Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 We as legal writing professors sometimes have to think about all of those things and how to convey sort of that, the core set of skills that Jonah talked about that we cover, but in a way that doesn't exclude students and really empowers students to be part of
Speaker 1 00:00:19 This honorable, the Supreme Court of the United States t
Speaker 2 00:00:23 Welcome to the US Law Essentials Law and Language Podcast, the legal English podcast for non-native English speakers to help you improve your English listening, improve your legal English vocabulary, and build your knowledge of American legal culture. Hi, this is Daniel. And before we begin today's episode, I wanna remind you that US Law Essentials offers online courses in legal English and US law. Our courses are designed for international attorneys, law students, and translators. If you have any questions, please contact Daniel at Daniel us law essentials.com and join us on Facebook and on LinkedIn. And now today's episode,
Speaker 3 00:01:09 Welcome to the US Law Essentials Law and Language Podcast. I'm your host, Stephen Horowitz, and today we continue our series of interviews on the topic of multilingual lawyers with our special guests, Georgetown Law Professors, Jonah Perlin and Anhe. Welcome and thank you both so much for joining this episode. Thanks for having us, Steven.
Speaker 0 00:01:30 Yes, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 00:01:32 Um, Anhe and Jonah are both legal practice professors, which Georgetown means they teach legal writing courses. That's only the beginning of what makes them interesting and special. Uh, more specifically, while the majority of their students have been American JD students, they also both have significant experience working with international students in the JD program. Uh, Unhi has a JD from Georgetown Law and did her undergraduate degree at George Washington University, where she also did a Master's in public policy. She also previously worked for the global law firm of Greenberg TR L L P, and more recently she's taught at Georgetown Law for the past three and a half years. And prior to that, taught legal research and writing in China at P King University School of Transnational Law and is created programs for international Lll m students at Georgetown Law and Fordham Law School. She has previously been co-chair of the Legal Research and Writing Diversity Committee for the Association of American Law Schools.
Speaker 3 00:02:34 She's currently on the editorial board for the Asian Journal of Legal Education and members of the Asian Pacific American Legal Writing Professor's Collective. And she's also a co-chair of the program committee for the Legal Writing Institute's 2024 Biennial Conference. Um, and her scholarly interests include cross-cultural communication and the intersection of language, culture and law. And she, she regularly presents on teaching global JD and international students. Okay. And now Jonah is also a graduate of Georgetown Law and he did his undergraduate degree at Princeton University, which is the town where I grew up actually. Uh, and he and he majored in religious studies but did not become a rabbi, was that
Speaker 4 00:03:18 That's correct.
Speaker 3 00:03:19 Okay. Um, and he has worked at a, as a litigator at the law firm of Williams and Connolly, l l p in Washington, DC and also clerked for Federal Appeals Court Judge Robert a Katzman of the Second Circuit. And for Judge Ellen Siegel hug, Huel hug of the US District Court for Washington dc. For the past four and a half years, Jonah has taught legal writing at Georgetown Law, and perhaps more interestingly, at least from the perspective of this podcast, Jonah is the founder of the very successful and influential How I Lawyer podcast, in which he interviews a wide range of lawyers about how they lawyer and I say influential because among other things, listening to Jonah's podcast and talking with him is what inspired me to start the US Law Essentials Law and Language Podcast with Daniel Edelson. Uh, and one of the best things about your podcast, Jonah, that I wanna mention from the perspective of l l m students or international students is that it could be extremely helpful and valuable without even listening to it.
Speaker 3 00:04:25 I'm not saying people shouldn't listen to it, but what I'm saying is that cuz one of the biggest challenges or, or surprises for a lot of law students who come to the US is that is getting their head around the wide and extensive range of the kinds of lawyers we have in the US and the kinds of things they do. So I'll tell my students sometimes just look at all the episodes and read the episode notes just to see the range of different kinds of lawyers we have in the us. That alone extremely valuable cultural knowledge for them. Cool. So, I, I'm not saying don't listen to it, I'm just saying that there's value even if you don't listen to it. Anyway, so welcome both of you.
Speaker 4 00:05:05 Thanks for having us.
Speaker 3 00:05:07 Thank you. Uh, and the first question I wanna ask you guys is do you, do you remember how we met?
Speaker 4 00:05:15 Uh, I can go first on this one. Um, so I, Steven, I think we met at a conference where I was at, I was presenting in New York before you came to Georgetown, uh, on an article I was working on about sort of communicating, using digital presentations like PowerPoint. Um, I think that was the first time we met and then soon thereafter, uh, you joined us at Georgetown, you made the right call, of course. Uh, coming down to DC and joining, uh, our home law school. And ever since then, it's been fun, you know, interacting and getting to know each other as an idea partner. Um, you know, Georgetown is a big school, as some people know, and often the LMS and jds consent kind of be siloed and, you know, our relationship is one way that I've sort of tried to break through that silo. And I think you've done the same. So it's been fun, fun interacting with you.
