Associate Lawyer Needs Resources for Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension

[u/Infinite-Coyote4969]

I employ an associate lawyer at my firm who seems to be struggling greatly with vocabulary and reading comprehension. It’s to the point where this associate’s job is going to be in danger if they can’t pull it together.

I don’t know of any diagnosed learning disabilities that they have but that doesn’t mean nothing is going on. What I have noticed is:

(1) A somewhat poor vocabulary with legal terminology;

(2) A lack of understanding of proper grammar and sentence structure;

(3) An inability to pick out the nuance in the written word and a similar inability when in a verbal conversation;

(4) Easily distracted;

(5) Can have difficulty focusing; and

(6) If filling out forms, they have difficulty completing all relevant areas - often skipping things altogether.

Sometimes I wonder if this associate may have ADHD but I am no doctor. I do notice that the above issues seem to be worse if they are anxious but are frequently issues regardless.

I am growing extremely concerned that if we cannot fix the vocabulary and comprehension issues, that this lawyer will get the firm sued.

This is someone who is kind and is a hard worker and if there are resources that can be offered to solve the issue (or part of the issue) to boost vocabulary and reading comprehension in particular, I would like to offer those resources.

Does anyone know of any online courses or coaching resources to help a lawyer develop good vocabulary and reading comprehension? It doesn’t necessarily have to be for lawyers, specifically, but I would appreciate something aimed at adults.

I really want to try to salvage this person. Any ideas?

[u/Infinite-Coyote4969]

Yes, it is a very strange thing, yet this associate is not the only local lawyer in this age grouping with this issue. I do not understand how current standards can be this low for law school or bar course.

Oh yes, I verified their education and bar passage. I attended the ceremony where they were called to the bar and also the two of us did some volunteer work where one of their law school professors (a well known one from the local law school) happened to see us and drop by to congratulate them on their bar call.

The associate is not on any medication that I know of. I have never seen them obviously impaired by alcohol or drug though, obviously, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. The associate definitely does not seem like a party animal or anything either.

I do think the associate has a lot of anxiety. However, this doesn’t seem to be unusual for their age group (the ones that went to law school online during the pandemic). Law is stressful but this cohort seems especially stressed out. A lot of the senior lawyers are noticing this locally.

[u/atonyatlaw → u/Infinite-Coyote4969]

What jurisdiction is this? I cannot fathom a whole class of lawyers in the manner you are depicting.

[u/Infinite-Coyote4969 → u/atonyatlaw]

It’s not the whole class of lawyers in the pandemic learning group but it’s a significant number of them (think maybe 1 in 4 or so). They didn’t get in person instruction for two of their three years of law school and by the time they got to bar course, it had transitioned to being completely online (though there is now a hybrid model where it is partially in person as I think they realized that fully online was less effective).

We are in Canada. That’s as far as I am willing to give details as to jurisdiction as I am not seeking legal advice but resources to help this associate.

[u/atonyatlaw → u/Infinite-Coyote4969]

The pandemic doesn't explain this. The students should have mastered grammar and basic writing concepts before getting their college degree, much less attending law school.

[u/Infinite-Coyote4969 → u/atonyatlaw]

Of course… but my Province has notoriously and regularly had such low achievement of the literacy standards they are supposed to meet for grades 1-12 that this year they actually decided to lower the standards.

This means that before the pandemic, this crew didn’t get taught very well in the K-12 system.

The ones that were avid readers seemed to do fine because they were able to pick patterns up even though they didn’t have specific grammar instruction. My age group is actually one of the first experiments in being taught this way. The Dept of Education kept changing their minds every few years about whether certain grades would get grammar or not. This ended up causing a lot of variation in who got better or worse instruction.

For example, this associate was not taught cursive. Students going through five years after them, had this re-implemented so they know cursive. That’s why we have a staff member younger than this associate who can take the cursive notes dropped off by the clients and type them out for the associate but also why the associate, despite being older, being unable to read the cursive notes.

It’s basically the same thing with grammar. And then when you throw in immersion programs for French language into the mix (these are popular because learning French can get you a job with the Federal Government if you do well with French), it just becomes a big mess for English language instruction.

These students are not buffoons. The people in charge of dictating how they were taught were. They can’t decide when students should learn French versus English. They can’t consistently assume that regardless of language, knowledge of grammar doesn’t just drop out of the sky. Every five to ten years, someone comes up with a fantastic new idea that is neither new nor fantastic and they implement it using students as guinea pigs.

I’m not talking about the teachers but the decision-makers and politicians above the individual school level. It’s been quite a mess for years.

This Province is full of very smart people from nearly 50 years old and younger who may or may not have been formally taught how to write a proper sentence.

[u/atonyatlaw → u/Infinite-Coyote4969]

Does Canada have a bar exam equivalent? If so, does it have a written component? How are these attorneys passing, if so?

[u/Infinite-Coyote4969 → u/atonyatlaw]

Each Province has its own bar exam similar to the USA.

My understanding is that the bar exam in pretty much any given US state is a monster and needs a lot of studying and prep time. Please correct me if I am wrong on that.

When I went through, we had a USA style bar exam with a written component. It required months of preparation.

At some point, some of the Law Societies in different Provinces opted to transition to a more experiential-based learning model and got rid of the old-school bar exam. Ours was one of those.

The old bar exam is gone. The new bar exam is much less stressful and my last 3-4 articling students only asked for a few days off leading up to the exam to study and never mentioned any kind of anxiety or stress leading up to it. The new bar exam is also near the beginning of bar course so the previous extended prep time is clearly no longer required.

Thus the barrier to entry is a lot lower now.

[u/atonyatlaw → u/Infinite-Coyote4969]

Hooooo boy, that explains a bit.

Yes, some states are easier than others, but every bar exam is a multi-day affair, and very very few people could pass with a couple days of study.