Experiencing the South African undergraduate law curriculum

Abstract

In a study to ascertain the fitness for purpose of the four year LLB degree, introduced in South Africa in 1998 as part of a post-apartheid transformation agenda, six law graduates from a single year cohort at one historically white university, who are now practicing attorneys, were interviewed. The purpose of this part of the empirical study was to obtain insights into the experience of the undergraduate law curriculum from a representative sample of successful graduates, who had completed the degree in the minimum time prescribed for the qualification.

Adopting a phenomenographic methodology, which attempts to explore the differing perceptions of respondents in relation to a particular experience, in this case, the experience of the undergraduate law curriculum, the study developed an analysis of some of the ways in which the students respond to the LLB curriculum. The categories of description derived from the graduate interviews produced an interesting “map of the collective mind” of the graduates: the instrumental strategist (outsider); the pragmatic generalist (in comfort zone) and the transformed vocationalist (engaged insider). These positions appear to reflect three hierarchically ordered levels of engagement with the curriculum.

The key principles of integrating skills, teaching ethics explicitly and sensitising students to the practice of law in a diverse, pluralistic society that were to inform the design of the undergraduate curriculum have not been effectively implemented, and play a role in the way law students experience the curriculum. A “cycle of disadvantage,” emerged from the data as a representation of the replication of historical disadvantage through the curriculum. For many “non-traditional” students, their status as “outsiders” – both within the university and beyond it, once they enter the realm of professional enculturation – along with their personal history and expectations, tends to replicate their social positioning. The law curriculum acts to reproduce existing inequalities rather than serving as a transformative vehicle for students.

In conclusion, the author develops some suggestions for ways in which the experience of the undergraduate law curriculum in South Africa could become a transformative educative process, instead of remaining as an obstacle to many students seeking to gain entry to the legal professions.