Speaker 3 00:06:04 Yeah, it, it really has. And, and I remember the topic, it was a, it was an academic support, uh, conference and you talked about teaching, uh, law students how to use PowerPoint, uh, which I thought was really, really interesting and eye-opening for me. And you, you talked about all the ways that that students really do need to know how to use PowerPoint because the, the older partners or judges or whatever tend to make the younger partners, uh, younger lawyers have to do all this. So it's a, it's a whole genre of writing in a sense.
Speaker 4 00:06:35 Exactly. It's absolutely a genre of communication and one that I was shocked by when I started, um, as a junior associate many years ago, and I just expected to be writing emails and briefs like I learned at Georgetown in legal writing. And they said, it's time to make a PowerPoint. And I said, okay, I guess I should learn how to do that. But yeah, absolutely. It was fun.
Speaker 3 00:06:56 <laugh> and, and, and he, do you remember when, when you and I first met,
Speaker 0 00:07:00 I think we met years ago, um, at one of the first, possibly the first Global legal skills conference in Chicago. Yes. Um, I saw you present about teaching international L l M students and I think I also had a presentation about teaching international students. Um, but you know what is so funny, and this is something that I talk to my students about sort of more generally, is just, um, what I remember more than our first meeting at that conference was that we had coffee in New York years ago, shortly after the conference. Um, and when we like had coffee and then we stepped out onto the street, there was a lot of construction and dust in the air and I had like a coughing fit. Um, and you were so kind and just gave me your own water bottle to take a sip out of. And it's just a small thing, but I remind my, or I tell my students all the time, um, you know, sometimes it's like small kindness as you really remember. And
Speaker 3 00:07:58 And this was, this was pre covid?
Speaker 0 00:08:00 Pre covid for
Speaker 4 00:08:01 Sure.
Speaker 3 00:08:01 Pre pandemic
Speaker 0 00:08:02 <laugh>. I think you did have small children though, so I should have been more careful.
Speaker 3 00:08:06 <laugh>, yeah. Oh, I, I didn't remember that detail. I remember having coffee with you. I didn't remember the coughing fit. Uh, but yes, we met at the Global Legal Skills Conference, uh, and it was 2015 in Chicago, but it was not the first one. It was the first one and the only one that I've been to. But it was, I remember towards the end of the conference I got to talk with you and I, I don't even remember what we talked about, but we talked for a while, right? Mm-hmm.
Speaker 0 00:08:31 <affirmative> mm-hmm.
Speaker 3 00:08:32 <affirmative>. Anyway, so I, I, I feel extremely fortunate to, to get to be colleagues with you guys now and to get to keep collaborating with you. Um, so my next question is, what is your own language background or experience with language and language learning? Uh, <inaudible>, you wanna go first?
Speaker 0 00:08:52 Oh my gosh. Um, how much time do we have? So
Speaker 3 00:08:56 We have, until Jonah has to go pick up his children <laugh> from daycare or school or
Speaker 0 00:09:01 Whatever, you know, I have had sort of lots of different experiences with language, um, and have been sort of in an insider slash outsider spaces to language multiple times in my life. Um, which I think affects how I work with students and it definitely affects my scholarship too. Um, so English is really my second language. I am a Korean speaker by birth. Um, though my English skills have long since like surpassed my Native Korean skills. Um, and so that's sort of an interesting thing when I talk to students, um, especially sort of second language speakers of English, um, who are learning English at later stages in their lives about that process. Um, I've lear I learned another language in high school. I took French in high school and then at different points I've had experiences where I've been in other countries. So studying abroad in the Netherlands as a law student or teaching abroad, um, in China where I did not have the ability to speak the language in the place where I was at. Um, but had different faced sort of different challenges in terms of the locals there, being able to speak my language and lots of different sort of levels of communication and thinking about ways to communicate. Um, and so I think even now, based on all of that, sometimes I find myself observing myself sort of an like, out of body third person, like observation about like different ways that I speak to people based on, um, my own background and experiences.
Speaker 3 00:10:50 And do you, do you use any of the other languages like Korean in your work today at all? Or have you used, have they been a part of any of your work at any point?
Speaker 0 00:11:00 They have not directly been a part of my work, but the experience of being, um, multilingual or, and the experience of being second language or speaking second language, um, has definitely impacted my work.
Speaker 3 00:11:18 How would you describe your Korean language ability at this point?
Speaker 0 00:11:21 So at this point I would call myself a heritage speaker, which is probably some a term that you can define much better than I can. Um, oh,
Speaker 3 00:11:30 You grow up if it, you grow up speaking it at home. So you know it, but you don't necessarily study it formally or academically, is
Speaker 0 00:11:37 That Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 3 00:11:41 Could you do, here's a question I like to ask people who are, who, who sort of straddle, uh, linguistic cultures. Um, do you, can you do math in your head in Korean?
Speaker 0 00:11:53 I can, yeah. Which is so funny.
