A new academic year begins

And so the new academic year begins. This year I enter Level 3 and I'm taking more modules, hoping to complete the Law degree by next summer. It's going to be an interesting time ahead.

The shift from one level to another is quite a different experience from going forward from one academic or school year in a bricks & mortar institution. Whether it's university or school, there's a continuity of people around you and a shared experience so you return to familiar faces and surroundings. But with distance learning, you're not returning anywhere physical or seeing anybody after a time away. Instead, you're just going back to your desk at home. So all the focus is on waiting for the new academic year's module website to open.

The start to a module is often a bit staggered, with the website opening a few weeks before a module formally begins. This allows some students to get ahead but things can be complicated if tutors haven't yet been allocated whilst the online forums for most modules I've done often don't open early enough. One result is that very few students make the recommended online posts from module activities so it's harder to . Everybody studies at their own pace and around their own schedule so some will want to start ploughing through as soon as possible whilst others choose to follow the formal schedule and await the online tutorials to help them. There's no one right way to do things.

Level 3 sees students split off onto different pathways, which I'll discuss in more detail in later posts. It's by far the most diverse of all with many possible module combinations so my experience will be very different from many other students on other routes. So let's see how it goes.

(Image created with Microsoft 365 Copilot.)

Getting your module results

There's a strange limbo after one submits an End of Module Assignment (EMA). The module is over but the results aren't through for some time. Other demands, including other modules, can absorb time but there's still a sense of wondering that can't be satisfied one way or another until the result arrives. And that will take quite some time.

(And yes there's a reason for this, lest someone from the Open University staff be reading this and wants to point out the amount of time it takes to mark, moderate, externally moderate, work out overall marks and any adjustments and so forth. It's inevitable it takes time but that doesn't change the waiting experience.)

And then comes the day when one gets one or more of their results. With all the speculation this involves.

The Open University's systems are complicated and one effect seems to be that results don't always come out at quite a pre-announced "big bang" moment. The day of results can shift a bit. With one module I had both a delay of many days announced due to major systems failing and then also a release a couple of days earlier than the revised expected date. And then once the marks are out, it often seems to take a few days for all the relevant parts of the site to catch up, so I sometimes have a final mark in one place, a promise of a mark in a second and a blank in a third. Eventually everything is displayed correctly but not immediately.

Related to this the announcements that the results are out don't always come at the same time. So sometimes the first I've learnt that results are out has been messages on social media. When I've logged into the website there's been a message there - but the email to tell me to go to the site to look hasn't come until later. It makes for interesting fun, especially if I'm out and about with only the phone to check on.

My previous study was in a different era with most things submitted on paper and overall results coming in the mail or announced at a set time on a noticeboard. There was a similar sense of speculation and randomness with the post (although in those days it was much more reliable) but not the odd way of learning results were out through instant messages.

All this adds to the tension as one goes to see what their actual result is, perhaps added to by comments online as one person declares they did terribly whilst another is shocked to have done so much better than expected. And then the chaos as one clicks on the wrong link and then has to go back before eventually making it through to find the dreaded header "Overall module result", looking down and seeing the result. It's a nerve wracking experience but it has to be done.

Unless one decides to do something radical. But unfortunately with results coming online it's not possible to make a paper aeroplane out of an unopened envelope and throw the unseen results into the air, as happens at the end of The Paper Chase. Still there's nothing to stop you printing them out for a substitute effect - the plane in the picture at the top was made out of a printout of my Contract Law result because I thought of the film's ending and decided to homage the scene. But unlike Hart in the film I made sure to read my results first.

(Photograph my own.)

So just what were the facts in Donoghue v Stevenson?

It may seem surprising but many Law students, lecturers and lawyers do not carry extensive case lists in their head. The law is constantly evolving and it's better to look up a key case than to try to work from memory.

But there are some cases that have become so famous that they're heavily remembered and invariably encountered in law classes. Some set down key legal principles, such as Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Co ([1893] 1 QB 256), one of the best known cases in Contract Law. Others are remembered because of problems they exposed in the justice system, such as the Adolf Beck case that showed how unreliable eyewitness evidence can be. And then there's the case on which negligence law is founded, Donoghue v Stevenson.

