The Second Draft
As legal writing professors, we exalt analysis over intuition and are trained to follow the facts rather than engage in guess-work. We train our students to do the same. Yet when it comes to the pedagogy of legal analysis, we sometimes disregard our training by relying on observations and anecdotal evidence. Specifically, we may be assuming that the vast majority of our students are visual and/or tactile learners because they have grown up using computers, and we see students using computers all the time. Implicit in our assumption is that learning styles are determined by environmental factors alone or that students’ awareness of their strengths lead them to capitalize on their personal learning-styles. Could we be doing more harm than good by relying on techniques and technology in the classroom that, in reality, may be incompatible with the way most of them learn?