Speaker 3 00:11:56 <laugh>, that's, I've never, I've, I've, you know, I've gotten pretty good at Japanese and Spanish over the years, but I, I don't think I can do math in my head in either of them. So to me that's a, that's a major signal of the limitations of my language ability.
Speaker 0 00:12:11 Yes. I definitely cannot practice law in Korean. So that's, yes, <laugh>, I think that's the major limitation.
Speaker 3 00:12:17 Okay. And, and Jonah, what about you? What's your, what's your language learning experience through life? Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:12:23 I feel like I have a very different experience from Anhe and, you know, that's the fun part about working with such great people. And, and he and I work together a lot at Collaborate a lot, which is why it's fun also to be on a podcast together. Um, you know, I, I speak some Hebrew, um, I think you referenced it tangentially. My mom's a rabbi, so, and, and speaks, uh, pretty fluent Hebrew actually. Um, but I took it a little bit, uh, as a, as a child and then again in college, um, the language I speak a little bit better is German, but only a little bit better. Uh, and that's cause I took it all through high school and did a little study abroad, uh, in Germany. But it's been quite some time since I used it on a regular basis. I would say that language was never my, uh, my top skill, although learning another language and struggling with it a little bit as a high school student was really helpful to, uh, better understanding things in English grammar.
Speaker 4 00:13:20 Um, so for example, I really never understood what a direct object was until I had to learn that, learn what a direct object was, cuz it's pronounced, it's used as different conjugation in German. So things like that were really important to my understanding of the English language. Um, but I did grow up traveling a lot. My, my father from my entire childhood worked at the World Bank here in DC and one of the benefits of that was, um, he would occasionally get to bring me on business trips. I'm not sure if that happens anymore, but there was like a formal way then that if you worked at the World Bank, you could bring, uh, family members. And so I was in, uh, China twice before I was 12. I was in, nor I was in Oslo and Stockholm before I was ever in New York City. Uh, and so I do think that was a huge part, sort of learning and being around people of different backgrounds and different cultures
Speaker 3 00:14:14 And, and then so, so you both have these, uh, somewhat a lot of exposure to, to cross-cultural experiences in your life. How is it that you ended up becoming teachers at a law school and he,
Speaker 0 00:14:29 So I think my, um, impetus for everything that I've done in my life is just I've wanted to make the world better in just some way. Um, and as a law student, I loved the experience of being in law school, even though it was challenging at, in different ways, at different points for various reasons. Um, sometimes because I was multilingual and sort of had these other experiences that I didn't necessarily feel like everybody else around me had. Um, so it's definitely just something that sort of had the idea of wanting to make the world better in some way has been something that's informed everything I've done. And this idea of teaching was to me the sort of best way and the most fun way I could think of to accomplish that. And I just really love showing up in class, um, every week and trying to help students, trying to help, um, by helping students develop, um, trying to help form the legal system in a different way. Um, and all of that that sort of happens out of, and comes out of teaching.
Speaker 3 00:15:43 And, and what's the, what's your experience with the process of becoming, um, uh, a legal writing professor at a law school? How does one do that?
Speaker 0 00:15:54 For me, I sort of, it was very drastic. I sort of dropped everything and went to teach in China for a year, um, which I don't think is necessarily the path that everybody takes, um, <laugh>, but worked out pretty well for me.
Speaker 3 00:16:10 And that was through the Peaking University School of Transnational Law?
Speaker 0 00:16:14 Yes, that's right.
Speaker 3 00:16:16 And, and, um, how did that come about and what kind of teaching were you doing there?
Speaker 0 00:16:22 Uh, that actually came about because, um, Sammy Mansur, one of my friends from law school, uh, was there and introduced me to Craig Hoffman, who was another one of our colleagues at Georgetown, uh, who was there and sort of gave me this idea that I could in fact, um, drop everything and travel and teach. And so I went to China for the year, um, to teach. And it was really an amazing experience. So the course, the two courses or multiple courses, courses I was teaching included, um, transnational legal practice, um, transnational legal research and contract drafting. And it was so interesting to be able to sort of translate not just the ideas of writing and try to explain ideas of writing in legal English, um, but also ideas of, you know, how us legal or us lawyers practice, think about logic, think about relevance, all of these other things.
Speaker 3 00:17:34 And, and, uh, Joe, now I'm gonna ask you about your, your, uh, path in a minute. But, um, uh, anhe, how, now that you're teaching JD students in a US law school, how, how different is the experience and, and the curriculum compared to what you might be teaching at in, uh, at peaking, uh, university of Transnational law?
Speaker 0 00:17:56 Do you know what? I actually, um, think the experience in the content is not overly different. Um, at least the way in which I approach my course. So I, because of my experience teaching, um, students abroad and working with international students and working with multilingual students, I really try to incorporate ideas of teaching to students without assumptions about what students bring in to the classroom and what they students might know or be familiar with. Um, so what I try to do is, you know, explain assumptions, um, think about the kinds of references I'm making to po popular culture, um, jokes, all of those things, um, and try to explain why everything is there and do a lot of sort of just background foundational explaining and setup for the students that are in my classroom. I think that overall it in fact makes my teaching better.
