Nova Southeastern Univ., Shepard Broad Law Center

Lawyering Skills and Values (LSV)
Lawyering Skills and Values (LSV) introduces an innovative approach to legal education, one that integrates legal theory with practice, professionalism, and technology right from the first day of law school. The cornerstone of the program is the development of legal research and writing skills in a practical context, with an emphasis on professionalism, client-centered representation, and ethical lawyering. In each three-credit semester, students participate in alternative dispute resolution, apply the latest law office technology, and resolve practical and ethical issues that lawyers commonly encounter in the practice of law. The first-year focuses on predictive legal analysis in a transactional context, using state law and secondary research materials. Students assist clients in transactional matters and write objective memoranda of law before counseling their clients. By researching, negotiating, and drafting a contract, students themselves develop the facts that a court would use in a future interpretation of the contract. In the second semester, the Program focuses on persuasive writing in a pre-trial litigation context, using federal and state law and secondary research materials. In pre-trial matters, students take primary responsibility for investigating the facts of a client’s case in preparation for trial. They draft a demand letter, client counseling letter, and a persuasive memorandum in support of or opposition to a pre-trial motion. At the end of the semester, students argue their motions orally and participate in a mediation of a dispute. Throughout the year, students interview and counsel clients, resolve practical and ethical dilemmas, and draft correspondence to clients and opposing attorneys.

With this background in transactional and litigation skills, students entering second-year elect to follow either a business track or a litigation track. All second year students have the opportunity to research, write, and orally argue legal issues within their area of concentration. Students in the business track will select courses designated as Advanced Lawyering Skills and Values Transactional courses. These courses will provide instruction in a variety of transactional skills, including: (1) determining what facts need to be solicited from the client and how best to solicit and evaluate such facts, (2) analyzing and applying the applicable law to various facts, (3) determining appropriate options for a client and analyzing the potential advantages and disadvantages of such choices, (4) communicating such choices to the client and counseling the client with respect to the choices, (5) identifying ethical considerations regarding such representation, such as determining the identity of the client being represented and disclosing potential conflicts, and (6) implementing choices through selection or drafting of documents. Negotiation skills also may be taught when relevant. Students electing the litigation track will take Civil Pre-Trial Practice and other courses designated as Advanced Lawyering Skills and Values Litigation courses. These courses will provide instruction in a variety of litigation skills, including: (1) interviewing clients and witnesses to determine the relevant facts and the veracity of certain persons, (2) preparing and answering interrogatories, taking depositions, and developing other pre-trial litigation skills, (3) determining appropriate general litigation strategies as well as specific strategies for a particular case, (4) communicating with and counseling clients, (5) identifying ethical issues applicable to various aspects of litigation, and (6) developing negotiation skills.

Faculty
The Law Center has recently taken dramatic steps to remove all distinctions between the faculty in and out of the Program. All LSV professors have pay parity with equivalent members of the doctrinal faculty. Although LSV professors cannot receive tenure, they do have all of the rights and privileges: full voting rights (including on all promotion and tenure decisions); ability to receive summer stipends; renewable five year contracts after the first five years; same title as all other members of the faculty; and the same research assistant and travel budgets. The student-faculty ratio for LSV is one of the lowest in the nation with full-time professors—approximately 26 to 1. In addition, each professor in the LSV program rotates out of the department every five years to spend time working on scholarship. For more information on the program, contact the LSV Director, Anthony Niedwiecki at niedwieckia@nsu.law.nova.edu or any other faculty member in the program. You can find out more about the LSV Program and its faculty by going to: http://www.nsulaw.nova.edu/lsv/

University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law

The goal of the writing program at Pacific McGeorge School of Law is to produce thoughtful, skillful, and ethical advocates, attorneys who enter the complex, dynamic world of contemporary legal practice with the theoretical foundations and rhetorical tools necessary to make a positive impact.

Our formal writing program is organized as a two-year required program. First-year students take Legal Process, a 3-unit, two-semester course that focuses on the foundations of legal advocacy - legal research and writing. The curriculum covers the American legal system, legal analysis, basic legal research, predictive writing, and a short introduction to persuasive writing. In the first semester, in addition to short writing assignments ranging from single paragraphs to drafts of a predictive memo, the students write and re-write two closed-universe predictive memos. They also study research strategies and sources, both paper and electronic, and take a research examination at the end of the first semester. In the second semester, the students research and write a longer predictive memo and then research and write both a first draft and a final draft of a persuasive memo to a trial court. Both semesters include mandatory faculty-student conferences.

In the second year, the students take a 3-unit Appellate and International Advocacy course that covers a semester and a half. The course entails writing a complex persuasive document to a U.S. appellate court that involves both domestic issues and an international issue. Students in the course use Michael R. Fontham, Michael Vitiello, and David Miller’s Persuasive Written and Oral Advocacy in Trial and Appellate Courts, a text developed in the course and published by Aspen. The course is structured using large-group lectures and small-group workshops. Full-time faculty provide the lectures, while the workshops are run by a practicing attorney and an upper-level student. Students practice oral argument throughout the course and engage in a final moot court competition in the spring semester.

McGeorge has recently introduced an upper-level advanced writing course and an advanced advocacy seminar and plans to add a transactional drafting course and other elective writing courses in the future.

The first-year Legal Process program is staffed by a Director, five full-time Instructors, and seven adjuncts. Six of the adjuncts, who are all practicing attorneys from the Sacramento and San Francisco areas, staff the Evening Division program, while the seventh adjunct teaches a section in the Day Division. The five full-time Instructors teach two sections of approximately 20 students each. The Director and full-time Instructors are on renewable three-year contracts, while the adjuncts are all on one-year renewable contracts. Several of the full-time faculty teach elective courses, including Community Property, Advanced Legal Writing, Advanced Appellate Advocacy Seminar, and Applied Remedies. We are also considered for courses in summer school, although we are not required to teach in the summer. We serve on faculty committees and attend and vote at all faculty meetings, except on matters involving hiring, promotion, and tenure. We share in the same benefits package given to tenured and tenure-track faculty, and the full-time Legal Process faculty all received mid-year salary increases during the 2005-2006 academic year to bring us more in parity with other schools. All Legal Process faculty are appointed by the Dean. The Appellate and International Advocacy course is taught by a tenured faculty member and two faculty members on long-term contracts.

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA LAW SCHOOL

The University of Minnesota Law School requires students to complete a three-year writing requirement to graduate. In the fall of the first year, students concentrate on common law legal analysis through a series of building-block, predictive writing exercises, followed by two drafts of a closed-research office memorandum relating to an issue presented by a contract scenario, followed by two drafts of a full open-research office memorandum (relating to an expanded version of the contract scenario). Students submit some kind of writing exercise virtually every week of the semester, receive individual feedback from instructors, engage in peer review, and give mock client advice.

In the spring of the first year, students concentrate on statutory interpretation and build upon their common law analytical skills through a series of building-block, persuasive writing exercises that lead up to an original and a rewrite of a full set of district court motion papers and two oral arguments of the motion. Students submit some kind of writing exercise during most weeks of the semester, receive individual feedback from instructors, engage in peer review, and engage in persuasive argument.

In the second year, we require a full-year appellate advocacy experience involving multiple brief drafts and oral argument exercises, except for any students who are participating as staff members on one of the scholarly law journals (for whom there are elective appellate advocacy offerings). Law Review staffers write pieces under individual faculty supervisors who certify the nature and quality of the work.

In the third year, students may satisfy the writing requirement through designated, faculty-supervised moot court, law journal and senior seminar experiences.

The first year legal writing program and basic second year appellate advocacy program are taught in small sections of roughly twelve students each. Attorney instructors, paired with upper-level student partners, teach within a central program design prepared and run by a director with full clinical tenure (i.e. continuous appointment terminable only for good cause or financial exigency). Various attorney instructors currently have respectively fifteen, ten, eight, and five years of experience teaching at the law school within the program.

Over the last seventeen years, students from the programs have won three national and eleven regional moot court championships, five national and eighteen regional best brief awards, twelve regional best oral advocate awards, two national best speaker awards, two Burton legal writing prizes and the Brown Award for Excellence in Legal Writing.

Contact person:
Bradley G. Clary
Clinical Professor of Law and
Director of Applied Legal Instruction
clary002@umn.edu

Rutgers – Camden School of Law

Legal Writing Professors at Rutgers-Camden have almost complete autonomy over all but the basic focus of the first-year course, i.e., memos in the fall and briefs/moot court in the spring. Otherwise, professors are free to design every other aspect of their courses around their pedagogical aims and scholarly focus. Classes have a student-teacher ratio of approximately 36 to 1. We also have teaching assistants earning grades for their work. The upper-level curriculum is designed to enhance the depth of student knowledge and also to introduce students to more sophisticated techniques of persuasion, drawing on classical rhetoric, psychology theory, creative writing, and visual design theory.

The LRW program is integrated with the school’s other lawyering programs, including the school’s clinics, competitive moot court, and pro bono programs. This interdependence is reflected in collaboration among faculty. Many of us teach extensively in or work with the clinical and pro bono programs. Likewise, several writing professors have created memo and brief problems stemming from scenarios arising within Rutgers’ Domestic Violence Clinic, and first-year students have researched and written as if they were working for clients within that clinic.

Rutgers – Camden supports the scholarly development of the legal writing faculty. Legal writing faculty have ABA Standard 405 (c) status. We are eligible for sabbaticals, and we are encouraged to present at conferences. We have published scholarship in the field of legal writing and in other doctrinal areas.

