ELGC begin the first week of the fall semester and as noted above, meet for 2 hours every week for 9 weeks in each of the fall and winter semesters.” This was enacted, and Osgoode’s current 1L class is the first to experience the new format for the 2024–2025 academic year.
Overwhelming Workloads
To address the concern of 1Ls feeling overloaded with work, one of the recommendations was for “three courses (ELGC, ILS, and PubCon) [to] end early […] to make the end of term and lead-up to exams […] more manageable.” This change has also now been enacted.
Another recommendation was to “develop and introduce a series of online pre-term modules” to familiarize students with the foundational knowledge for entering the study and profession of law. The modules would lay the groundwork for the more intricate layers of law that 1Ls will encounter with their other required courses such as Contracts or Torts. They would be called Law and Legal Reasoning and would consist of 10-12 hours of content. The motion was passed but the modules were not yet available to 1Ls this year.
Administrative Law
The reason for Administrative Law now being a required course for completing in upper years was to alleviate the inconsistent teachings of principles in PubCon and LPII, which supported the recommendation for reducing the time burden as it removed an area they would have had to cover. The 1L students don’t seem to be particularly concerned about the addition of the Administrative Law requisite, and it is unclear whether many of them know that it is even a new requirement. A mandatory course of this nature was already a requirement for many other schools across the province.
1L Reflections
1Ls this year are gradually learning to navigate Osgoode and naturally are reflecting on the experience thus far. From the academic scheduling and curriculum context, most of them have minimal knowledge of the extent of and rationale for the changes unless they’ve done their own, personal research. The changes haven’t been widely talked about, even many upper years have been surprised by hearing 1Ls don’t have LPI, for example.
Many have noted that handling six courses, instead of the previous full course load of five, is a lot. Even if some aren’t as time-consuming as others, adjusting to that many at the very start felt significant. Having three of the courses end earlier does benefit students at the end of the semester, for studying for exams. However, all six starting simultaneously at the beginning of the year, when students were most confused about how to best manage everything, felt very challenging. Some 1L students have also mentioned that the looming rumour that “first-year grades matter the most” in law school makes it especially daunting.
Students still seem to feel overwhelmed with acclimatizing to law school and perhaps the pre-term modules would have facilitated a smoother transition. On top of the week-one jitters and getting oriented with learning the foundations of law, 1Ls were also already starting to dig through assigned landmark cases by the end of the first week. No doubt they understand the intensity and demands of law school. But the transition into all six courses made for an overwhelming start without that foundational training, nor the easing into the year with the typical ELGC intensive instead of a full week of courses. The students do note that the ELGC course is certainly essential to our studies and it is reassuring to know the school is continuously looking for ways to grow and evolve the programming; the concerns are more related to how its new course structurally impacts the time management demands for the year rather than the actual curriculum.
Additional Thoughts
The concerns and their respective changes are very interwoven—ELGC changes impacted workload distribution and changes to workload distribution changed what was valuable about the ELGC-intensive style.
It will be interesting to see how the 1Ls continue to respond to these new structures and curriculum, and how the ACCP will measure the impacts of the changes over the years. Specifically, it will be important to see what opportunities may be made available for students to voice their feedback.
If these topics are of further interest, it is recommended that students in 1L read the agenda of the Faculty Council meeting notes where these changes were passed. Doing so helps to further understand the changes and discussions around the rationales. There are also additional recommendations and discussions that this article did not address including concerns related to the fall reading week, anti-Black racism, and exposure to International, Comparative and Transnational education.