Speaker 3 00:18:59 So that's really interesting to hear about the way that you taught in China and how that's informed your, your current teaching. Um, and now Jonah, what's, how did you end up as a, as a teacher in a law school?
Speaker 4 00:19:13 Sure. So I think my path was the same in the sense that it was not planned and somewhat circuitous, but very different as well in, in some ways. When I started law school, I thought my, my dream of becoming a teacher, uh, or at least a professor at a university was over. Um, and that's cuz I had thought I might go and get a PhD. I got a master's before law school and ultimately during that master's degree, the, the, I learned two things. One, I learned how to write because I wrote a lot in a very short period of time. And the second thing I learned is that I did not want to go get a PhD in religious studies. Uh, and I was able to come to Georgetown and I thought, you know, I'll do something different. I'll be a lawyer and I want to find things that I'm good at and things that naturally fit my personality and my interests.
Speaker 4 00:19:59 And that's sort of, that's like a mental model that I carry with me and try to impart to my students is don't just find the things that you like to do. Also try to find the things that naturally suit your skills and experience. And I figured I'd come to law school and figure out what that was early on. That sort of led me to a more litigation based path. Um, but I always liked the idea of being in front of a room and I love, and he's version of that, of sort of giving back to the world. For me, the North Star was always trying to find a way to add value, add value to somebody in practice that was usually my client or my law firm. Um, but the idea of adding value to the profession and the people coming into our profession was really enticing.
Speaker 4 00:20:40 Um, and one of the funny parts of my path to teaching was it was the product of the success of somebody else. So my dear, dear friend and classmate from Georgetown Law, um, was teaching as an adjunct, uh, in the evenings in the evening program at Georgetown teaching an advanced legal writing class. And I saw him one day, we had dinner, and I said, that sounds like a really great opportunity. I would love to do it if you ever find a way for me to be able to have that chance, like, let me know. And he ended up about a year later, maybe two years later, getting a clerkship on the United States Supreme Court. And as a result, he couldn't teach the class. And so immediately he called me and said, Hey, I can't teach the class this year. I got this great job. Uh, do you have any interest in taking over the class?
Speaker 4 00:21:25 It was a very inconvenient time for me to do that. My wife was pregnant with our second child. I was working, you know, hundreds of hours a week at the law firm. And well, hundreds of hours a week was probably too, that's probably an exaggeration, but it felt like that. And, but I said, okay, let's do it. And thankfully my wife was, was on board with it. And so I got that opportunity to adjunct and I liked being a litigator and I loved being a law professor. And so immediately at that moment I said, I wanna find a way to do this full-time. Um, and I was lucky that Georgetown had a visiting position to open up. And because I had been an adjunct, I probably had enough, uh, experience to get the visiting position and the visiting position gave me enough experience to apply for the full-time job.
Speaker 4 00:22:09 And sort of the rest is history. Um, when people ask me like, how do you become a legal writing professor? Which is very different in some ways than becoming a, um, a, a podium law professor, uh, my answer is practice law and get into a classroom as soon as you can. And those are the two things that sort of at least show you if it's something you're good at and also build your experience up so that you're able to take on that role. So that's, that's how I ended up here and thankfully, uh, they haven't kicked me out yet.
Speaker 3 00:22:39 Uh, that that's a good story. Um, it might be even better if your friend at the Supreme Court who did the Supreme Court clerkship had then said, Hey, I'm gonna leave this clerkship. Right. Could you come in and fill in for <laugh>? Yes,
Speaker 4 00:22:53 Would've been. It's true. That would've been, that would've been very cool. Although I was lucky enough to have worked for two really great judges. Uh, and at that point, um, you know, I I found this great position. So yeah, that would've been nice though.
Speaker 3 00:23:03 The next thing I wanna ask you both about, uh, and it's sort of two questions combined and maybe you can talk and, and compare your experiences with each other and maybe you know, each other's courses fairly well. When you teach legal writing in a, in a US law school, what, what is it that you're teaching and what, what are you asking students to do and what are you covering? Um, and what, what are they able to do by the end? And the second question, the second part of the question is, um, Georgetown Law has now, um, uh, a lot of international students in its JD program, not in the, it has a lot in the L L M program, but I I'd heard that it's about maybe 50 per year in the JD 50 per class, so I guess 150 total in the JD program. Um, and I think, uh, uh, both of you have had sections where you've had international students in your class. Um, and so I was gonna ask, in addition to talking about your own sort of curriculum and, and what you expect students to learn in your class, um, what is your sense of the experience of the international students in a US legal writing class, and what has your experience been having them in working with them? Like things you've noticed challenges, different strategies or approaches or, or things they notice or comment on?