Additionally, Rutgers – Camden hosts, maintains, and develops innovations for the LWI Idea Bank. For more information about the Rutgers – Camden Legal Research and Writing program, please contact:

Prof. Jason Cohen at jayco@camden.rutgers.edu;
Prof. Sarah Ricks at sricks@camden.rutgers.edu;
Prof. Ruth Anne Robbins at ruthanne@camden.rutgers.edu;
Prof. Sheila Rodriguez at sheilaro@camden.rutgers.edu; or
Prof. Carol Wallinger at cwallinger@camden.rutgers.edu

Mercer University School of Law

Program: Mercer has a 3-semester required program totaling the equivalent of 9 credits. In the first semester, students take Introduction to Legal Research and Legal Analysis. They also complete a required writing component as part of either Contracts or Criminal Law. The second semester covers predictive research and writing, including the forms of legal reasoning and common organizational paradigms. The third semester focuses on rhetorical techniques of persuasion and covers research, trial & appellate briefs, and 2 oral arguments. All core courses include drafts and re-writes of 2-3 major assignments per semester as well as a number of smaller assignments. Faculty hold both required and optional student conferences. The upper division includes 9 research and writing electives, and many students take a research or writing course every semester of their law study. Mercer also offers a Certificate Program in Advanced Legal Writing, Research, and Drafting, which takes upper-division students through an advanced research and writing curriculum. The Program includes weekly meetings of Advanced Writing Groups. Each Writing Group is limited to 6 students and is modeled after Peter Elbow’s concept of a "community of writers." Certificate Program students complete 17 credit hours of research and writing courses, not counting law review or moot court.

Faculty: All legal writing professors are either tenured or on a tenure track. The tenure-track is the same track as that of any other professor and includes identical salary, benefits, offices, administrative support, professional development funds, research stipends and assistants, voting rights, and committee responsibilities. There is no director. The faculty meets weekly, shares ideas, and makes programmatic decisions together. Everyone teaches a non-legal writing course as part of their normal course load (not as an overload). Legal Writing faculty have written or have contracts for 3 legal writing text books, 2 books in other areas, over 20 law review articles, and over 25 other publications. They regularly make presentations at legal writing conferences and have served in leadership positions in LWI, ALWD, the ABA Communication Skills Committee, and the AALS Section. Mercer serves as the host school for the Legal Writing Institute and co-hosted the 2006 Conference in Atlanta.

Website: www.law.mercer.edu/academics/legal_writing/index.cfm

Contact person: Edwards_LH@mercer.edu

George Mason University School of Law

George Mason University School of Law offers an intensive three-year legal writing program to prepare its students for the practical demands in the practice of law. In the first year, students are introduced to both enacted law and common law, learn a variety of research methodologies using both print and electronic database resources, learn the art of analyzing legal concepts, and the practical skills of presenting this research and analysis in a coherent, organized, and logical written product. Students begin writing objective legal memoranda in the first semester, and then progress to the art of persuasive writing through a trial level problem, where students are required to write both pre-trial pleadings and trial memoranda. At the end of the second semester, students engage in oral argument before local practitioners and judges. In the third semester, students continue developing and refining their research, analytical, and writing skills by working though an appellate problem at the federal appellate level. Students research and prepare two complete appellate briefs according to the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure – one for the Appellant and one for the Appellee – and then engage in oral argument before legal practitioners. In the fourth semester, students are divided into law firms and counsel the same client through a variety of simulated circumstances requiring different types of legal drafting, from simple contracts governing the behavior of the client and others, to drafting legislation and preparing a will. Students also engage in a settlement negotiation with their colleagues and finalize the terms of the settlement reached into a settlement agreement for their client.

The LRWA Program at George Mason also requires at least two additional writing courses beyond the first two years. For those students in the general law track, the additional writing requirement can be satisfied by taking either two 400- or 600-level seminar courses or one 400-/600-level seminar and one “Writing” course (designated by a (W) following the title of the course). Students in the specialty track programs use their theses and other required courses to fulfill the upper-level writing requirements.

For additional information, please contact Elizabeth A. Keith, Director of Legal, Research, Writing and Analysis, George Mason University School of Law, 3301 N. Fairfax Drive, MS 1G3, Arlington, VA 22201, (703) 993-9158 (telephone), (703) 993-8202 (facsimile), ekeith@gmu.edu.

Texas Tech University School of Law

Texas Tech University School of Law offers a two-semester, six-credit Legal Practice course that covers a range of lawyering skills: analysis, research, writing, ADR, oral advocacy, and client interviewing/counseling. The course is taught in a contextualized and integrated manner. The LP Professors teach all facets of the course (with support from the library staff for specialized research workshops), and most exercises and skills are taught within the arc of a typical client representation (interview to research to memo, or trial brief to negotiation/mediation to appellate brief). The LP Professors are supported by Teaching Fellows--2L and 3L students who assist with giving workshops, grading objective assignments, running exercises before distribution, etc. This year's student-teacher ratio is 39:1.

In the fall semester, students write a closed memo and open memo (each with drafts), complete three extensive research exercises, draft a client letter and counsel a client, and take a writing exam.

In the spring semester, the students start with an in-depth 5-week course-within-a-course on ADR with related writing exercises. They also draft a brief and give an oral argument. They have an MPT-type final as a capstone assignment.

The professors who teach LP enjoy 405(c) status and are treated like other faculty in terms of research funds, travel, offices, committee assignments, etc. They vote on all matters except tenure-track hiring and promotion. In addition, the school is very receptive to offering LP faculty room for professional growth/change (one LP faculty member joined the doctrinal faculty, and another was named deputy director of a new specialty law center). The Legal Practice Program also includes a part-time Writing Specialist who is available for workshops, conferences with students, etc.

University of Dayton School of Law

The Legal Profession Program, developed in 1988, is a comprehensive two-semester, six credit-hour course sequence devoted to building legal research, analysis and writing skills in the context of the evolving technology used in law practice. The Program’s classes meet in small groups with experienced full-time faculty and stress practical applications of essential lawyering skills. Faculty meet frequently with students for individualized writing and research conferences. Assignments are submitted via an innovative e-filing system developed at the University of Dayton School of Law.

Throughout the Legal Profession course sequence, students are trained in such important skills as accessing and understanding legal authority and effectively communicating legal analysis within the context of the following specific practice areas: advocacy, general/transactional practice; and intellectual property. As a result, our students quickly develop the strong professional skills necessary to be productive and efficient. After the first year, students continue their skills development with upper level writing courses, required externships, intra-sessions, and capstone courses.

The professors in the Program are on long-term contracts of one, three, and five years under a policy designed to satisfy 405(c) requirements. Program faculty have published numerous books and articles, frequently present at LWI and ALWD national and regional conferences, and serve on these organizations’ committees. The Program’s former director, Becky Cochran, served on the ALWD Board of Directors.

For further information, please contact: (Maria.Crist@notes.udayton.edu)

The Legal Profession Program is further described at: http://law.udayton.edu/. Click on “Faculty Profiles” describing the individual accomplishments of faculty associated with the Program: Rebecca Cochran, Maria Perez Crist, Sheila Miller, Kristen Safier, Lori Shaw, Susan Wawrose, and Julie Zink.

The Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, New York City

The Lawyering Skills and Legal Writing Program at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law provides in-depth instruction in lawyering skills, legal writing and research for successful academic performance and legal practice. A closely supervised first year course is matched with advanced writing courses for both J.D. and LL.M. students and the Legal Writing Center supports individual students’ development throughout law school.

First-Year Lawyering Skills and Legal Writing is a two-semester course. Each year, the first year course is taught in over thirty small sections, each of eight to sixteen students. Legal Writing I focuses on basic principles of writing, language structure and usage, organization; case reading; legal analysis and case synthesis; ethics in informational legal writing; manual legal research methods and skills; and includes exercises in fact gathering and interviewing skills. Legal Writing II introduces students to computer-assisted research sources and usage, focuses on advocacy writing skills and ethics, includes exercises in negotiation, litigation drafting and strategy, includes a class visit to an appellate court, and concludes with an exercise in appellate brief writing and oral argument. Work in both semesters includes in-class instruction, in-library instruction, and individual faculty-student conferences and provides extensive written and oral feedback on all assignments. Classes are taught in small sections by experienced practitioners. Advanced Writing Courses for LL.M. students feature a curriculum designed to specifically meet the needs of returning and international students.

The Legal Writing Center brings together writing, research and other academic services for students and serves as a referral opportunity for faculty and administration. All student support is provided by experienced members of the writing faculty. The Legal Writing Center offers the following services: individual work with students on writing, analytic, outlining, note-taking and exam-taking needs; individual work with LL.M. students on English language, writing, analytic, outlining, note-taking and exam-taking needs; workshops on Research Methodology, Citation, Exam Preparation, Spanish for Lawyers and other topics; training for Teaching and Research Assistants; a manual and materials for Legal Writing Teaching Assistants; advisors for students who are writing Journal Notes, fulfilling the writing requirement of the Summer Institute Program or submitting articles to Writing Competitions; Judicial Appellate Advocacy Talks; as a clearinghouse for doctrinal tutoring; and a Legal Writing Resource Guide (distributed to all students).

Faculty members are experienced practitioners whose workplaces include major New York City law firms, the U.S. Attorneys Office, the New York State Attorney General’s Office and other private and public firms and organizations. Many Lawyering Skills and Legal Writing faculty members have held federal clerkships and have written and/or edited books and articles in diverse subjects in the legal field.