Donoghue (or McAlister) v Stevenson ([1932] All ER Rep 1) may well be the best known legal case in British history. Notably, the relevant chapter in 100 Cases That Every Scots Law Student Needs to Know is titled "The Most Famous Case Of All". It's not hard to see why.

The case was key in the development of negligence law, by far the most litigated part of Tort. It applied to both Scots Law and English Law (the assertion that the law was identical in both jurisdictions was not disputed during the case though some have later questioned this) and the ruling was taken up across common law jurisdictions. It's often encountered by Law students very early in their studies. Many law schools (including the Open University's) teach Tort Law at Level 1; some others may leave Tort to Level 2 but have introductory Law modules that include Donoghue. It involves a highly ordinary scenario of a drink in a café with a very memorable horrific image that is easy to relate to. And the ruling invokes grand religious principles of the duty to one's neighbour.

In all this it's easy to forget some basics in the case. Including that the facts of the case were never actually established.

It doesn't help that the House of Lords judgment itself opens with "My Lords, the facts of this case are simple" as though there were established facts even though the opening paragraph also contains the disclaimer "she alleged, and at this stage her allegations must be accepted as true...".

In most cases an appeal on a point of law to a higher court is not the conclusion of a dispute. Usually, the higher courts will rule on the appeal and then the case goes back to the lower courts to be determined in light of that ruling. In this dispute, the ruling meant that Donoghue could sue Stevenson for negligence despite not having a contractual relationship and so a hearing was scheduled. But in the intervening period Stevenson died and before the case could eventually be tried his estate settled out of court.

So we don't know for certain the facts of the case. The story is of a woman (Mrs Donoghue) and her friend going to a café in Paisley on the evening of 26 August 1928, the friend ordering drinks, Mrs Donoghue drinking most of an opaque bottle of ginger beer and then, when the remainder was poured, discovering it contained the dead body of a snail, causing her to suffer shock and gastric illness.

But it was never proved in court that there was a dead snail in the bottle. Nor was it ever proved for certain that the bottle of ginger beer had been prepared and sealed by Stevenson's company. This was a time when bottles were often reused and sometimes returned to the wrong manufacturer. Although his estate settled, Stevenson, had he lived, may well have based his response on this and a court would have had to determine whether or not his company had indeed been responsible for a dead snail getting into the bottle.

And so perhaps the most famous case of all has no clear facts.

(Image created with Microsoft 365 Copilot.) 

The big product liability case: Coyote vs. Acme

Is there anything sadder than getting excited about a film involving a product liability case?

I'll avoid answering that one. But tomorrow just such a film comes out, Coyote vs. Acme (and yes, that's not the way to cite a case...) in which Wile E. Coyote takes on the company which supplies all his defective equipment:

(Yes it doesn't come out until next week in the US. But this is a UK based blog and here proceedings start tomorrow.)

And this is not the first time that this dispute has been contemplated. Back in 1990 The New Yorker carried a fictitious legal case document, Coyote v. Acme by Ian Frazier.

Although comedic, this is based on a serious legal concept, product liability. A manufacturer and supplier has a duty to supply well-designed goods that work as intended and come with warnings. Wile E. Coyote's attempts to catch the Road Runner have so often failed because the equipment he's obtained from Acme has been defective. The US based Pisanchyn Law Firm has a blog post explaining this in more detail at What Coyote vs. Acme Teaches Us About Product Liability (Yes, Seriously).

So tomorrow we'll see one coyote take on a big corporation and it should be fun.

One line of defence I doubt we'll see is the question as to whether Wile E. Coyote is a single animal. This moment, from the 1955 short Ready.. Set.. Zoom! suggests otherwise and there may be a limit to how much one coyote can claim:

So tomorrow we'll see some fun as Wile E. Coyote finally takes on his true nemesis. And have some legal fun at the same time.

A Level results day

Good luck to all those of my readers getting their A Level results today.

And this is also a day when a lot of confused statistics and nonsense fly about. So here are a few potential rejoinders.

Firstly, a lot of the statistics about the number of students accepted onto particular subjects at university come from UCAS. The figures only cover applications made through them and don't include students who've applied to the institution directly, which includes many distance learning, mature and/or part-time students. This is especially true in subjects where the Open University has the largest student numbers in the country, such as Law.

