Supervising Undergraduate Law Students’ Dissertations: A Four-Step Review

Abstract

The literature on supervision focuses primarily on postgraduate supervision. Whilst there is some scholarship on supervising undergraduates, there is essentially no scholarship on supervising undergraduate law students specifically. This article investigates undergraduate law students’ attitudes toward dissertation supervision. In 2020–2021, the lead author supervised 12 LLB(Hons) students’ 15,000-word dissertations at the University of Auckland. The supervision process was in four parts: reviewing the proposal; reviewing the introduction; reviewing the first draft (10,000 words); and reviewing the second draft (15,000 words). The authors invited the supervisees to complete a survey on their supervision experience. This article surveys the literature on the supervision of undergraduate students, describes the lead author’s supervision process, and presents and discusses the study results. Students reported that each step in the four-step review process was helpful for their dissertation progress and achieving their goals for the dissertation, and provided useful feedback that was more useful than anticipated for each step in the review process. Students also reported that they received sufficient and appropriate contact with their supervisor, and sufficient guidance from the supervisor — allowing sufficient autonomy. The article also identifies students’ perceived difficulties and reflects on ways the process could mitigate those difficulties.