For further information about the Lawyering Skills and Legal Writing Program at Cardozo School of Law, please contact Leslie Newman, Professor of Law and Director of Lawyering Skills and Legal Writing Program, at 212.790.0323, or newman@yu.edu

University of Baltimore

The Legal Skills Program at the University of Baltimore is in the midst of an exciting transition. Since 2001, the required curriculum has spanned three semesters, for a total of seven fully‑graded credits of research and writing instruction. The curriculum treated writing as a discrete subject, however, and relied primarily on adjunct faculty and student teaching assistants to teach the writing courses. Starting with the 2006-2007 academic year, we have begun the process of integrating instruction in writing and doctrine.

Our innovative Introduction to Lawyering Skills (ILS)/Torts class joins two previously separate courses — a four­‑credit torts course and a three-credit research and writing course — into a seven‑credit intensive course integrating instruction in both subjects. This new curriculum allows students to learn doctrine through writing and learn writing in a doctrinal context. The course is taught in small sections of approximately 30 students by full-time, tenured and tenure‑track faculty recruited from among the ranks of experienced writing professionals. One quarter of this year’s entering class is enrolled in the new course. The transition will continue over the next three to four years until all of the 1L students take this integrated course.

The intensive instruction in ILS/Torts provides momentum for the second and third semester courses, Legal Analysis, Research, and Writing (LARW) II and III. LARW II is a two-credit simulation course that introduces students to the basic documents they are likely to encounter in pursuing or defending a civil lawsuit, including pleadings, settlement agreements, client letters, and motions. LARW III is a two‑credit Moot Court course in which students write an appellate brief and argue before a panel of judges. This sequence allows students to acquire, build, and reinforce their research and writing skills.

Although students benefit from the instruction provided by tenured and tenure‑track faculty in their first semester, UB Law School recognizes the significant contributions practicing lawyers and student teachers can bring to the educational process. Accordingly, the LARW II and III courses continue to be taught by adjunct faculty and teaching assistants under the supervision of the tenured program co‑directors. The adjunct writing professors come from varied backgrounds and include judges, partners and associates in law firms, government attorneys, sole practitioners, and state legislators. The writing professors teach small sections of 10‑14 students, providing instruction that is relevant to the day-to-day practice of law and keeping the curriculum focused on the skills necessary for successful legal practice. The teaching assistants act as both mentors and teachers to their students.

Many students say that the Legal Skills Program's courses are the most difficult courses they take in law school. Although the curriculum is challenging, students receive in-depth, personal feedback on their work in each course. The reward for their hard work is being prepared for legal practice.

Contact: Professor Eric B. Easton (eeaston@ubalt.edu)Professor Amy E. Sloan (asloan@ubalt.edu)

Indiana University School of Law - Indianapolis

Full-time faculty:
Joan Ruhtenberg
Cynthia Adams
Ken Chestek
Jim Dimitri
Allison Martin
Debby McGregor
Joel Schumm

We at IU-Indy are proud of the advancements we have made in our program and the contributions we have made to the legal writing field. We are especially pleased to be hosting the next LWI Biennial Conference on July 14-17, 2008.

The Course:
IU-Indy has a required three-semester, six-credit graded writing course. The first two semesters of the J.D. course cover objective writing, persuasive writing (at the trial court level), and an introduction to oral advocacy. The professors enjoy a great deal of autonomy, choosing their own texts and devising their own syllabi with shared goals. Volunteer upper level students are assigned to work with each writing professor’s students on a 1:10 basis.

The third semester is presently integrated with the Intramural Moot Court Competition and covers appellate advocacy as well as the drafting of non-litigation documents. The third semester is taught primarily by experienced adjuncts. Librarians with J.D. degrees teach research throughout the three semesters of the program. Faculty/student ratios typically average between 1:35-40 for full-time professors.

The Faculty:
The program has seven full-time faculty members, either with 405(c) status or on track for 405(c) protection (which they may apply for after successfully completing three years of teaching). Salaries are competitive, and additional funds (up to $14,000) are available for summer research grants. Writing professors often teach summer or academic courses other than legal writing, including Professional Responsibility, Criminal Procedure, Juvenile Justice, Civil Procedure, Torts for LL.M. Students, Trusts and Estates, etc. Several writing professors serve as advisors to the national Moot Court teams, and all writing faculty members participate on law school committees.

Faculty members receive a research leave prior to clinical tenure and an annual professional development fund. All writing professors vote on all matters (other than some appointment and promotion issues). The seven full-time writing professors collectively have over eighty years teaching experience in the field.

IU-Indy serves as the host school for the LWI discussion listserv, LRWPROF-L, as well as various other lists that serve the LWI community. Ken serves as Treasurer of the LWI Board, Ken and Joel serve as Board members for the Journal of the Legal Writing Institute, and Allison and Jim serve as Assistant Editors of the Journal. Debby is a member of the LWI Bar Outreach Committee.

Joan is co-author of A Practical Guide to Legal Writing and Legal Method, and Debby and Cynthia will be publishing The International Lawyer’s Guide to Legal Analysis and Communication with Aspen in 2008. All faculty members continue to publish in legal writing and other doctrinal areas.For further information, please contact Joan Ruhtenberg, Director, jruhten@iupui.edu, or Debby McGregor, Assistant Director, dmcgreg@iupui.edu. You may also visit our webpage at http://www.indylaw.indiana.edu/courses/legalwriting.htm

WESTERN STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LAW

Western State University College of Law is a practice-oriented law school, with courses that emphasize the development of lawyering skills. Professional Skills I and II form the core for the professional skills curriculum and are required for all students. Class sizes are limited to 15 students. Like all first-year courses at WSU, Professional Skills courses are graded and are worth three credits.

Over the past two years, the faculty has made substantial improvements to the Professional Skills Program. The Professional Skills Program is now organized and administered under a Director/Assistant Director Model, with adjunct instructors teaching individual classes. In 2005, the faculty appointed Professor Marc McAllister as the tenure-track Director of Professional Skills. Before coming to Western State, Professor McAllister served as a law clerk for a United States Circuit Court of Appeals judge and practiced as a litigator at a large law firm. WSU also recently hired a full-time, non-tenure track Assistant Director.

The Director has compiled a core group of adjunct instructors, all of whom have taught legal writing and research in the past. The Director and Assistant Director have implemented an extensive training program for adjuncts. Training workshops consist of techniques for implementing learning theories in the classroom, grading calibration exercises, instruction on implementing technology into the legal writing curriculum, and techniques for teaching a diverse student body (WSU’s student body is consistently ranked among the most diverse in the nation).

The Professional Skills Program teaches the foundational skills of legal research, case synthesis, legal and factual analysis, citation, and objective and persuasive legal writing. The courses comport with the “process-oriented” approach to writing instruction, teaching legal writing in stages reflecting the writing processes employed by experts. These courses also fully integrate research and writing instruction. The process-oriented approach enhances student learning by providing opportunity for instruction at each stage of the writing process, and by providing for immediate application of all research instruction.

All assignments in Professional Skills are original and are based on current legal issues. Professional Skills I includes four major writing assignments, which each increase in difficulty from the previous assignment. The first assignment uses only one precedent case. The second assignment increases in complexity by requiring application of several additional precedent cases. The final two assignments add the component of open research.

In Professional Skills II, students learn the art of advocacy, both oral and written. In this course, students write two major appellate briefs and engage in oral arguments. The brief assignments involve multiple drafts and increase in complexity from prior assignments. The semester culminates in a moot court competition in which all Professional Skills students argue before a panel of local judges, professors, and practicing attorneys.

Upper-level students are required to take six units of Advanced Professional Skills courses and must satisfy WSU’s Upper-Level Writing Requirement. The Advanced courses include those offering live-client experiences. Members of the local bench or highly-skilled trial lawyers teach these courses. Many students fulfill the Upper-Level Writing Requirement through WSU’s extensive judicial, criminal, and civil externship programs.

The John Marshall Law School, Chicago, Illinois

The John Marshall Law School has a multi-year Lawyering Skills Program. Each student is required to take four semesters of legal writing, equaling nine credit hours, and an additional semester of trial advocacy. The basic first-semester course is taught by full-time Lawyering Skills faculty in sections of twenty-five or fewer. This semester focuses on the structure of the legal system, sources of law, legal reasoning, predictive writing in memoranda and opinion letters, and extensive print and on-line research instruction. The second semester introduces persuasive writing, and includes a discussion of rhetoric, demand letters and briefs, and an introduction to oral advocacy. The second semester also includes advanced research training, including a review of print materials, and several sessions devoted to research on the internet and in multiple commercial databases. The third semester is devoted to advanced written and oral advocacy, including the intra-mural Herzog Moot Court Competition. The final semester is focused on drafting and transactional work, and includes advanced research training in specialized areas. Students satisfy the drafting requirement by taking one or more drafting courses. Options include a general drafting course, as well as specialized drafting courses in areas such as real estate, civil litigation, intellectual property, international business law, business planning, employee benefits law, and patent law drafting. There are doctrinal prerequisite courses for legal drafting. The fact that students come to the drafting courses with specialized knowledge enables the faculty to assign rigorous projects that reflect the challenges students will face as young lawyers.

In addition, John Marshall has a Writing Resource Center, staffed by a full-time Director and three writing specialists. The Center provides individual counseling and assistance to help students make the transition to legal writing. John Marshall also has an Appellate Advocacy Program that gives students many opportunities to represent the school in national and international moot court competitions.

Faculty: All full-time faculty members are tenured, tenure-track, or hold full-time clinical appointments. The full-time faculty members include Cynthia Bond, Maureen Collins, Joel Cornwell, Sonia Green, Ardath Hamann, Joanne Hodge, Maureen Straub Kordesh, Molly Lien, Samuel Olken, David Sorkin, Julie Spanbauer, and Mark Wojcik. All full-time faculty members have extensive experience teaching legal research and writing, and many have taught at John Marshall since the program was founded in 1984 by Susan Brody. In addition, the school attempts to enrich its program by having one or two distinguished visitors each year who are experienced teachers of legal writing.

