SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LAW
The legal research and writing program (Law Firm) at Syracuse University College of Law is a two-semester, two credit program. Students are graded on the work they produce for this course.
The director of the program is an Associate Professor of Law and is on the school’s tenure track. The other seven Law Firm instructors have uncapped contracts. For more information on Syracuse’s Law Firm instructors, please visit the school’s website at
http://www.law.syr.edu/faculty/index.asp . All Law Firm teachers share in creating the writing and research problems used by the students.
Law Firm classes are taught in small sections of approximately twenty students, and all classes are supported by Teaching Assistants who meet regularly with the first year students. In addition, the program is supported by a writing specialist who holds weekly office hours and conducts workshops on a variety of topics relevant to legal writing.
The Law Firm program introduces students to the core lawyering skills of writing, research, oral advocacy, and client interviewing. In the first semester, most students are introduced to the analytical structure of legal argument. They complete two principal writing assignments in the form of predictive memoranda and also complete a variety of shorter exercises. These students also conduct a short client interview and are introduced to library-based legal research. In the second semester, most students learn how to conduct computerized legal research and are introduced to persuasive legal writing concepts. These students again complete two writing assignments, including an appellate brief, and then argue the issues contained in that brief in a moot court setting.
Within its Law Firm program, Syracuse also includes two sections devoted to the study of international legal research and writing. These two sections cover the same fundamental areas as the other Law Firm sections, but students, who are selected for this section in the summer before they arrive in law school, also spend part of the spring semester working on a "memorial" and oral argument to the International Court of Justice. Approximately one-third of the class is then selected for a moot court team that competes in Toronto each March.
For more information about the Law Firm program at Syracuse University College of Law, please contact Professor Ian Gallacher, Director, Legal Research and Writing, at igallach@law.syr.edu.
The director of the program is an Associate Professor of Law and is on the school’s tenure track. The other seven Law Firm instructors have uncapped contracts. For more information on Syracuse’s Law Firm instructors, please visit the school’s website at
http://www.law.syr.edu/faculty/index.asp . All Law Firm teachers share in creating the writing and research problems used by the students.
Law Firm classes are taught in small sections of approximately twenty students, and all classes are supported by Teaching Assistants who meet regularly with the first year students. In addition, the program is supported by a writing specialist who holds weekly office hours and conducts workshops on a variety of topics relevant to legal writing.
The Law Firm program introduces students to the core lawyering skills of writing, research, oral advocacy, and client interviewing. In the first semester, most students are introduced to the analytical structure of legal argument. They complete two principal writing assignments in the form of predictive memoranda and also complete a variety of shorter exercises. These students also conduct a short client interview and are introduced to library-based legal research. In the second semester, most students learn how to conduct computerized legal research and are introduced to persuasive legal writing concepts. These students again complete two writing assignments, including an appellate brief, and then argue the issues contained in that brief in a moot court setting.
Within its Law Firm program, Syracuse also includes two sections devoted to the study of international legal research and writing. These two sections cover the same fundamental areas as the other Law Firm sections, but students, who are selected for this section in the summer before they arrive in law school, also spend part of the spring semester working on a "memorial" and oral argument to the International Court of Justice. Approximately one-third of the class is then selected for a moot court team that competes in Toronto each March.
For more information about the Law Firm program at Syracuse University College of Law, please contact Professor Ian Gallacher, Director, Legal Research and Writing, at igallach@law.syr.edu.
posted by LRW Programs at
2:13 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home