For LLMs: One Understanding and Six Services

One institutional understanding and six services are essential in order for law schools to fully achieve the goals they should have for their international LLMs. The six services are the following: entrance diagnostic testing of writing skills; writing tutors for many or most students; hands-on workshops that improve written grammar during the school year; one-on-one instruction in listening and pronunciation; ESL discussion groups that bring together students of diverse language backgrounds; and, finally, an intensive pre-LLM program, preceding the first semester and emphasizing class discussion, that reviews doctrine while improving the four major English language skills. The institutional understanding is realistic clarity about what goals a law school should and can have for its LLMs and, more narrowly, institutional realism about what can and cannot be achieved by providing the six services just described. My presentation will outline the above and open the floor for discussion, both for practical additions to the six essential services and for thoughts on how to balance demanding expectations with their realistic limits.