The upper level advocacy and drafting courses are taught by adjunct faculty with demonstrated expertise in their respective areas of expertise. Enrollment in upper level courses is limited to fifteen students.

For further information about the Lawyering Skills Program, please contact Molly Lien, Professor of Law and Director of Lawyering Skills, at 312-987-2379, or 7lien@jmls.edu,
or Sonia Green, Associate Director and Assistant Professor of Law at 312- 427-2737, ext. 756, or 7green@jmls.edu.

For further information about the Appellate Advocacy programs, please contact Ardath Hamann, Associate Professor of Law and Director of Appellate Advocacy, 312-987-1410, or 7hamann@jmls.edu.

The John Marshall web site is at www.jmls.edu

Gonzaga University School of Law

Gonzaga has a required four-semester LR&W Program taught by seven experienced LR&W professors, who are eligible for long-term security, and have full voting rights and representation on faculty committees.

The first-year course, LR&W I & II, is a year-long, four-credit class. It focuses on developing and refining the following skills: legal analysis; legal research, both in print sources and on-line; and objective, predictive legal writing. Students work on a series of increasingly complex research and writing projects, i.e., legal memoranda and opinion letters. In the first semester, the first two projects are closed universe. The teachers fully critique these projects but do not assign a grade. Both projects emphasize legal analysis. Students then write at least one open research memo that is fully critiqued, but not graded in that semester. The final open research memo is fully graded. In the second semester, students focus on more complex resources such as constitutional provisions, statutes, legislative history, and administrative regulations. They write two open memos on complex issues and an opinion letter from one of their memos. Their final memo is graded. Students also take a graded research test at the end of each semester. In addition, throughout each semester, students are also writing shorter pieces and keeping research journals that are critiqued by the teachers. The goal is to teach the skill, critique the skill, and then grade the skill each semester. Individual conferences and rewrites are hallmarks of the first-year writing program.

The second-year classes (two credits) focus on transactional drafting and persuasive writing. The first-semester class, LR&W III, focuses on introducing students to transactional drafting with an ungraded contract drafting exercise. Students then move on to persuasive writing through a series of litigation documents. They start with a demand letter and then move on to a draft and a rewrite of a motion for summary judgment with supporting memorandum, exhibits, and affidavits. For the final semester, in LR&W IV, students work in pairs on an appellate brief. They then argue that brief either in a classroom setting or through our intra-school moot court competition that culminates in oral argument before members of the Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska Supreme Courts.

The LR&W faculty are ranked professors and have the opportunity to apply for five-year, presumptively renewable contracts in their fourth year of teaching LR&W. LR&W faculty have full voting rights and representation on all faculty committees. LR&W teachers often chair faculty committees. The teaching load varies depending on enrollment. LR&W teachers may teach outside the LR&W curriculum and are eligible for sabbaticals and full research stipends. Finally, the LR&W Program encourages academic freedom. Although the LR&W teachers coordinate the number and types of formal assignments, each teacher is free to develop syllabi and select textbooks.

University of Arkansas at Little Rock, William H. Bowen School of Law

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock, William H. Bowen School of Law offers six credit hours in legal research and legal writing, covering two semesters, in the first year. The first semester covers the basics of legal analysis and predictive writing, with students mastering the process of legal writing through several drafts of office memoranda. The second semester provides a transition into persuasive writing, featuring trial-level and appellate briefs. Legal research is taught over two semesters by the law school’s library staff. The first-year writing program dovetails with the school’s second-year six-hour lawyering skills requirement, taught by practitioners and other full-time law faculty, which further develops students’ abilities in drafting, interviewing, counseling, and advocacy. In addition, UALR’s legal writing faculty offer upper-level writing electives in drafting, appellate advocacy, advanced legal research, and scholarly writing and editing, as well as teaching doctrinal courses such as Disability Law, Immigration Law, Family Law, and Decedents’ Estates.

UALR’s legal writing program has achieved significant gains in scope, credit hours, size, and status in the last several years. As the ABA recognizes, “schools that hire tenured or tenure-track professors specifically to teach legal writing recognize legal writing as an integral part of the law school curriculum and accept the writing professors as an integral part of the school’s faculty.” ABA Sourcebook on Legal Writing Programs 87 (Eric B. Easton et al., eds., 2d ed. 2006). Beginning in 2000, UALR has offered the tenure track to its legal writing faculty, reflecting the law school’s firm commitment to the program and its professors.

Current members of the legal writing faculty are Ranko Shiraki Oliver, Coleen Barger, Lindsey Gustafson, and Michael Flannery. The law school is hiring a new legal writing professor on the tenure track to begin in the 2007-08 school year. UALR recognizes, supports, and honors the accomplishments of its legal writing faculty. Professors Barger, Gustafson, and Oliver are each past winners of the law school’s annual Excellence in Teaching Award, with Professor Oliver winning the overall university-wide Excellence in Teaching Award. Professors Flannery and Barger are past winners of the law school’s Excellence in Research and Excellence in Service awards, respectively. Professors Gustafson and Barger helped to found and continue to work as faculty editors of the Journal of Appellate Practice and Process.

Contact person:Coleen Barger, cmbarger@ualr.edu
Web page address: www.ualr.edu/cmbarger

Southern Illinois University School of Law

First-year law students at Southern Illinois take two courses, Lawyering Skills I and II, in which they receive integrated instruction in legal research, legal analysis, and legal writing. The 1L's are also introduced to client interviewing, client counseling, negotiation, and oral argument. Almost all class meetings for these two courses include an active learning experience, often in small groups, and take full advantage of the latest classroom technology. Objective legal writing and basic research sources are covered in the fall; persuasive legal writing and more advanced research sources, including legislative history and regulatory research, are covered in the spring. Each course is three credits, graded with the same distribution requirements as all 1L courses.

The Lawyering Skills courses are staffed with experts in the various aspects of legal skills training. Primary responsibility for the writing aspects of the courses lies with the Associate Clinical Professors of Lawyering Skills (on a 405(c) promotion track with long-term contracts) and the Director of Lawyering Skills (tenured on the law faculty). Each student has at least four required conferences with their writing professor during the first year, receiving guidance as they work through multiple drafts of each major paper. Primary responsibility for the research aspects lies with the Professors of the Law Library (on the law library tenure track and tenured in the law library) and the Director of the Law Library (tenured on the law faculty). All these positions require scholarship for retention and promotion, and all may vote at faculty meetings. At times both a research and writing professor stand in front of the class, team teaching, and all the professors involved meet weekly to integrate their teaching efforts. The law school also has a Writing Across the Curriculum requirement, so that every course in the law school includes at least one writing assignment, with feedback provided, in addition to any final exam.

University of Oregon

The University of Oregon’s Legal Research and Writing Program—currently ranked 26th in the nation—has become even stronger in the past year. Last spring, the faculty created the position of senior instructor, which will provide LRW professors with longer contracts, a salary increase, and paid sabbaticals. Soon after, the faculty voted to award five-year contracts to senior instructors who have demonstrated a long-term commitment to teaching legal research and writing. In addition, class size has been reduced to 22 students, due to the hiring of additional LRW faculty. No LRW professor teaches more than two classes, keeping the student-faculty ratio around 43:1.

At Oregon, LRW is a required two-semester program that fully integrates research, analysis, writing, and advocacy skills. Topics covered by various professors include client interviewing, client letters, office roleplays, and trial arguments. The LRW faculty work collaboratively to ensure that students in various sections receive comparable experiences, though experimentation is encouraged. Each LRW professor is assisted by three student assistants who lead research training sessions (in print and online), hold office hours, assist with oral arguments, and mark exercises and citations. New LRW courses for upper level students have been added over the past few years.The full-time LRW faculty includes Suzanne Rowe, Joan Malmud, Kate Weatherly, and Rebekah Hanley. Part-time professors are Rosalind Lee and Megan McAlpin. Their prior work included federal clerkships, practice with major law firms, and public interest work. They have produced books and articles; they present at national and regional conferences and teach in international settings; and they have led CLE courses for major law firms. LRW faculty members are active nationally in LWI, ALWD, and AALS. For more information, visit our website at www.law.uoregon.edu/org/lrw.Suzanne E. RoweAssociate ProfessorUniversity of OregonEugene OR 97401srowe@law.uoregon.edu

Washburn

Washburn's Legal Analysis, Research and Writing program is taught exclusively by full-time, tenure-track professors led by a tenure-track director. The required program includes six graded credit hours during the first year. An upper-level writing requirement, first adopted in 1986, is currently under revision to reflect the ABA's evolving definition of "rigorous writing experience." The program also offers several upper-level research and writing electives as well as opportunities to collaborate with professors in writing amicus briefs to the Kansas appellate courts.

As part of Washburn's First Week program, incoming law students' baseline writing skills are measured using a standardized, norm-referenced assessment. The first-semester legal writing course introduces fundamental legal thought and the art of lawyering,including legal process, legal reasoning, case analysis and synthesis, legal research, and objective legal writing. Students receive extensive written feedback on a closed-universe office memo and an open- universe office memo. Professors provide extensive written feedback on at least one draft, and they conduct mandatory individual conferences with each student to discuss the graded draft. After students revise and resubmit the drafts, professors provide comprehensive written feedback on the final memos.

