A Curricular Framework for English for Academic Legal Purposes

Abstract

The decline of the requisite linguistic skills of law students around the world has been documented comprehensively through legal scholarship. While ameliorating initiatives attempt to remedy law school education, the curriculization of English for academic legal purposes (EALP) has been neglected, resulting in the absence of a principled curricular framework for developing EALP syllabi. The proliferation of legal English communication across the circles of world English has accentuated the deterioration of students’ linguistic skills and exacerbated the educational challenges confronting law schools. These premises were influenced and validated by the researcher’s experiences as student and teacher of law and language. Three research questions address the rationale and guide the research: (1) Which curricular principles can be deduced from theoretical linguistics, second language (L2) pedagogy, and legal education to constitute a framework for EALP? (2) Which legal linguistic skills clusters can be identified from a typology of EALP-type textbooks? (3) As research outcome, how can the literature review and textbook analysis be synthesized into a cohesive curricular framework for EALP that can be applied across the circles of world English? The cyclical research strategy that underpinned this qualitative study relied on a social constructionist worldview, case study methodology, and qualitative content analysis method. The literature review probed theoretical linguistics, L2 pedagogy, and legal education as tributary disciplines of EALP. Insights gleaned from the literature review informed the qualitative content analysis of a purposive sample of EALP-type textbooks (N = 44). The textbooks were coded to create a typology and to determine the clusters of linguistic skills introduced during law school and across the circles of world English. The literature review led to the formulation of theoretically informed, curricular principles from the three disciplines that underpin EALP. The qualitative content analysis resulted in the creation of a typology of textbooks that exhibits clusters of linguistic skills that are scaffolded throughout law school. While academic communication skills were accentuated, legal linguistic skills incorporate additional clusters of thinking, research, and pedagogic skills. Together these skills constitute the skill of “thinking like a lawyer.” A synthesis of the theoretical principles and skills clusters provides a holistic curricular framework for EALP that is sensitive to the local diversity within the circles of world English. The curricular framework for EALP draws legal English from the periphery to the center of law school education by accentuating the legal linguistic skills needed both in academia and in legal practice. The main limitations of the study are the challenges posed by the inclusion of original EALP syllabi and the manual coding of the textbook sample.