When Law Students Read Cases: Exploring Relations Between Professional Legal Reasoning Roles and Problem Detection

Abstract

This study investigates effects of different legal reasoning roles on first-year law students' case reading and analysis, focusing detection of textual and legal interpretation problems arising within and between related appeal court cases. In a between-subject design, 56 first-year law students received 1 academic and 3 professional role scenarios, each involving a different communicative frame. Scenarios contained instructions to think aloud, while students read the same 3 related appeal court cases. Protocols were scored using a list of interpretative problems developed from pre-experimental task analysis. Results show that detection varies with the communicative frame embedded in different professional roles. On overall problem detection, students in the advocatory and policy scenarios performed significantly better than students in the (academic) class recitation scenario. Advocatory and advisory groups also performed significantly better than students in the class recitation group in detecting critical interpretative problems. Results further showed that students who switched between cases while reading (as opposed to reading linearly) scored significantly better on all problem detection measures. Unlike previous studies of legal case reading, this study contributes to understanding by focusing on interpretative problems located in and between related cases, rather than focusing on readers' accurate recovery of meaning per se.