The second semester primarily focuses on statutory construction, legislative research, and legal advocacy through persuasive legal writing. Students receive comprehensive written and oral feedback on a client letter or demand letter, a pretrial motion, and an appellatebrief. Students are required to revise and resubmit the appellate brief in final form. At the end of the semester, all students participate in an ungraded moot court argument. Washburn's award-winning Moot Court Team recently took first place in the Evans Constitutional Law Tournament, both for best oral argument and best appellate brief. Washburn regularly partners with the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Kansas Court of Appeals by hosting oral arguments each semester in the law school's state-of-the-art Robinson Courtroom. Legal writing students prepare to attend oral arguments by reading the appellate briefs in advance. The law school also sponsors panel presentationswith visiting appellate judges to give students a first-hand account of effective appellate advocacy. In March 2007, Washburn's Center for Excellence in Advocacy will host a symposium titled "The Art of Advocacy: Writing to Win," in conjunction with oral arguments and panel presentations by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.Washburn's legal writing program recently adopted the ALWD citation manual for teaching citation skills in all first-year sections. Every student must demonstrate satisfactory mastery of citation skills each semester on a comprehensive, in-class citation exam. Each professor has a full-time teaching load of two sections per semester and a total of 40-45 students. The law school funds a teaching assistant for each section of 20-23 students. Legal writing professors are eligible for professional development support and research assistance, including summer stipends, to the same extent as all other faculty members.

Our upper-level legal research and writing electives continue to expand. Current options include Writing for Law Practice, Transactional Drafting, Advanced Appellate advocacy, and Advanced Criminal Appellate Advocacy. Washburn has offered Advanced LegalResearch as an elective for many years. Students may elect to take other kinds of advanced legal writing courses by enrolling in Clinical Pretrial Advocacy and several doctrinal seminar electives.Washburn recently adopted the ALWD citation manual for all first-year sections. Each semester, every student must demonstrate satisfactory mastery of citation skills on a comprehensive in-class citation exam.

The Washburn Law Library pioneered Washlaw, one of the most well-known internet portals designed specifically for legal research. Our first-rate law library supports the legal writing program in countless ways, including assistance with research instruction, electronic legal research training, audiovisual and digital media services, and othertechnical support. With the assistance of Washburn Law Library's technical support team, our program recently began hosting DIRCON, the listserv for the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD).Full-time legal writing faculty are continuously engaged in scholarly activities and continuing legal education presentations. Our faculty are actively involved in national legal writing organizations including LWI, ALWD, AALS, and SCRIBES.
For more information, please contact:
Lyn Goering, lyn.goering@washburn.edu
Jeff Jackson, jeffrey.jackson@washburn.edu
Aida Alaka, aida.alaka@washburn.edu
Tonya Kowalski, tony.kowalski@washburn.edu
Andrew Evans, andrew.evans@washburn.edu

Chicago-Kent College of Law

Chicago-Kent's Legal Research and Writing Program is one of the most comprehensive and rigorous in the nation. Students are required to take five graded semesters of Legal Research and Writing, totaling 11 credit hours. LW I introduces students to legal analysis, predictive writing, and legal research; LW II introduces students to persuasive writing and oral advocacy. LW III introduces students to transactional writing, negotiation, and communication with colleagues and clients; while LW IV provides advanced research training in areas such as international and foreign law, empirical and administrative issues, as well as an intensive writing experience in a subject area chosen by the student. Last, the senior seminar provides an opportunity for in-depth research, analysis, and writing on a topic of the student's choice. Students often choose to take more than one seminar. The first-year program, Legal Writing I & II, is taught by full-time LRW faculty. In 2006, Chicago-Kent has twelve full-time LRW faculty. The full-time faculty are a mix of people with clinical tenure (the Director, Associate Director, and four other LRW faculty) and Visiting Assistant Professors (a fellowship program of up to four years). Each full-time LRW faculty member teaches one section of not more than 30 first-year students each semester (faculty with administrative responsibilities teach fewer students), and is assigned a third or fourth year student Teaching Assistant, who aids with research, student counseling, teaching and grading citations, and other duties as agreed. Full-time LRW faculty also teach one other course each year, on a topic of interest to the faculty member and acceptable to the academic dean. Full-time LRW faculty serve on committees, attend faculty meetings and workshops, and are encouraged to participate in the intellectual life of the school. The starting salary for new LRW faculty in August 2006 was $54,000. LW III and LW IV are taught primarily by adjunct faculty, working with the program Director and dual-degreed Reference Librarians. Additionally, from time to time one of the long-term full-time LRW faculty "rotates up" and teaches in the second-year of the program. Several Clinical faculty members and the Library Director also teach LW III or LW IV. Seminars are taught by LRW faculty, by tenured and tenure track faculty, and by adjunct faculty.

Chicago-Kent also has a Director of Appellate Advocacy with clinical tenure and a full-time faculty member who works with international LL.M. students. Contact person for further information about the program:Mary Rose StrubbeProfessor of Legal Research and WritingDirector, Legal Research and Writing ProgramAssistant Director, Institute for Law and the WorkplaceChicago-Kent College of Law(312) 906-5288, mstrubbe@kentlaw.edu. For more information on the program, go to: www.kentlaw.edu/academics/lrw/

The University of Tennessee College of Law

The legal writing program at The University of Tennessee College of Law is one of the cornerstones of the College=s academic program and demonstrates the College's commitment to teaching and training students to be excellent lawyers.

The writing program includes both required and elective courses. In courses that fulfill writing requirements, students create documents that give advice, present arguments on behalf of clients, specify the terms of contracts or other instruments, and present scholarly analysis of legal issues. In elective courses throughout the curriculum, students prepare professional documents of all types.

In the first year, students take a 6-unit, graded sequence (Legal Process I and Legal Process II ) taught by full-time tenured or tenure-track law professors and by practicing attorneys. Working closely with the classroom teachers, a Ph.D. writing specialist helps each student identify writing strengths and weaknesses (as demonstrated in a diagnostic essay assignment completed by each in-coming first-year student or in documents written for Legal Process classes) and offers individual tutoring and a series of writing workshops to all students who wish to improve their writing skills. Reference librarians teach classes in legal research and work with Legal Process teachers on writing and research assignments.

After the first year of law school, students continue to develop their writing and research skills through two upper-level writing requirements. Through the Planning and Drafting requirement, students learn to plan and draft documents, such as contracts, governing the future conduct of clients and others. The Expository Writing requirement focuses on developing critical analysis skills through researching and writing a scholarly research paper on a subject chosen by the student. Students may satisfy the upper-level writing requirements through a variety of courses and independent projects. Many students elect to take more than one course that satisfies each of these requirements.

Beyond the required courses, opportunities to gain experience in preparing professional documents are available throughout the curriculum, particularly in practice-oriented courses offered as part of the Advocacy and Business Transactions concentrations. Finally, the College of Law's Moot Court Program and its three student-edited journals B the Tennessee Law Review, Transactions, and the Tennessee Journal of Law & Policy B offer additional exciting opportunities to gain realistic, professional experiences in legal writing.

Thomas Jefferson School of Law

When Thomas Jefferson's legal writing program began in 1993, it was one of the first in the country to be taught primarily by tenured and tenure-track faculty members and to draw extensively on thinking, learning, writing, and teaching methods from other disciplines. Today, the program incorporates practices from benchmark legal writing programs, learning and teaching experts, and fields including rhetoric, composition, literature, education, and psychology. For students, this means that they will engage in solving increasingly complex legal problems as they are introduced to and then begin to master the essential lawyering skills of analysis; reasoning by induction, deduction, and analogy; research; and written and oral communication and persuasion.

The first year of the curriculum is taught by a team of full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty members augmented by a group of experienced practitioners. The full-time faculty members have varied teaching backgrounds, extensive law practice experience, and diverse scholarly interests ranging from literary and rhetorical theory to world trade regulation and social security. The school's commitment to hiring full-time tenure-track faculty members to teach legal writing allows professors to develop their scholarship interests as well as to bring into the classroom their deepening experience and understanding of the teaching and the practice of legal writing. Because the legal writing faculty at Thomas Jefferson includes teachers who have become expert in a number of fields through their practice, their teaching, and their scholarship, they are well qualified to help students begin to construct a foundation for their own practice of law.

The legal writing curriculum is designed to help prepare graduates to become accomplished and productive attorneys by equipping them with critical skills, acquainting them with social and ethical responsibilities, and introducing them to a range of practice settings. The four-unit Legal Writing I course in the first semester includes a sequenced series of skill exercises, practice memos, and drafts as well as two graded memos. The three-unit Legal Writing II course, offered in the second semester, includes similar practice and draft opportunities as well as a trial brief, an appellate brief, and associated oral argument experiences. The upperlevel writing requirement can be satisfied by choosing one from a menu of courses including business drafting, civil law and motion practice, criminal motion practice, advanced appellate advocacy, and legal drafting or by choosing a doctrinal course requiring an academic paper that satisfies standard criteria.There is no director. Those teaching the legal writing courses have agreed on general goals and guidelines for the curriculum. For more information, visit the website, http://legalwriting.tjsl.edu.Contact: Linda L. Berger, Professor (directorless program) 619-374-6933, lberger@tjsl.edu

GOLDEN GATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW

Golden Gate has a comprehensive, three-semester writing and research program. In the Fall of the first year, students take Writing & Research I (two credits), which surveys legal methods and systems, develops students’ skills in analyzing statutory and decisional law, and introduces students to prescriptive legal writing. In the Spring, students take Writing & Research II (one credit), which introduces persuasive writing. A tenure-track director, two full-time instructors, and experienced adjunct professors staff the first-year program. Each class section is limited to 14 to 18 students. The course is graded on the same curve used for all first-year required courses.