Speaker 4 00:24:25 Sure. I mean, I can talk a little bit about the, um, the curriculum. I mean, every school teaches legal writing or legal practice or legal analysis, whatever you call it a little bit differently. Um, but, but at its core, uh, we teach a year long class. Uh, it is largely based on litigation documents. Uh, in the fall semester we teach predictive legal writing. So that's usually known in the genre of communication of kind of the, the supervisor memo. The, the supervisor asks you a question and you need to be able to research and answer that question, or a client asks you a question and you have to answer that question. And then in the spring we do pro uh, persuasive legal writing, and we usually do that through the form of an appellate brief. The key thing to remember is, and I have a slide that I show every year on the first day, uh, that shows you come to law school and people say, you're learning how to think like a lawyer in my class or in our class.
Speaker 4 00:25:21 You need to learn how to think like a lawyer, write like a lawyer, read like a lawyer, research like a lawyer and act like a lawyer. And we only get about 40 class hours all year with you. So one work week of time. And so that's a lot. So it's really an introductory course that'll, that gives you enough to get started enough to show up at your first legal job and have some vocabulary and some experience dealing with how do we communicate in writing as a lawyer in an American legal system. Um, that doesn't mean we can teach every genre legal of legal writing. That doesn't mean that we have time to also cover trial skills. That means we don't often have time to cover transactional drafting skills. Those are all classes you can take later. But we are really an introductory class of legal communication. Did I get that right? Anhe, what do you, what what, I'm curious if you have a different answer.
Speaker 0 00:26:18 That's definitely right. And I think something that, I mean, so Jonah you mentioned genre. I think that's one of the things that we tried to, um, convey too is that because it is an introduction, because it's creating a foundation, part of that foundation is having students come away with the ability to examine genres and eventually figure out, um, independently what things are expected, um, in different areas that they haven't even, um, been introduced to, or specific types of genres they haven't been introduced to. Um, because we only have 40 hours of time with the students. Um, and so I think in that way, uh, the legal writing course that we teach and possibly some other legal, likely other legal writing courses that other folks teach also serves as an introduction to us legal culture, um, and what is meant in us legal culture by, or what kinds of cultural expectations there are as to communicating and interacting, uh, with each other's lawyers.
Speaker 4 00:27:27 Yeah. And some of that is explicit and some of that is implicit. And one of the things that, that I've really tried to learn about is, is making the implicit explicit and better identifying what those implicit um, pieces are. So one way to do that, for example, Steven, is how do we convey our assignments? Do we convey our assignments as sort of mock emails from a supervisor that look like what an email from a supervisor might look like or do we convey them by saying, here's your assignment sheet and it's written just like any assignment sheet that you've received basically from high school forward. And so there are moments that we can be really, um, intentional if we think about it, uh, that try to teach that cultural piece that I agree is really important, but also really hard to teach.
Speaker 3 00:28:17 So that's a, that's a really good, um, summary and explanation of, of I think what, what happens and what is expected and, and what is learned in a US style legal writing class in the sections. When you've had international students in your class, um, what's your sense of what their experience is with the class?
Speaker 0 00:28:42 Um, I, I'll take a stab at this. I think overall I, the students that I have had who are international students or who have, um, come out of either college education abroad or, uh, some students that I've had that have even sort of been trained as lawyers abroad, um, do exceptionally well. Um, but a lot of this I'll sort of bring in my own experience, um, sort of tinges that too. So I sort of try as much as I can to pay attention to all of the students that I have. Um, I think for international students, sometimes what can be a challenge is that a class is not just about that one particular class, but about your entire experience, um, in a place. And that can include what happens in the hallway, what happens when you walk into a classroom, um, what happened on the way to the classroom or at Starbucks across the street, or, you know, anything like that can impact, um, what happens in the classroom.
Speaker 0 00:29:51 Um, one example that I have that I think about a lot, and I in fact have my students read this piece, um, because to me it conveys so much about power dynamics, silence, how we communicate, and lots of different experiences that people can face in law school. Uh, there's a piece that Mindin Lee wrote, um, an opinion piece called Breaking My Own Silence. Uh, and she wrote it, um, it was published in the New York Times, and in it she mentions how her experience as a immigrant and a second language speaker of English who goes to Georgetown. And she actually happened to go to George, um, sorry, goes to law school and she actually happened to go to Georgetown. Um, and how she had an interaction with somebody who was advising her about, um, interviewing for jobs, uh, as part of being a lawsuit and, and how much that impacted how she then viewed communication and sort of stereotypes of, um, Asians and Asian Americans, things like that.
Speaker 0 00:30:59 I think all of those things end up impacting students who are in the classroom itself and students bring all of that to the classroom itself. And so I think what happens with, um, a legal writing class and the students experience in a legal writing class is that we as legal writing professors sometimes have to think about all of those things and how to convey sort of that, the core set of skills that Jonah talked about that we cover, but in a way that doesn't exclude students and really empowers students to be part of this community.
