The Intensive Legal English Program

Juan Del Valle: Well, hello, everybody. My name is Juan Del Valle. I am the Director of International Programs and a lecturer in the law school for a little bit more than seven years. I had the opportunity of being a student here in our LLM for International Attorneys program back in 2009, graduated in 2010. I came originally from Colombia, where I was an attorney, and I decided to pursue my master’s degree in law here to learn more about the common law system, mostly about the U.S. legal system, and hopefully open some professional doors to work in international organizations and in U.S. law firms.

Mark Bass: I’m Mark Bass. I’m the coordinator for Legal English Programs at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law.

Juan Del Valle: Well, welcome back to this podcast talking about our graduate and international programs at Washington University School of Law. Today, we’re going to be talking about ILEP, the Intensive Legal English Program, that we offer for all those students who come from countries where English is not the first language, and where these students may gain some skills in their legal English specifically before starting their LLM or MLS programs.

Today I’m here with Mark Bass. He’s the coordinator for Legal English Programs at our law school, and he’s going to be telling us in more detail what this Intensive Legal English Program, or ILEP, is about. So, Mark?

Mark Bass: Yeah, thank you, Juan. So, the Intensive Legal English Program is a four-week summer program. It starts before the regular law school classes begin. As you said, it’s for international students whose first language is not English. It’s separate from the degree program.

We do have students who are required to take ILEP because of their English scores, but we also have a lot of students who want to take it even though they’re not required to, because of the benefits they get from it.

So, ILEP, we call it for short — it’s the Intensive Legal English Program. In ILEP, we work on spoken and written communication skills that are essential for the study of law. It’s not a typical English-as-a-second-language program, though, because of that focus on the skills for law.

In addition to working on the English skills for law, we work on all the main skills. We work on reading, writing, speaking, and listening. There also is a strong element of foundations of the U.S. legal system. So students come out with a stronger understanding of the basics of the U.S. legal system.

In addition — the types of things that the students work on — we work on reading court cases, which, once students get into their law program in the fall, much of what they do for their courses is reading many, many, many court cases. Reading those court cases is difficult even for a native English speaker, so we put a lot of focus on reading court cases.

Students also practice the type of writing that you use in your law courses, and that they’ll be using even in the legal professions and beyond. It’s a different type of writing used in law school than I think you’d use in other professions or in other areas of your life.

As far as speaking skills, we do a lot of role plays. Students will practice interviewing clients, practice giving presentations, and then the big project that we have at the end — that students are working towards throughout the four weeks — is an oral argument where they are presenting to the court, advocating for their client to hopefully get the court to rule in favor of their client.

For listening, of course, they’ll be listening to lectures. We listen to recorded lectures. This last summer, we had two law professors who came and gave specific lectures. We had a law professor come and give a lecture about an area of constitutional law, and we had a professor who came and talked to them about an area of negotiation.

So, a lot of things that we cover in the curriculum in the Intensive Legal English Program really help prepare students for their courses in the fall.

Juan Del Valle: That’s wonderful, Mark. Thank you so much for that very nice description of that program. You know, I actually took the ILEP when I came in as an international student back in 2009, and it was a four-week program. Is it still four weeks?

Mark Bass: I think it was five weeks back then, but actually now it’s a four-week program. It is intensive, as I’m sure you remember. I always tell students that the “I” in ILEP is “intensive” — to remind them why they’re so busy, and the amount of work that we do.

But yeah, it was five weeks, and at one point it was shortened to four weeks, which I think is a good length of time. It’s a lot of work and it gets tiring, but it is so rewarding.

Juan Del Valle: Yeah, I remember — yes, a lot of work. In my case, I was so excited to be able to have that opportunity of strengthening those skills before starting the courses in the LLM. Because, of course, yes, I knew English. I could speak, I could write, I could read English, and I took my TOEFL and all that, but it’s very different — right, as you were saying — once you’re going to be starting in the legal field, that really requires a new set of tools, of tools to help you out throughout your law school and beyond.

You know, there are things that, after I graduated from the LLM, in some of my jobs, I would remember things from the ILEP, and I would say, like, “Oh, I remember this. I saw this in the ILEP.” So these tools are not only for the program — I think they go beyond.

Mark Bass: Oh yeah, definitely, definitely. Right — so you already knew English, you already spoke English well, but this is legal English. It’s different than the English you’ll use in other aspects of your life. I often tell the students it’s almost like learning another language.

Like, they already know how to speak English, but this legal English — it’s something even native speakers of English, even Americans, your average American, has real difficulty with: the type of vocabulary, the type of terms, and the manners of communication that lawyers use. There’s even a term for it: legalese.

Legalese — sometimes it’s used in a derogatory sense, because lawyers are using this language that no one else can understand. But that tells you just how difficult it can be. That’s why I think there’s such a need for this type of program and for this type of education and developing those skills, because the type of vocabulary and the other aspects of legal English are something that is really specific to the legal field.

