LAW1024C Legal Foundations 2 Summative Assessment 1, Teamwork Essay, UOE

Self-assessment essay

You are required to write an essay of no more than 1,000 words reflecting on the development of your  teamwork skills over the course of the academic year.

The document must include your second completed teamwork action plan and, where possible, your first  completed action plan from LAW1023C (but does not need to include your peer feedback documents). 

The word count limit excludes the action plans, the bibliography, and all citation information in footnotes.  Note that where footnotes contain additional arguments or material which is not for the purpose of  referencing, these words will be counted within the word count.

The overall word limit is strict. Exceeding the overall limit for the assessment will result in the following  penalties being applied:

• Up to and including 5% beyond the word limit, one mark on the categorical scale will be deducted  (ie 68 will become 65; 62 will become 58). 
• Over 5% beyond the word limit, ten marks will be deducted (ie 62 will become 52). In reflecting on your skills development, your discussion must focus on:

i) How your skills have developed. You must produce evidence of that development. To do so, you  must, where available, draw on 
a. both your completed teamwork action plans, 
b. your autumn term peer feedback, and 
c. your spring term peer feedback.

You can also refer to any other evidence which you think helpful. 
For further clarification about what a Teamwork Action Plan is see the Assessment tile on ELE.

ii) Why your skills have developed in the way you describe. In discussing this, you should include  personal examples of things you did/did not do which facilitated or hindered that development.

iii) In light of i and ii above, a concrete plan of the steps you will take in the next academic year to  improve your grasp of the skills under discussion. You may wish to draw on appropriate literature  to inform this.

You do not need to treat i, ii, and iii above as discrete sections (ie you do not need to divide your essay  into three parts). Your marker merely needs to be able to see that the three elements have been  addressed. 

Rationale for assessing teamwork

Legal Foundations provides you with the opportunity to learn various important legal skills as well as  substantive legal rules. Unlike more traditional modules in law, the focus of this module is very much on  legal practice. Thus the skills you will work on are skills which are important to professional practice (such  as client interviewing and advocacy), and to the extent that you are taught legal rules, it is in order to  better enable you to put those skills into practice.

One important skill in modern lawyering is the ability to work together with others as part of a team.  Although films often portray lawyers working alone, the reality is frequently very different, and the ability to function effectively as a team can prove crucial to a case’s outcome. Good teamwork requires you to  develop a complex of interpersonal skills: you will need to learn to communicate effectively with others; to  negotiate with them; to take on leadership roles where appropriate; to exercise empathy – and so on. 

Legal Foundations provides you with a significant opportunity to develop that skill set. The module is  structured around two mock court hearings (one in each teaching term). The basic operational unit for the  court hearings is not the individual student but the law firm. Every student is a member of a law firm, and  it is the firm that prepares and presents its case. If you want your firm to be successful, you will need to  work together – as complicated as that can sometimes be.

Your law firm will be semi-autonomous. This means that while you will be given some guidance on the  tasks you are to undertake, you will have a fairly high degree of autonomy as a team in deciding the  details of how those tasks are conducted, including in deciding who will do what. Moreover, you will be  required to agree a firm charter, setting out the standards which you will hold yourselves to – and this will  play a role in determining your mark, as explained above.