Speaker 4 00:31:40 Yeah, I think that's exactly right. In my experience, um, teaching international students as well, I mean, the Georgetown law class looks a lot different than the class that I was in, and I imagine the class that, and he was in, uh, years ago. We have a much greater variety of where people come from, what their backgrounds are, what their experience is. Um, and, and as I like to remind my students as well, it's, you know, it's a legal writing class, but that has sort of multiple facets to it. That means it's also an English class that means it's also a writing class and it means it's a legal writing class. And all of those are kind of layered on top of each other, and each student comes to the classroom with a different experience. Um, so, and it's not just international students. I mean, if, if you're, I've had students in the past who are, are math and science students or former sort of, uh, PhD, uh, empiricists, and those folks come in and I often ask like, what writing have you done in the past?
Speaker 4 00:32:44 And some of them write, I've written my name and that's about it. I've had students who have come into my class who've never taken a formal writing class in their whole life of any kind based on their background and where they came from. Um, and international students, it's, it's a, it's, you know, each international student has his, her or their own challenges or, um, experiences that come into it. Um, so everybody comes into the class with something different. I think for the international students, some people assume, and in my view, having now taught many of these students wrongly that it's going to be, somehow they're not gonna be good at it because it's maybe English is not their first language. And as, and he pointed out, that's not been my experience at all. Um, my experience has been that international students tend to sort of fall everywhere on the curve, just like every other student.
Speaker 4 00:33:33 Um, and that they may have unique challenges, but each person has unique challenges. One of the hardest questions that I got asked when I was interviewing for this job was, what student do you teach to? You have a classroom of 50 plus students. Who are you teaching to? Do you teach to the middle? Do you teach the top, do you teach the bottom? Do you teach the student that is challenging you? And it's a question that I ask myself every semester and almost every class because we really try to meet our students, all of our students where they're at. That's a challenge. That's like what makes, I think I'd be curious if you agree on he, but like that's kind of what makes my job fun and challenging is trying to meet lots of different students at different places.
Speaker 0 00:34:17 I think that's exactly right. It is definitely what makes it fun and sort of new every time.
Speaker 4 00:34:21 Absolutely, absolutely. And and you're absolutely right, Steven. This is a growing percentage of our class of, of international JD students. Um, during the course of the pandemic, I actually had eight international students in my class taking the class from foreign countries cuz they couldn't because of the pandemic actually even get here. So I had several students taking the class from either, primarily from either China or Singapore in the middle of the night and zooming into my classroom. Um, and for those students, I mean that was a, that was just a time change challenge in addition to all the other challenges, uh, that, that when he was talking about,
Speaker 3 00:34:57 I've been thinking about a quote I saw, uh, not too long ago and I can't remember where it came from, but somebody talking about legal writing, some academic or, or, or, uh, big name legal writing professor saying something about, the thing about legal writing is that it leaves no place left to hide. There's no room to hide. You have to put everything out there, um, and, and explain everything. You can't, you know, try to write around an argument. You have to anticipate arguments. Um, and at the same time, I think about a, a comment from a, um, a student I had who was from China one time, an l l m student who when I was teaching them sort of the fundamentals of, of us style legal writing, you know, issue, rule, application, conclusion, he and I gave him some comments and some feedback. He said, you know, if I wrote like this for my professor back in China, it would be considered insulting because it's too obvious.
Speaker 3 00:35:56 Like as if, as in you're supposed to leave a little bit left a a little something for the reader to infer. So in other words, a more reader responsible culture versus a writer responsible culture that we have in the US I think, or maybe and it's all relative, but we're where it's our job as the writer to make sure that the reader cannot misunderstand this. And there seems something somewhat unique to, to us legal culture, uh, in my mind. But, um, is that something, have, have you come across any, any, um, interactions with that type of dynamic?
Speaker 4 00:36:34 I mean, I definitely have. I mean, the conventions of the writing before people come to our classroom are just really different. Um, I remember having come off a graduate degree in the humanities, the conventions of the humanities graduate degree are very different than legal writing. It's why, going back to my math and science students, they sometimes have the slowest start but end up finishing first because writing, writing a legal argument or making a legal prediction is not that different than a predictive grammatical, I mean a geometric proof. Um, and, and so, you know, it's figuring out how to bring our students from wherever they are on day one based on their experiences to day two. One of the examples that I've had specifically from an international student was the expectations of how much language gets quoted directly versus not. Um, and so for example, I've had, you know, I had a student I who, who was an international student basically tell me, um, you know, the idea that you would put law into your own words just doesn't, you know, is not what we would do, uh, in the country in which I was trained.
Speaker 4 00:37:39 And that's just a good reminder that what we're teaching is a very technical type of writing that has a set of conventions and we try to teach those conventions. Um, so, so yeah, I, I've seen that as well. I've also had students who have a lot of trouble, you know, removing flowery language and adverbs. Uh, another example that I have every year is the idea that students wanna say the same thing with different words, elegant variation, um, which is what they've been trained their whole life to, to do that. And I say in law, words have meaning. And so if we're talking about battery, I don't want you to at some point change the word to assault, cuz that's a word that has very different, uh, denotations and connotations. So it happens a lot.
