William Mitchell College of Law

William Mitchell students take two required skills courses. First-year students take Writing & Representation: Advice & Persuasion (WRAP), a six-credit, two-semester, graded course. Midway through law school, students take Writing & