Osgoode News

Osgoode's Curriculum Reform (Part 1)

NICK VAN DUYVENBODE
Opinions Editor

Over the next two weeks, I would like to split my article into two parts. This week I will directly address the current changes in Osgoode’s curriculum reform that are taking place, and next week my article will address where we have positioned ourselves at Osgoode amongst one of many law schools seeking reform and our relevance as a law school.

On February 1, 2010, the Curriculum Reform Working Group (CRWG) released their recommendations outlining that a new curriculum will be applied to the entering class of 2012 that will affect the requirements for 2nd and 3rd year. Amongst other changes, including an overall drive to support further experiential learning, there are two major components of reform that are to occur: 1. the revision (addition) of a 2nd and 3rd year writing requirement; and 2. the establishment of a mandatory ‘praxicum’.

Upper Year Writing Requirements:
Students will be required to write a 6,000 word paper in 2nd year (accounting for at least 50% of the seminar grade) and a 8,000 word paper in 3rd year (accounting for at least 60% of the seminar grade).1 There are plenty of seminars offered at Osgoode that will meet the two criteria; and therefore students should generally have sufficient opportunity to satisfy this requirement as they wish. If there is an impact resulting from this additional writing requirement, it will be upon those students who actively choose not to take seminars at Osgoode.

Upper Year Praxicum:
The addition of a praxicum requirement will “...ensure that all students have at least one substantial opportunity to out theory to practice and practice to theory”.2 Two important questions remain though: 1. Who will administer this component of the JD program? And 2. What programs/courses/seminars will fall under this praxicum requirement?

The Clinical Education Committee is comprised of Osgoode’s various clinical intensive program directors, with three student representatives and is currently chaired by Professor Farrow.

There are currently 3 proposed routes to provide students with their praxicum experience:

“1. The modest expansion of the number of spaces, available in our pre-existing (i.e. the ILP, clinics and intensives);

2. Additional spaces in newly created but not yet operational (as of this 2010/2011 Session) clinical programs/intensives; and

3. Designated particular existing 3-4 credit “Praxicum type” seminars/courses as Praxicums.”3

What follows now are my initial red flags that have yet to be resolved......

In the 2010-2011 academic year, there were 164 spots in Osgoode clinical programs. In the same year, without any mandatory praxicum requirements, there were 254 applications (a shortfall of 90 spots).4 If you factor in a mandatory requirement, without any added spaces for a class of 300+, there will be a shortfall of roughly 140 spaces (factoring in also when exchanges are taken and when students decide to take their praxicum course).

Currently the proposed list of praxicum classes that would fall under category 3 include: Constitutional Litigation; Labour Arbitration, Legal Drafting, Theory and Practice of Mediation; Dispute Settlement, Trial Practice, Project Finance, Lawyer as a Negotiator, Case Studies in Small Business, Real Estate Transactions, International Taxation, Land Development and Real Estate Problems, Criminal Law II, Advocacy and Criminal Trial, and Tax Lawyering.5

For those that have taken some of these courses, one might questioned the degree to which their current form actually realistically embodies the ‘praxicum’ ethos that they are to be representative of. While talking to the Administration I was advised that there is intent to re-jig these courses to make them more praxicum-esque; however there are no finalized details as to what this will look like. There is only a deadline of May 2012 for this decision to take place.6

If this decision does take place in the summer, there is also a question as to what degree students will be able to provide input and critique the new program before final decisions are made? Currently, students are left with the concern about whether these courses can be turned into truly representative praxicum experiences, or will they be the cast-off courses for those that do not make it into a clinical intensive program?

What unintended consequences could flow from a mandatory praxicum requirement? Could one effect be affecting who will actually be admitted into clinical intensives? Are we going to reshape admittance to allow students who are more concerned with gunning for a position in our clinical programs, rather than a dedication to servicing the legal community that each clinic is designed to represent?

Are students, who would otherwise have realized their law school passion through a clinical intensive program, being forced to accept non-clinical praxicum course or alternative clinical experience to their preferred choice? Ultimately, with more students there will be a more competitive process for entering programs, and there will undoubtedly be consequences for students. Some may say that perhaps the clinical intensive programs are already competitive enough to get into!

My last question links into the direction of next week’s article: to what degree are we instituting a praxicum that awkwardly attempts to reform our current curriculum from the fringes without addressing the need for substantive and encompassing curriculum reform?

Footnotes

1 Osgoode Hall, Report on the Reform of the Upper Year JD Curriculum (Toronto: Curriculum Reform Working Group) at 32-33.

2 Ibid at 24.

3 Supra note 1 at 24.

4 Supra note 1 at 25.

5 Supra note 1 at 25-26.

6 Supra note 1 at 27.