Speaker 3 00:38:21 Yeah, there's, there's parts where you do need to copy the exact words and there's parts where you're not allowed to copy the exact words and that can be confusing. And he, you wrote an article about the use of names in the classroom, which sort of ties into some of what we're talking about.
Speaker 0 00:38:37 Yes. Um, it was such an interesting time to write it. So I d basically wrote it during the first pandemic summer in my closet, <laugh> in between taking turns with my husband, watching the children, and sort of teaching them preschool <laugh> and all adjusting to the pandemic and all these kinds of things. Uh, it's called What to Learn from Pandemic teaching our students names. And the gist of it is basically this idea that it is just so important to recognize, um, the identities of our students. And a lot of what happens is that identity is, and cultural background, lots of other things are wrapped into a person's name. And so just getting somebody's name right in a classroom, pronouncing it correctly, just making the extra effort to do that can make such an impact on whether that person feels as if they belong in the classroom and are part of the community in the classroom.
Speaker 0 00:39:43 And I think it gets to what Jonah was saying, um, or overlaps with what Jonah was saying about recognizing what students bring into the classroom and, um, that they have a wide range of experiences and that the experiences that the students bring in are valid and are places where we can have discussions and, um, and can learn from each other and in a lot, and a lot of times even engage in some cross-cultural communication and learning about why things in US legal discourse or the way they are, why certain conventions are the way they are, um, why we cite in certain ways or quote certain things and not others.
Speaker 3 00:40:27 And, and you're also, I think, working on an article about accent.
Speaker 0 00:40:32 I'm doing some research right now, um, about accent and how accent is treated, um, in US law that hopefully will be, um, will recognize the work that Mari Matsuda did actually in writing a piece about accent decades ago. Um, and Title seven cases that involve accent claims of accent discrimination. Um, Jonah and I are also working on a piece together currently, uh, with Amanda Levandowski, one of our other colleagues that will touch on genre, which I think we've used the word a lot over this, the course of this discussion to.
Speaker 4 00:41:13 Yeah, and I just wanna, if you don't mind, Steven shout out and his work, uh, names because, um, it's something that I didn't even, you know, I talked about things that we do implicitly and things we do explicitly, and then we have blind spots and names was a blind spot that I didn't even know I had until I read and he's work and I found one of the, one of the sort of where and and her and listened to her present on her work. One of the ways that happens in the law school classroom is if you're not comfortable as a professor saying somebody's name, you just either don't call on them or don't call on them by name like you do other students. That's a natural reaction, but one that I didn't even realize I was doing until I learned about it. And the answer, and please correct me if I'm wrong, anhe, but the answer is, a, we can do more work before we start to get to know our students names and also just be really cognizant that if you need to ask someone their name, ask them their name and get it right and pronounce it the way they do, um, because that shows respect to them in the classroom, um, in a way that makes it be a welcoming community and demonstrates that it's an opportunity for us to learn how we want to be called.
Speaker 4 00:42:29 Um, and so it's something that I, I'm very cognizant of now. I ask my students to record their names, uh, before class starts so I can learn them, but I also tell them on the first day, if I say it wrong, it, it's not because I didn't try to learn it, but please correct me. Um, I had that happen my first year teaching. I had a student and I kept calling her Joanna, Joanna, Joanna. And only six weeks into the semester did I realize she was from Germany and her name was Johanna. And I would've, there was no way for me to know that it's spelled exactly the same way. I'm far from native, but I'm a decent German speaker. So I knew how to pronounce it, but because I was never corrected, I never had that opportunity. And so by inviting people in the beginning to make that correction, it lowers their burden, right, that you're putting on them to make it a community where we can all be called what we wanna be called, which is sort of, in my view, a minimum level of competence for a classroom.
Speaker 3 00:43:25 Yeah. And this is, I, I realize this is an issue not just with regard to international students, but for, for all students, especially in a, in a multicultural, uh, society like the United States. Okay. As we, as we get towards the end of this, uh, discussion, I wanna ask you both, um, what advice do you have for, for international students or students coming from other countries or other language backgrounds, um, who might be taking, uh, a legal writing course in a US law school?
Speaker 4 00:43:55 My answer is the same for international students and non international students, which is just start writing, just start doing. If you try to, I have, I sometimes have students come to my office and say, can you give me another textbook or is there something else I can do to learn this? The best thing to learn is by doing. And the best way to do that is to start as soon as possible. And so to the extent you can get more reps in, the better you're gonna be.
Speaker 0 00:44:22 I'll second that. Um, and add on just the general, uh, the more general advice of just be kind, um, to yourself and to others, because sometimes it takes time to learn something or master a new area, which is really what we're asking students to do. Um, and the being kind to others piece I think just makes a huge impact. I mean, Steven, I don't think I would be on this podcast. Has you not, uh, been kind during our first couple of meetings and Jonah for sure. Um, we've become quite good friends because we've been kind to each other.