Second-year students take Appellate Advocacy (two credits). In this class, students write a 20-page, two-issue appellate brief and argue to a panel of attorneys acting as judges. The course culminates in a voluntary, in-house competition. The second-year program is staffed by a tenure-track director and adjunct professors, all of whom are experienced appellate practitioners. Class size ranges from 10 to 14 students. The course is graded on the same curve used for all second-year required courses.

For more information contact Prof. Leslie Rose at (415) 442-6645 or lrose@ggu.edu

Pace Law School

Description of Program: The legal writing program at Pace integrates legal research and writing with substantive criminal law, and in so doing integrates the multiple aspects of a lawyer's professional life. The first year course is a two semester, 6 credit course, that is taught by tenured and tenure-track faculty. Each section of Crim Law/Legal Analysis andWriting has about 20 students. Students learn about the elements of crimes and the role of punishment along with the effective expression of legal analysis, the operation of the court system, the concept of representing a client, and the problems engendered by that professional responsibility. The students learn the challenges of thinking in a logical and organized fashion, statutory analysis, legal research, citation, the use of authority, the importance of facts, and the ability to be self-critical. The students are exposed to the "Socratic method" in a small section, as well as a problem-solving approach that includes collaborative exercises in drafting, research, interviewing, negotiation, and alternative dispute resolution. Over the course of the year, each student drafts at least six pieces of writing in the area of criminal law, some persuasive and some predictive. Each piece is extensively critiqued by the full-time faculty member through both written comments and oral conferences.

E-Mail address of someone who can answer questions: Michelle Simon(MSimon@law.pace.edu )Tom McDonnell (TMcDonnell@law.pace.edu )

Loyola Law School, Los Angeles

Loyola’s Legal Research & Writing Program is designed to achieve one objective: to train students in the analytic, research and communication skills necessary to excel in the practice of law. To accomplish this, Loyola has assembled a professional LRW faculty, who guide sections of 25-30 first-year students through a graded, year-long, three-unit introduction to legal analysis, research and writing.

* The LRW Faculty

Loyola’s Legal Research & Writing faculty is comprised of eight full-time associate and full clinical professors, all with strong academic credentials, solid practice experience, and a commitment to teaching as a career. Led by Director Arnold Siegel, who joined the Loyola faculty in 1977, our instructors include:

o graduates of Stanford, Columbia, Georgetown, UCLA and Loyola law schools;

o former instructors at the UCLA, Chicago-Kent, Whittier, Southwestern University and University of San Diego law schools;

o former editors of the Columbia Law Review, the Columbia Journal of Law & Social Problems and the Southwestern University Law Review; and

o lawyers with a range of practice experience, in both the public and private sectors and in firms ranging from solo practice to multinational firms.

The LRW faculty is initially hired on a one-year contract, and on renewable three-year contracts thereafter, and participates in all faculty decision making except matters relating to tenure and tenure-track appointments. In addition to Legal Research & Writing, the LRW faculty teach the upper class course in Ethical Lawyering, and may teach other upper class courses depending on the interests of the faculty member and the needs of the law school. For example, LRW faculty members currently teach Legal Drafting, Negotiations, Trial Advocacy and Family Law.

* The Legal Research & Writing Program

First-year students begin their training with a demanding, six-week introduction to legal analysis and legal writing that culminates in their first office memorandum. They spend the next eight weeks in intensive instruction in legal research, where they master practical research techniques for both primary and secondary authority. We emphasize an integrated approach to using print and online resources.

In the Spring term, students work on increasingly complex legal problems. Their first Spring project is a second office memorandum that requires students to use primary evidentiary materials to (a) define the legal issue presented; (b) research and select authority to resolve that issue; (c) marshal the evidence and inferences therefrom to build factual arguments; (d) analyze the facts and law to predict how a court would resolve the issue; and (e) embody this relatively complex analysis in a professionally crafted and presented document.

The final first-year project is a persuasive trial court brief (which we believe better prepares our students for their actual experience than an appellate brief). Based on declarations and documentary evidence, students must research and draft a memorandum of points and authorities supporting or opposing a motion, which they then argue against another first-year student before an alumnus judge.

* The Ethical Lawyering Course

Skills instruction continues in the students’ second year with Loyola’s required three-unit course in Ethical Lawyering. Taught in small sections, EL combines instruction in Professional Responsibility with practical experience in client interviewing and counseling. Students elicit the facts relevant to their clients’ legal problems through simulated interviewing sessions, research the applicable law, and advise their clients accordingly. Students draft an office memorandum analyzing the facts and law relating to their clients’ problems, and a client letter memorializing their legal advice.

For additional information, please contact Arnold Siegel at arnold.siegel@lls.edu.

Northwestern University School of Law

The CLR Program is the first-year required course at Northwestern University School of Law. Northwestern also has advanced research and advanced writing electives. CLR is a two-semester course that provides 2 credits each semester, for a total of 4 credits, which count in the GPA. We have 9 faculty teaching the first years, with an average class size of just under 30 students per professor. This year we also have an ESL coordinator for our non-native English speakers. Our faculty serve on various faculty committees but do not have a vote. Every member of the CLR faculty, including the Director is on a one-year, renewable contract. We are called Clinical Assistant, Associate or full Professors. The promotion to Clinical Associate Professor is made by the Dean on recommendation of the Director. The promotion from Clinical Associate Professor to Clinical Professor is done only after a full faculty review with class observations, student interviews, review of publications and letters of support from colleagues in the field.

The first semester focuses on teaching legal analysis, written and oral communication, research and citation. The students write an ungraded law/fact application and two graded memos, each of which is rewritten, for a total of 4 graded memos. Some of our faculty add other things such as client letters or role plays for client interviews or reports to partners. Second semester the students write two appellate briefs. We pick one topic which carries us through the entire semester. All the students write first an appellant’s brief on that topic and then an appellee’s brief. We end the semester with a noncompetitive moot court. This year, for the first time we will be adding a three-session basic contract drafting component to our second semester.

Judy Rosenbaum
Director of Communication & Legal Reasoning
Northwestern University School of Law
357 East Chicago Ave.
Chicago, IL 60611
312.503.8943 (v) 312.503.2035 (fax)
http://www.blogger.com/app/j-rosenbaum2@law.northwestern.edu

University of Nebraska (UNL) College of Law

UNL has a required six-credit-hour first-year LRW program in which our 140 first-year students are taught legal writing by ten Adjunct Instructors, many of them with significant legal writing teaching experience, and all of them with significant legal writing talent. During the first five or six weeks, students study basic legal method, writing style, and citation form. Each week, all students submit written exercises, which their instructors critique but do not grade. Those exercises are all organized around the same legal problem; each exercise is a slightly more sophisticated part of the office memo a lawyer might write analyzing that problem. After the last of those exercises, the students are assigned a different Closed Universe memo problem, and are given two weeks to produce a 9-11 page memo analyzing the problem. While the instructors grade those memos, the students spend four weeks studying bibliographic legal research. They finish the semester with a 9-11 page Open Universe memo problem, giving them three weeks to research and write the memo.

During the second semester, the students work on a single Moot Court issue all semester; they start by writing a third Office Memo, again about 9-12 pages in length, then turn that into a complete Appellate Brief, and finally conduct a week of practice oral argument and a week of final oral argument. Students assemble their briefs in teams of two, each taking a separate issue on their particular appeal; the same teams conduct oral argument. By the end of the year in Legal Writing, students have typically produced 50-65 pages of fairly formal, graded legal writing (3 office memos and an appellate brief), and another 15-25 pages of written exercises.

The only upper-class writing requirement is that all students take a seminar in which they are required to produce a long research paper. Nonetheless, many students take upper-class electives with substantial writing components; there are probably 10-15 such other courses in the curriculum, including one pure writing elective, “Style and Composition in Legal Writing.”

For further information, contact the Director of Legal Writing, Professor Craig Lawson, at 402-472-1247, or clawson1@unl.edu.

Boston College Law School, Newton, Massachusetts

At Boston College Law School, Legal Reasoning, Research & Writing (LRR&W) is a core course in the first-year curriculum, and is viewed as such by the Law School faculty as a whole. A two-semester, five-credit graded course, LRR&W teaches students a sophisticated methodology for legal problem-solving by integrating the skills of legal analysis, research, and communication. In particular, the course’s contextual, problem-centered approach for teaching legal analysis is specifically designed to complement the teaching of legal analysis in the other courses in the first-year curriculum. Over the course of the year, each student receives extensive individual written and oral feedback on several major writing assignments as well as on interim drafts. Because of this curriculum, Boston law firms report that BCLS students come exceptionally well-prepared to analyze and write about legal problems. While individual professors in the program have autonomy in developing curriculum and choosing teaching methodologies, the program is characterized by collegiality and a very high degree of collaboration. It is also characterized by a process of continual exploration and revision, which in recent years has focused on incorporating technology into the classroom and feedback on written work. This process is encouraged by the stability and continuity of the LRR&W Program, as well as by the strong support of the law school administration, which includes grants for summer research.