Secondly, there's often a lot of nonsense written about A Levels getting easier. This has been going on since at least when I took my A Levels back in... erm... very many years ago, and probably long before then. A lot of this comes from non-specialist journalists and commentators writing and opining on a subject they don't know the full details of. The reality is that much has changed over the years including teaching methods, technological support, methods of examination and also the competitive environment with ever greater numbers of students applying to university and under ever more pressure to perform well. So direct comparisons of grades across the decades don't mean much; nor can you pull out an old A Level paper (something much easier to do in the internet age) and ask today's pupils to answer it to compare results.

It does not help that normally this is about the slowest news week of the entire year and A Level results are a guaranteed source of news that get perhaps too much attention. If they came out in a busier news week then the coverage would be more limited and likely to be dominated by those who actually understand the education sector. Maybe this year the Clacton by-election (which is polling today in case you haven't noticed) will help draw away some of the less informed.

If you haven't got the grades you were hoping for, don't panic. There are plenty of options out there, whether going through Clearing, taking a break or the Open University amongst others. There are many lawyers and other professionals who have got where they have in spite of A Level disappointment.

(Image created with Microsoft 365 Copilot.)

How accurate is Educating Rita?

By far the best known film about the Open University is Educating Rita from 1983. Written by Willy Russell, based on his stage play of the same name, it stars Michael Caine as lecturer and OU tutor Frank Herbert and Julie Walters as Susan "Rita" White, a hairdresser taking an OU course in Literature:

So how accurate to modern day OU study is it?

In my experience not very. It may have been much closer to reality in 1983 but technology and the methods of OU study have moved on a lot in the decades since.

In Educating Rita the methods of teaching we see are regular in-person one-on-one tutorials, lectures broadcast on television at anti-social hours and a summer school whilst assessment is by final examination. All of these are very different from how I have been taught and assessed. For starters, I have not had any physical meetings with any of my tutors. All our contact has been through either online group tutorial sessions (and these are not always taken by my own assigned tutor), emails or the occasional arranged one-on-one call. Invariably the interaction is very different to that of Rita and Frank and so the whole premise of the film would not work. Also, there are no longer televised lectures. (The one shown here appears to be broadcast late at night when the BBC Programme Index suggests the OU was generally broadcasting in the morning in this period. However looking again on the film's apparent release date * 16 June 1983, we do indeed find very late evening lectures were broadcast on both BBC1 and BBC2.) There are some summer schools and other in-person teaching events but not on my modules. But instead students do get to interact through online tutorials and forums (and unofficial WhatsApp groups) and there are some assignments that require us to respond to each other's work. In contrast to Rita's exam, so far on my modules at least they have all been fully assessed by coursework though I understand this is a relatively recent development for OU Law modules.

Some things that are familiar include the studying with books at home amidst potential distractions all around or the awkward hours for sessions that can interfere with domestic and social life for both students and tutors ("They expect me to teach when the pubs are open!") though nowadays most evening online tutorials seem to be taken by tutors from their homes (and there are fewer restrictions on pub opening hours). Rita is a young working woman who left school without any qualifications and is seeking to advance herself through the OU; through the WhatsApp groups supporting my modules I have encountered a number of real life OU students who fit this description.

But regardless of how it reflects studying today, it's a good film to watch. Oh and it has Michael Caine actually saying the line previously misattributed to him. "Not many people know that."

(* Film release dates can be tricky to look up at a glance, especially for films in the pre internet era. In those days, it was common for a film to be released first in London's West End and then steadily rolled out across the country. The exact rollout might vary a bit for other factors, most obvious school holidays. There's also the complication of dates for premieres that were often not the day immediately before a film was available to the public anywhere. And international releases were staggered as well. Online searches for a British film often bring up anything ranging from the premiere through to a US general release.

The main reason behind all this was the cost of the physical film prints with many reused from one market to the next. However as global communications and marketing grew, whilst technology made piracy easier, the staggered release dates increasingly created problems as demand was whipped up before the official supply was ready. Some of the big blockbuster movies started investing in many more screening prints to allow for global simultaneous releases and the more recent rise of digital projection has removed the print cost problem. However, staggering can still take place for other reasons such as a country's distributors waiting for a film to prove itself in other markets or even just aligning to local peak weeks for greater ticket sales.)

