Peer to Peer Writing Workshop

The Faculty of Law has collaborated with law schools and students in the United States to establish the first of its kind peer to peer writing workshop in Ukraine.

The workshop pairs law students at Kyiv Mohyla Academy (KMA) with students from Georgetown Law, Loyola University Law School – Chicago, The University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Ukrainian law students will work on a one-on-one basis with a US law student on an English language legal memo on a current Ukrainian law issue. The pairs will meet on video calls once a week for a period of six weeks and work on drafting and editing the assignment. Tutors and students will be provided support and guidance from faculty at administrators at the various institutions.

The pedagogical goal is to improve English language legal writing and the greater goal is to give students the opportunity to establish relationships with law students across borders. With reconstruction and foreign investment after the war, these skills and relationships will be critical. The Faculty of Law aims to prepare its students to be leading practitioners in the new environment.

The workshop was established under the leadership of Dean Volodymyr Venher. Taisa Markus, Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign and Visiting Professor at KMA, spearheaded efforts with the US law schools and structured the workshop. Natalia Maksymchuk, Director of the English Language Program at the Faculty of Law, serves as Deputy Director. A number of faculty and administrators at the US schools and at the KMA Faculty of Law are involved in the workshop.

• Iryna Demydenko, a student at the KMA Faculty of Law, says “I look forward to getting to know the US tutors and learning from each other.”
• Virginia Robinson, University of Chicago Law School ’23 adds “The workshop provides me with a great opportunity to support legal education in Ukraine during very difficult times and a chance to create relationships which will be mutually beneficial”