The LRR&W program is staffed by a teaching Director, Jane Kent Gionfriddo, who plays a largely facilitative role in administering the program, and five additional full-time professors: Dan Barnett, Joan Blum, Mary Ann Chirba-Martin, Elisabeth Keller, and Judith Tracy. Students are taught in sections of between 40 and 45 students. Professor Gionfriddo has taught in the program for 23 years and administered it for 20. The average service of the five other faculty members is 12 years. Members of the professional library staff, who have law degrees in addition to their graduate degrees in library and information science, co-teach the segments of the curriculum that introduce legal research sources and techniques, and research—both print and on-line—is integrated throughout the year-long curriculum. LRR&W professors, like most faculty members in the Law School’s clinics, are long-term contract members of the faculty who have a form of job security “substantially similar to tenure.” See ABA Standard 405(c). LRR&W professors are well-integrated into the general faculty community. They serve as full members of law school committees and vote at faculty meetings on most issues. Two LRR&W professors have received the University-wide Distinguished Teaching Award, and one professor has received a Law School award for teaching excellence. Three LRR&W professors have served on the Board of Directors of the Legal Writing Institute; Professor Jane Gionfriddo was the Institute’s President from 2000 to 2002. Several members of the Program were co-editors of the Institute’s semi-annual newsletter, The Second Draft, from 1994 to 2000. Since 2001, two LRR&W professors (neither of whom is the Director) served as Chair of the AALS section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research; one was on the Planning Committee for the 2003 AALS Workshop for New Law Teachers and chaired the Planning Committee for the 2003 AALS Workshop for New Teachers of Legal Writing. Members of the LRR&W faculty have also been active in the New England Legal Writing Consortium, a regional organization of legal writing faculty that holds semi-annual meetings on curriculum and pedagogy; one was a founding member. The Law School hosted the December 2001 meeting of the Consortium, which was attended by over 40 participants from 11 law schools, and it is scheduled to host the next meeting in December 2004. Both these meetings were hands-on workshops requiring participants to prepare material beforehand and discuss it with other colleagues in small groups at the conference. Finally, LRR&W professors have done extensive consulting work at other law schools and at many law firms in Massachusetts.

Contact Person: Jane Kent Gionfriddo, Associate Professor and Director of Legal Reasoning, Research & Writing; 617-552-4358

University of Missouri-Columbia, School of Law

At Mizzou, LR&W is a graded, two-semester, four-credit program, with 150 first-year students divided into eight small sections (with 19 to 20 students in each). The fall semester focuses on print research and predictive writing. The first writing assignment requires students to attend court and report on the proceedings. After that court visit report, students learn to write a law office memorandum by writing a shorter CRAAC assignment and two pass-fail, open-universe memoranda (usually based on state law issues). Students work in pairs on these early assignments, but work alone when writing the final, graded memorandum (usually based on a federal statutory issue). Students receive detailed written critiques of their work and are required to attend at least two conferences with their professor to discuss their writing. The second semester focuses on persuasive writing, oral advocacy, and CALR. Students write a complaint, an answer, a motion for summary judgment (with suggestions in support), and an appellate brief. The early assignments are pass-fail, and the later assignments are graded. Students also present two oral arguments, one for a trial court and one for an appellate court.

LR&W courses are taught by three full-time legal writing professors and one adjunct. The adjunct faculty member in recent years (and again this year) has been a Missouri Assistant Attorney General who is able to draw from substantial practice experience. In coordination with the legal writing faculty, five law librarians teach research strategies by making presentations in the LR&W classrooms, assisting small groups of students with hands-on assignments in the library, and meeting one-on-one with every student. The full-time legal writing faculty members have long-term contracts and voting rights (including a vote on the hiring of tenure-track faculty). The law school provides a Teaching Assistant for each section of legal writing, and separate Research Assistants are available for any full-time legal writing faculty member who has scholarly interests requiring research assistance. Full-time legal writing professors have faculty accounts for travel and are eligible for summer research grants.

Anyone interested in more information about the Legal Writing Program at the University of Missouri-Columbia should feel free to e-mail the director, Professor Melody Daily, at dailyma@missouri.edu.

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA SCHOOL OF LAW

Three full-time Legal Research and Writing professors teach the required first-year legal research and writing course. Each professor is eligible for the equivalent of 405(c) status after six years (two of the current legal writing professors have achieved that status) as well as promotion to the rank of Professor (currently, two have achieved that rank). The legal writing professors participate fully in the academic and administrative life of the law school, including voting rights (save for tenure decisions), law school committee assignments, and university-wide committee work. Our three professors have a combined 34 years of experience in teaching legal research and writing and 20 collective years of practice in law firms. Upperclass electives taught by them include Advanced Legal Writing, Pre-trial Litigation, Ethics, Professional Responsibility, Germs and Justice, and Biomedical Ethics and the Law. Publications include articles on bioethics and a CD-rom multimedia lecture series on the legal system.
Each legal writing professor teaches four sections of 30 students and works closely with upperclass students (Dillard Fellows) who assist in critiquing the students’ assignments and in holding conferences with each student. Students submit 11 assignments in the fall semester, including research exercises (tied in to the memoranda assignments), citation exercises, preliminary outlines, and three memoranda of increasing length and complexity. Two of the memoranda assignments require a rewrite. In the spring semester, the focus is on appellate advocacy. The students first submit an appellate brief (a draft and rewrite) and then present an oral argument in front of a panel of three judges consisting of a Dillard Fellow and two alumni/professors. The first-year legal writing curriculum is augmented by upper-class advocacy, researching, and oral communication courses.

Contact person: D. Ruth Buck, Professor, Legal Research & Writing; 434-924-1042; drb7c@virginia.edu.

Marquette University Law School

Students at Marquette are required to take six credits of legal writing during their first year. During the first semester, the course focuses on predictive writing. Students write two closed research office memoranda; they submit a draft and a re-write of each memorandum. Each student has an individual conference with his or her professor before submitting the rewritten version of the memo. Students also complete two research assignments, one relating to each office memorandum. Most professors also give a final quiz covering plagiarism, principles of authority, citation, grammar, punctuation, and usage. During the spring semester, the focus switches to persuasion. Students write two open research trial court briefs. Again, each assignment consists of a draft and a re-write, and students confer individually with their professors during each assignment sequence. During the spring semester, students also complete two research reports documenting their research process and results. During the second or third year, students are required to complete an upper-level academic writing requirement. Beginning next semester, the legal writing professors will also begin offering advanced legal writing courses (electives) in topics of their choosing. We have offered advanced legal writing during the summer session as well.

In order to ensure the autonomy of each legal writing faculty member, Marquette does not have a director but rather has a program staffed by six full-time writing professors. Each professor has approximately 40-45 students, and each professor has complete autonomy as to the course curriculum. The writing professors are initially given one-year renewable contracts but are eligible for three-year contracts after completing five years on the faculty. Legal writing professors serve on all law school committees, attend faculty meetings, and are permitted to vote on all matters other than hiring and promotion of tenure-track faculty. They are eligible to receive summer research stipends and receive the same faculty development funds as the tenured and tenure-track faculty. Although scholarship is not required of the writing faculty, the administration supports scholarship.

E-mail contact: Alison Julien
Alison.Julien@marquette.edu

Cumberland School of Law, Samford University

Starting on the first day of orientation, the acronym “LLR” becomes a part of every Cumberland student’s lexicon. It stands for “Lawyering and Legal Reasoning,” a six-hour graded course in the first year of law school that emphasizes the writing and persuasive skills that all lawyers must possess—whether their practice takes them to the courtroom or to the boardroom. Each LLR section of 20 to 22 students is paired with another and assigned a hypothetical case for the year. One section takes the plaintiff’s side, the other the defense, and the students in each section prepare each side of the case as it might be prepared in the “real” world. This includes: 1) interviewing the client; 2) preparing a legal memorandum based on the student’s research into the issues that the client’s case presents; 3) drafting the appropriate pleadings; 4) solving a discovery issue; 5) filing a motion for a summary judgment [or response] with accompanying trial brief; and 6) writing an appellate brief on appeal from a summary judgment. Along the way, the students also correspond with the client, enter into settlement negotiations (including drafting a settlement agreement) and argue their respective positions before mock trial and appellate courts.
Cumberland believes LLR works because it encourages students to stop thinking like students and start thinking like lawyers almost from their first day at law school. And while the practical aspects of legal research and writing are emphasized, theoretical issues are not slighted either: in fact, before being introduced to their “clients” and undergoing what is affectionately known as “boot camp”—a rigorous introduction to legal research methods and citation forms—the students are asked to read, discuss, and respond in writing to the issues presented by Lon Fuller’s classic article on the nature of judicial reasoning, The Case of the Speluncean Explorers, as introduced and re-imagined in Peter Suber’s book, The Case of the Speluncean Explorers: Nine New Opinions. Cumberland also believes LLR works because its students believe it works too—for instance, in the current (2004) edition of Princeton Review’s The Best 117 Law Schools, which is based on student surveys, Cumberland was ranked fourth in the nation in the quality of its professors, and LLR was singled out in particular: “[s]tudents praise ‘Lawyering and Legal Reasoning,’ a first year class that ‘teaches practical skills, following a mock case from the complaint and discovery phases to appellate.’” The Review also noted that “[s]tudents love to point out that ‘Cumberland’s Dean, Judge John Carroll, actually teaches . . . first year writing classes.’” Although Judge Carroll has taken a one-year hiatus in teaching LLR for 2004-05, the course is taught by Cumberland’s “regular” faculty. The single adjunct (an adjunct by choice) also teaches a substantive course in the law school. In short, LLR works at Cumberland because the academic faculty is just as enthusiastic about the program as are the students that it serves.

For further information, contact LLR Director Belle H. Stoddard at:
bhstodda@samford.edu

See also Cumberland’s website at: http://cumberland.samford.edu

Hamline University School of Law

# of Full Time Instructors: 6

Faculty Structure: One Director (teaches 1/2 class load) and 5 full-time faculty

Faculty Titles: Director of Legal Writing or Legal Writing Instructor

Contracts (tenure not available)
· Director: 3 year rolling (405(c) status)
· 2 Instructors: 3 year rolling (contracts granted this year; status not clear at this time)
· 3 Instructors: One-year contracts.

