OLDFall 2022 Law School Course Evaluations

Below are the responses to the three open-ended questions asked regarding the instructor and the course. Please note, student responses have not been edited in any way. Blank pages indicate no response for that question. What aspect(s) of the course or instruction enhanced your learning? Dean Santos provided individual support and provided feedback that was constructive and valuable. I enrolled in the course to become a stronger writer. Dean Santos was essential in developing my writing. Her ability to explain the material and her advice provided me with a greater understanding of how to write. She gave me valuable tools for the course, but more importantly for practical use. examples of the assignments helped me model them for my own papers, eliminating the concept of trying to remake a wheel. I like that Dean Santos used several different tools to help us learn and stay engaged with the class such as handouts, powerpoints, examples, and even had the research librarians come in and remind us helpful ways to research. I like that she tried to record most of the classes if someone was out so that they could watch class and others can re-watch if needed. Dean Santos is the only professor who actually explained, in a meaningful manner, how to approach and tackle legal writing. During my 1L, I had two LPS professors--Moppett and Arter. Their methods for teaching were not only contradictory to each other, but they presented the material in a way that did not make any sense--I feel like they imputed so much knowledge onto us that we just did not have as 1L ' s and it made me dread legal writing. Moreover, the secrecy around it all made it not only unrealistic in legal practice (as all lawyers collaborates with others), but it made it so much more difficult to understand. Thus, I took this course to increase my skills. Dean Santos walked us through, step by step, on how to write a persuasive and effective memorandum of law. Not only did she provide us with examples, and powerpoints, but she dedicated periods of class time where we were able to talk about our cases with our peers, discuss different cases that could help both sides of the argument, and she took her time to talk to each person to ensure we were not confused and had a thorough understanding of the assignment and how to tackle it. Writing in class and being able to collaborate with my classmates both were very beneficial. I also appreciated being able to get feedback after submitting the argument section. More feedback throughout the writing process is needed throughout law school, in my opinion. I appreciated that so much of our class time was devoted to working on our writing for this course. It was very helpful to be able to ask Dean Santos questions as they arose while writing. When we did in class writing and was able to exchange ideas with our peers.

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