And speaking of — you mentioned that since you took the program, you’ve thought back on things that you learned in the program. Well, looking specifically at how well it prepares you for law school: students take this program in the summer, and then in the fall they start their degree programs, where they take substantive law courses. I have had many students tell me that they are so glad they took ILEP once they’ve gotten into their degree programs.

They come back and they tell me, “It really prepared me for my law classes.” Some even say, “I don’t know how I would have done it without it.” Just yesterday, I had a student in one of my classes — we’re in the fall semester right now — I was telling him how impressed I was by his participation in the class, and he seems to really understand the topics and the concepts. He’s one of the students who went through ILEP, and he said, “It’s all because of ILEP. I really learned these things from ILEP, and it’s really helped me. Now I can really understand things, I think, much better than I would have.”

So yeah — it’s a program… I don’t know if you can tell I’m quite proud of it. It’s a great program. I think it really benefits students a lot.

Juan Del Valle: Thank you, Mark. Yeah, that’s amazing — being able to see these success stories in a bunch of students who are maybe nervous at the beginning. I was nervous when I first came. And I think one of the nice effects of ILEP was controlling a little bit that feeling, and allowing me to be a little bit more focused in those courses.

Now, Mark — you seem to know a lot about this English-as-a-second-language work. Tell us a little bit about your experience. How did you end up here?

Mark Bass: I do know a bit about English as a second language. I have a master’s degree in teaching English as a second language. I’ve taught English as a second language — not just for legal English, but for a variety of purposes — for many years. I have an undergraduate degree in political science, which really helps with the law concepts. A political science degree is sort of like a pre-law kind of degree.

I’ve taken many courses in the Master of Legal Studies program here at WashU as well. And I’ve got a master’s in business administration. So I’ve taught in the Intensive Legal English Program since 2018 — I think was the first summer. So I came back every summer to teach in the Intensive Legal English Program, and then in 2021 I took over as the coordinator.

Juan Del Valle: Now, I was remembering my experience back then, and I was going to add that, besides all the important tools — right, information-wise and skill-wise — it also brought to me several other benefits. The first one I can say was getting adjusted to a new country, a new city, a new university.

It was the first time I was actually living outside Colombia. So that month here studying English allowed me to go over all that transition — to make those adjustments before I started the LLM program. I was really happy about that.

The second thing I also see is that I made my friends. It was in ILEP where I made my best friends. I’m going to call them buddies — we were always together throughout the LLM program. Three of them from Japan, by the way — we still keep in touch. So those are very, very strong relationships there.

And that really made it so fun for me, because when I started my LLM program, I already had friends. I already knew a lot of the students that I was going to be sharing class with, and I think that was a great benefit.

Mark Bass: Definitely. I think your experience is pretty common for students who go through the ILEP program. We’ll see students that make friends and form good bonds during the program, and then for the next year or the next two years, you’ll see those same students walking together or doing things at the law school in Anheuser-Busch Hall.

I’m glad you bring that up. So that is one of the benefits, particularly if you’re doing the in-person program — where the students actually come to St. Louis basically a month earlier than they would if they were just coming to start their degree program in the fall.

So they come in the summer, and it gives them four or five weeks before their degree program starts. It gives them a chance to really get acclimated, to really settle into life here in the U.S., here in St. Louis, here at WashU, here at WashU Law School. So there’s that benefit there — just having a little more time to settle in. Once their courses start in the fall, they’re already adjusted, and that alone helps a lot.

But they’re forming bonds with everyone. They’ve already got friends. They’ve already got a community of the other students who’ve gone through the program.

In addition, we don’t just have classes. We don’t just go to your courses and study and go home and prepare for your courses for the next day in ILEP. We also have a lot of social activities and other things outside of the classes that we do, and I think that’s a great benefit.

Just to give you an idea, what we did this past summer — summer of 2024 — which is pretty typical of all the years: I’m just going to go through some of the things we did. On the first day, we have an orientation session and a breakfast — before classes get started — just to get settled in and learn a little bit about what they’re going to be doing for the next four weeks.

We have a movie night where students can come up in the evening and we watch usually a law-themed movie. Usually in the second week, we take a field trip to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. So fortunately, here in St. Louis, we have a U.S. Court of Appeals — that’s federal court — so we take a field trip to go see that. We get tours of the courts. That’s a great activity.

At the end of the first week, we have a welcome picnic in Forest Park. Forest Park is a big, big park. Students are familiar with Central Park in New York — I think that’s famous, everyone knows about it. Well, we’ve got our own park, like Central Park, here in St. Louis, except it’s a little bigger. So we have a welcome picnic in Forest Park, and that’s one of my favorite events of the summer.

We have this nice picnic. Everyone gets together. People bring games. We socialize. We have food. It’s always a great event. All the instructors from ILEP come. I’m there usually — I’m manning the grill. I’m the one cooking hot dogs there.