Speaker 3 00:44:57 I think that's really good advice. Um, I might've taken a different career path if I had learned to be kind to myself when I was learning legal writing in law school. Okay. And the last thing I wanna ask you both, um, are for recommendations. What is something you've read recently or listened to or watched or, or cooked or, or gone and seen?
Speaker 4 00:45:15 Well, I, I have two, Steven. So the first is I've gotten really, I, I just took my first sort of international vacation in a very long time. And so I read fiction for the first time in forever. Uh, and I kind of went through a bunch of books by this British author, Anthony Horowitz, who was
Speaker 3 00:45:35 No relation, no relation, Steven
Speaker 4 00:45:37 Horowitz. Uh, he was a, he was a British mystery TV writer before he started writing novels. Uh, and I just have fallen in love with his books. I think they're really fun, they're really interesting. And he has a bunch of TV shows as well. Um, I think most recently Magpie Murders he wrote, which is based on a book that he wrote. The other recommendation I'll have is if you can't travel, which, and I've always had the traveling bug and my wife has the traveling bug, but we were home for about two years. If you can't travel, you can cook from foods from other places. And so one of the things that we've done, I have a five year old, a seven year old, is we've started doing these international dinners where the, we pick or the kids pick a country, we go find whatever the sort of national dishes of that country and we try to cook it. Um, most recently. Sometimes they're great, sometimes they're not for our taste. Uh, most recently we did the country of Honduras and we made delicious coconut bread, which has now become part of our like regular stable of things we cook. So if you can't travel, cook
Speaker 3 00:46:40 Can, can Anhe and I put in requests and show up at your house?
Speaker 4 00:46:44 Absolutely. In fact, when I did, uh, when I did when we did the Korean dinner, I did check in with Unif recommendations. Um, it's also a really great way if you know people from places or with heritages from those places to sort of get recommendations. But yes, uh, recommendations are, uh, available.
Speaker 3 00:47:03 Good, good suggestion. Okay. And he,
Speaker 0 00:47:06 I'm just thinking that's such a fun answer. Um, because <laugh> from Jonah, because I think at one point Jonah and I connected that, um, carby tongue, which is a Korean dish, is not ultimately too far removed from brisket
Speaker 4 00:47:22 From Jewish brisket. Totally.
Speaker 0 00:47:25 Um, so mine is much of, of a, a much less fun answer. I've been doing a lot of legal reading of legal sources and or legal scholarship. And so what's on my desk right now is a piece called Gut Renovations, um, using critical and comparative rhetoric to remodel how the law addresses privilege and power. So that's, all of those words probably give you a sense of what's discussed in the piece. It's really sort of a critique of western legal rhetoric. And as part of that dives into expectations of Western or traditional legal rhetoric, um, it was written by Elizabeth Barringer, Lucy Jewel and Terry McMurtry Chubb, who really, this piece has sort of opened my eyes a lot to conventions of legal writing and what we expect of students. So I'm really grateful to them for writing the piece. Um, I've also been reading Shali Munchies, um, article on, uh, titled You'll See My Family Became So American, which is just incredibly interesting and talks about, um, visual imagery and how that has, how that impacted, um, a case from an Indian immigrant who had immigrated to the us um, in the early 19 hundreds.
Speaker 0 00:48:52 And that's, that's sort of heavier reading, <laugh>, I suppose. <laugh>. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:48:58 Then we got the two ends of the spectrum. Yeah, exactly. Now I feel like I should've talked about what I was reading for work too. No, I'm just thinking that's <laugh>. I think that's great. I think it's great. Oh, well, I'll share something kind of in the middle. Um, I, I've been teaching the, the, my fall semester chorus is based on, on torts cases, uh, and negligence. Um, and I found a podcast by a plaintiff law firm, and the podcast is called The Jury is Out, and they just, these two partners talk about all things related to trials and, and, you know, personal injury cases. And I love getting the depth, you know, and they have my students who are from other countries frequently wonder like, where do they come up with these damages, numbers, these huge amounts? And, and these guys talk about it, they talk about how they get there, and I realize I was not so familiar with it myself, so I really enjoy hearing them talk about it.
Speaker 3 00:49:49 So it's sort of academic, but, but fun also. Well, anyway, thank you both, uh, Unhi and Jonah for taking the time to join me today. Uh, we're gonna include any relevant links from this episode in the show notes. Uh, I wanna remind our listeners to subscribe to the US Law Essentials Podcast on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Himalaya, wherever you get your podcasts. And you can also listen to all episodes on US law essentials.com. Uh, and if you have any questions, comments, reactions, ideas, et cetera, we always love hearing from our listeners, you can contact us by email at daniel us law essentials.com or through the US Law Essentials Facebook group or LinkedIn Group. Thanks for listening to the US Law Essentials Law and Language Podcast and stay essential.
