Challenges of German first-year law students

Empirical results and implications for legal education

Abstract

This article addresses the (self-identified) challenges first-year law students in Germany are faced with. In particular, this paper reports findings made within the third-party funded project XYZ at the XYZ University. In an extracurricular peer tutoring format, beginners of legal studies were introduced to different learning techniques in conjunction with legal methodology. Based on previous research, students were encouraged to become strategic deep learners by presenting them with a standardised course curriculum consisting of ten thematically defined sessions. All classes have been evaluated via a written questionnaire, the results of which are presented here. These empirical findings allow us to determine the difficulties legal beginners are confronted with and to derive sensible didactic improvements for law students, especially those in the early semesters of their studies. In particular, we advance the view to make more use of student-led tutorials in legal education and plead to encourage students to become strategic deep learners.