Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, University of Louisville

In recognition that legal writing and research are very important skills, the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville devotes four hours of the first year curriculum to legal writing and research instruction. Basic Legal Skills (BLS), a three-hour course, focuses on preparation of legal memos in the fall and brief writing and oral advocacy in a moot court program in the spring. Three full-time faculty members with over 46 years of experience teach the course; each is autonomous in designing and teaching her own class. Legal Research is a separate one-hour course taught by the law librarians. Brandeis also requires an upper-division writing requirement and offers upper-level writing electives including drafting and advanced appellate advocacy. Students and legal writing faculty interact often and students receive feedback through office conferences, interactive in-class writing assignments, and memo and brief assignments.

The student-faculty ratio in recent years for BLS has ranged from 45 to 48 students per faculty member. Currently the BLS faculty members, with the exception of one tenured professor, are on three-year contracts. Contract professors have all of the same rights as other faculty members except for voting on hiring decisions. They are presently not required to publish but may apply for and have received summer research grants. The faculty voted in 2003 to put the BLS spots on the tenure track, but no budget resources have been identified to make this happen.

For more information contact susan.Kosse@louisville.edu ; judith.fischer@louisville.edu; kathybean@louisville.edu.