We have a field trip to downtown St. Louis. It’s one of the things that we did over the weekend last summer. We went to downtown — saw the Gateway Arch, the Old Courthouse — and just walked around the downtown city.

And then we have our moot court on the last day, which is the final round of the moot court. That’s when the finalists present their oral arguments. As I’d mentioned earlier, the oral argument is your argument before the court, where you stand and advocate for your client in front of the judge.

We have a moot courtroom. It looks just like a real courtroom, and the finalists get up and present their oral arguments. All the other students who aren’t finalists watch this competition. We have judges, and they’re judged, and we decide on a winner. We have a winner-plaintiff and a winner-defendant from either side. We don’t reveal the winners during the moot court, but that afternoon — again, this is on the last day of the program — we have a catered awards ceremony and celebration in the main courtyard of the law school, and that’s always nice.

So we give out awards, and it’s the last thing we do. We’re celebrating completing this program and getting ready to move on to their degree programs after that. That probably rivals the picnic for me as far as my favorite events.

I know that a lot of the students also organize their own activities — going out and doing things while they’re here at ILEP as well. Again, forming those bonds. So yeah — that’s one of the benefits of doing the in-person program, where students actually come to the law school to do this in person.

We do have an online program that students can take as well. It’s also a four-week program, but in that program, everything is done online. So we just can’t have the social events and things like that, but the curriculum is pretty similar.

So if students are unable to come to the in-person program — we do strongly encourage anyone who’s able to come to the in-person program — but if you can’t, we do have that online program that students can take. We cover all the same types of communication, the same types of writing, reading cases, and we do the same types of discussions and role plays and things like that. So they’ll still get that benefit doing the online program.

Juan Del Valle: That’s wonderful. I think students who, as you said, are maybe unable to be here by July — coming from other countries, you could have visa issues, travel issues, right? So having that option definitely benefits our students.

One last thing that I recall — that I really received from taking the ILEP — was, well, that I enhanced my resume. Because I definitely added that program to my resume. And I’m sure that, in those job offers I had after graduating from the LLM program, the employers who saw that I had prepared myself exclusively in legal English before studying my LLM — I think that gives the employer a nice sense that I probably did understand my LLM better.

Mark Bass: Definitely. And one other thing that I forgot to mention before is — when students take ILEP, it’s divided into two courses. If they’re taking it in person, there’s a morning course and there’s an afternoon course. The way we’ve been doing it is they have listening and speaking for two and a half hours in the morning, and then they have their reading and writing course for two and a half hours in the afternoon.

So they do that five days a week, so it ends up being five hours per day for 25 hours per week that they’re taking their courses, that they’re in class. So it does keep them busy. Students who successfully pass both of those courses do get a certificate at the end of the course showing that they’ve taken the legal English course and they’ve successfully completed the legal English course.

So there’s that as well — they have that certificate. That being said, even if students don’t quite pass one course or the other, or don’t pass either one, the program is set up in such a way that it’s designed so that it can help students, but it shouldn’t hurt them. In other words, if they don’t pass one of their courses — or even if they don’t pass both their courses — there’s no drawback. It’s not going to hurt them because they took the course and didn’t pass it.

We do have a number of students that don’t pass it, and that’s okay. They won’t get the legal English certificate, but they will still be better prepared for their courses in the fall than if they hadn’t taken it. Every year I have students who contact me — “I’m thinking of taking ILEP, but I’m worried that I’ll fail it or I won’t pass it, and this will look bad.”

The courses are credit/no credit. If you do well, you get credit. If you don’t, you don’t get the credit. But even if you don’t get the legal English certificate, you’re still much better off. You’re still better prepared for your courses. So there’s no reason to not take it.

Well, yeah — another benefit is that if you are a student enrolling in the fall in a law degree program at WashU Law, the program is free. You do not have to pay anything extra to take ILEP. It is free for you. We do have a deposit that needs to be paid ahead of time, but that deposit ends up getting credited toward your degree program. So you pay a little bit of your law school tuition early, but you don’t pay anything extra to take ILEP.

Juan Del Valle: Let me tell you something interesting. Back when I took it in 2009, it was not free.

Mark Bass: Oh, really?

Juan Del Valle: Yeah, no — back then, I had to pay that. I’m going to ask for a reimbursement! No — but it was worth every single penny, even if it had cost. So the fact that now this amazing program is offered free of cost to our students — you know, I always tell the students that are incoming, when they tell me, “I’m thinking…” — like, what are you thinking about? Take it! Come on — it’s an amazing opportunity, and you’re going to feel so much stronger once you’re done with it.

Plus, all the benefits. It’s a big message here to every single one of our listeners: take advantage of this wonderful, very complete, very intensive program — the Intensive Legal English Program — that we have there for you.

Mark Bass: Yeah — there’s no reason not to take it, right? It’s all upside, no downside.

Juan Del Valle: Exactly right. Thank you so much, Mark.

Mark Bass: All right. Thank you, Juan.