Book buying - what to watch out for

The Open University used to send copies of the core textbooks to Law students prior to the start of the module (and may still do so on some other subjects; I've heard mixed reports). They've since switched to using Law Trove which gives online access to the text of a much wider range of books from Oxford University Press. But many students find it easier to read from physical paper books and will seek to obtain new or second hand copies of the core textbooks for modules. And at other universities, especially those with physical seminars, the situation can differ and physical copies may be essential.

It may seem tempting to rush out and buy a full set of Law books at the start of a course. They may even seem to be good gifts for someone else. But, as I hope to explain, this can be counterproductive. Book buying is a complicated affair best handled over the whole of the course.

If you're thinking of giving a textbook as a gift, be aware that there isn't one standard set of textbooks across the country. Each university chooses its own set of books. In some areas of Law one book is so dominant that it is very widely used but in others there's a range of potential core textbooks and many different choices are made. Also for gift-givers even if you read Law at the same university previously do not assume the same book will still be used, even if a new edition has recently been published.

Law is a field where things change quickly and there is a high turnover of editions. As I've previously discussed, many books go through new editions every few years, sometimes as quickly as every year for statute books. The textbooks and casebooks that are core on the Open University degree haven't turned over quite as fast, but of the eight I either used or would have used on Level 1 and Level 2 modules, no less than six already have new editions out. A full set of the eleven books used on non-SQE modules purchased in 2022 for someone taking Law part-time over the next six years would have seen at least five superseded by new editions by the time the relevant module started and at least another five superseded by the end of the degree (the sole exception at the moment is Peace & Stevens' Trusts and Equitable Obligations, most recent edition 2022). Someone studying full-time might be luckier with the turnover but if they'd started in 2025 then at least four books would have newer editions by the time they reached the relevant module and another two had new editions published so close to the start of the year that the previous books might have been used.

And that's even before one makes their optional module choice final. No one student is going to need all eleven books. Books on Business and Employment Law or Evidence Law are not going to be much help if one ends up taking Family Law and International, Environmental and Space Law instead.

So it's best for the student to control the buying and to do so spread out across the degree, only obtaining the latest editions close to starting the relevant module. With that in mind, here are a few tips.

Double check both which books you need access to and which editions. Not only are there multiple editions out there (some of which use very similar covers - looking especially at you EU Law: Text, Cases, and Materials), but there are a number of similar titled books by the same author(s) such as Poole's Casebook on Contract Law and Poole's Textbook on Contract Law, both now by Merkin and Saintier. That one has definitely caught a few people out. Look up the book on the publisher's website (for the OU this is usually Oxford University Press's Academic section) to see if there's a new edition out this year and double check whether the brand-new edition will be used or the previous one. Sometimes a new edition published in the summer is deemed too soon for use in modules in the immediate next academic year (and the position can differ for modules starting in September/October with those starting in January/February). If the older edition is listed, try sending an email to see if you can get definite confirmation whether that's up-to-date or not.

High street bookshops will be unlikely to have most of the books on the course lists and/or mentioned on this blog on their shelves. These are specialist books with a limited lifespan and general demand is limited. The main exceptions tend to be Law dictionaries and longer life opinion pieces such as The Rule of Law by Lord Bingham of Cornhill or Justice: What's the right thing to do? by Michael J. Sandel. All of these I've often found in high street bookshops.

Larger bookshops in city centres and/or near universities may have some of the textbooks on shelves (in central London I've certainly seen a good many at both Foyles on Charing Cross Road and Waterstones on Gower Street) but don't expect to find absolutely all the ones you need there, especially if the bookshop is nearer other universities whose own Law courses prescribe different textbooks.

Ordering online is the best way forward but remember to compare prices. Also look out for discount codes that are sometimes provided through universities. And make sure the order goes to an easy-to-reach address or a good collection point.

Second hand copies are fine providing they are the edition you need. Make sure to look around, not just on regular sites like Amazon and eBay but also on sites like Vinted where many students offer their no-longer-needed books. You can even find books offered on social media groups but exercise caution about the buyer. As always, check carefully that you're buying the correct edition. Some books are much easier to find at cheap second hand prices (or deep discounted new editions) than others so the more you can save on one book the more you can put towards another.

Good luck buying!

(Photograph my own.)