Required time teaching or other criteria before eligible for 3-year rolling contracts: Not clear at this time.

Years current faculty have taught LRW at Hamline (excluding current year): 2-14 years

Starting Salary: $33,000

Additional Professional Support: $1,000 per year professional development funds (The school does not pay for attorney registration fees.)
$500 per year per Instructor for student research TA’s

Number of Required Semesters: 2 (first year only)

Advanced courses offered: None. Students must take a topical seminar course and write a paper for it, but there are no advanced Legal Writing courses currently available.

Credits per semester: 2 each semester

Class size: Maximum of 48 students per Instructor; taught in 2 class sections

Graded Fall Semester assignments:
One-Case Legal Analysis Exercise; Closed Memorandum; Research Memorandum

Research Labs: During the first semester students are also required to participate in Research Labs taught by student TA’s and graded by the TA’s. These TA’s are closely guided by one of the Instructors. The lab assignments are created by that same Instructor in conjunction with the Law Library staff.

Graded Spring Semester Assignments: Client Letter; Appellate Brief; Oral Argument

Feedback Opportunities other than grading: At least one private tutorial/conference of 30-60 minutes with the Instructor before each written assignment. (1 tutorial before the Closed Memo; 2 tutorials before the Research Memo and Appellate Brief)

Rewriting of assignments: None. The program focuses on feedback prior to grading.

Additional Information: Based on anecdotal evidence from local judges and the Career Services Office, Hamline graduates are preferred as judicial clerks. Once a Hamline grad has clerked for an out-of-state judge, those judges generally contact Hamline in the future before hiring other candidates.

Contact Information
Alice Silkey, Director of Legal Writing
651-523-3012 or asilkey@hamline.edu

University of Florida Levin College of Law

Faculty
Henry T. Wihnyk, J.D., LL.M., Legal Skills Professor and Director
Tracy Rambo, J.D., Legal Skills Professor
Leanne Pflaum, J.D., Legal Skills Professor
Patricia Thomson, J.D., Legal Skills Professor
Betsy Ruff, J.D., Legal Skills Professor
Diane Tomlinson, J.D., Legal Skills Professor
Joseph Jackson, J.D., Legal Skills Professor
Holly Derenthal, J.D., Adjunct Legal Skills Professor

Department Faculty’s Status
Legal Skills Professors serve under renewable nine-month, long-term contracts. A newly hired Legal Skills Professor is appointed for a single academic term. The appointment may be renewed no more than four times. In the third year of teaching the Legal Skills Professor is eligible to be appointed for a three-year term. In the sixth year of teaching the Legal Skills Professor is eligible to be appointed for renewable five-year contracts.

Legal Skills Professors are entitled to vote at law faculty meetings on all issues except tenure-track faculty promotion, appointments, and tenure. Legal Skills Professors serve and vote on law faculty committees.

Department Goals
The Florida Bar and the ABA have made clear that lawyering skills must be a significant element of a law student’s preparation for practice. The Legal Research, Writing and Appellate Advocacy Department’s goal is to provide to our students the means to master these vital lawyering skills. In three courses, Legal Research and Writing, Appellate Advocacy and Advanced Techniques in Appellate Advocacy, we achieve this goal by training our students:

(1) To understand and apply the doctrine of stare decisis;
(2) To analyze and solve legal problems using critical legal reasoning;
(3) To write clearly, accurately, concisely, and persuasively;
(4) To understand and use manual and electronic legal research tools;
(5) To prepare professionally competent legal memoranda, appellate briefs and other documents;
(6) To present persuasive oral arguments; and
(7)To employ professional standards and ethics.

Curriculum
-Legal Research & Writing
Legal Research and Writing is the first semester course of the first year writing program. It is a two-credit, pass/fail class. Each writing professor, assisted by student teaching assistants, teaches approximately 50 students. The writing professors and Director teach all classes, prepare at least two legal problems each semester on which most assignments are based, meet weekly with the teaching assistants, grade student papers, and conduct student conferences.

The teaching assistants conduct hands-on legal research training, conduct some of the conferencing and, depending upon the writing professor, do some grading, all of which is reviewed by the writing professor.

The course focuses on teaching the students to analyze a legal problem, to research the law for the legal problem, and to write an office memorandum incorporating their research and analysis.
-Appellate Advocacy
Appellate Advocacy , the second semester course of the first year writing program, is a two-credit, pass/fail course. Each faculty member, assisted by teaching assistants, teaches approximately 50 Appellate Advocacy students.

The teaching assistants conduct hands-on legal research training, conduct some of the conferencing and, depending upon the writing professor, do some grading, all of which is reviewed by the writing professor.

The focus of the course is on persuasive writing. An appellate brief is the vehicle used to demonstrate the principles of persuasive writing. The course is designed to assist the students in applying the skills of research and writing (which they acquire in the first half of the two semester writing program) and their knowledge of substantive law, to develop effective, persuasive writing skills.

-Advanced Legal Research & Writing, Appellate Advocacy
This is the course each writing professor teaches to the Department’s teaching assistants. The class meets once per week, is graded providing each student a total of 3 credits over two semesters. In this course we require the teaching assistants to complete many of the assignments their students prepare and to assist the writing professors in preparing topics and materials for the students. The teaching assistants prepare and present a variety of demonstrations to the students. The teaching assistants also help the writing professor’s comment on student papers and conduct conferences. The writing professors read and provide written and oral comments on all projects completed by the teaching assistants.

-Advanced Techniques in Appellate Advocacy
Advanced Techniques in Appellate Advocacy provides in-depth, vigorous training in written and oral persuasive legal analysis techniques. Students are required to prepare several drafts of arguments and present at several oral arguments focusing on the issues argued in the briefs.

Students also prepare several short writing assignments designed to improve writing, legal analysis and advocacy skills. The primary text is Practicing Persuasive Writing and Oral Advocacy Case File 2 by David Miller. I also provide materials comprising selections from briefs and oral arguments in landmark and other appellate cases for the students to analyze and critique.

WIDENER UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW

Widener University School of Law in Wilmington, Delaware has a rigorously graded three-semester Legal Methods program in which our more than 300 first year students take Legal Methods I and II, followed by Legal Methods III in either semester of their second year. In all three semesters, class size is approximately twenty-five students; full-time professors normally teach two sections each semester. In our first year program, we use full-time Legal Methods professors, occasionally adding carefully selected adjuncts when enrollment requires creation of additional Legal Methods sections. In our third semester program, a blend of full-time Legal Methods professors, adjuncts, and full-time doctrinal professors teach sections of approximately twenty-five students. All eleven of our full-time Legal Methods professors, and our tenured director, practiced law before teaching. Our group includes professors with law firm, solo practice, public defender, and in-house counsel experience. Three of us clerked for federal district court judges; one of these three also clerked for two judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Five of us have published in law reviews or other law-related publications. We are proud of our diversity; our ranks include two African Americans, two men, and the current President of the Hispanic Bar Association of Pennsylvania. We have no cap on the number of years of service; our most recent turnover occurred when two professors moved on to tenure track, doctrinal positions—one of them here.

Our Legal Methods faculty collaboratively designed and continually updates a curriculum in which each semester’s lessons build upon and deepen students’ prior writing experiences. The first semester strongly emphasizes case reading and analytical skills. We work through exercises introducing and practicing the production of structured legal analysis generated through various case synthesis techniques. This work culminates in application of these skills to the cases to be used in the students’ first graded writing assignment, which is a closed memorandum. Before the closed memoranda are due, students submit drafts of their discussion sections; professors review and provide feedback on those drafts to guide students’ progress in case reading, synthesis, and analytic structure. Upon completion of the closed memoranda, we turn to teaching research skills as a natural extension of analytic skills. As they work on their second graded project for the first semester—a research memorandum—students learn case research techniques from their Legal Methods professors and apply them to their memoranda by working through a research roadmap that is assigned with the open memorandum. These roadmaps generically guide students through the steps of an organized research process, simultaneously modeling and keeping students on track with that process. Completed research steps are discussed in class sessions so that professors can efficiently guide and give feedback to students as they work on their research. In the second semester, we introduce persuasive writing skills and computer assisted as well as statutory research; we also continue work on analytic and synthesis skills in the context of persuasion with multiple classroom writing experiences and exercises. The semester’s main graded project is an appellate brief. Midway through the brief-writing process, we devote a week to individual conferences in which every student has an “oral report to the partner” experience. In these one-on-one sessions with their professors, students must explain their research progress and prospective arguments. This exercise permits us to identify and guide students who are having difficulty with the assignment, and gives students a “real practice” simulation. At the second semester’s end, all students engage in oral arguments judged by alumni, many of whom have judged and mentored our students for years. In the third semester, we focus on acculturating students to law practice. Students begin the semester with a graded client letter assignment. Within the scope of this assignment, they perform legal research to prepare for and conduct a simulated client interview. Through the interview, they collect the facts they need to draft the letter. After students submit their client letters, they continue work on the same “matter” with a complex memorandum of law in support of or opposition to a motion for summary judgment. This closed universe project, which includes extensive simulated materials such as business records, documents, deposition testimony, and expert reports, is designed to deepen students’ mastery of persuasive writing and fact analysis skills. Class sessions concurrent with this project explicitly focus upon these skills.

If you have questions, contact Mary Ellen Maatman, Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Legal Methods Program for Widener University School of Law in Wilmington, Delaware. My e-mail address is: MaryEllen.Maatman@law.widener.edu.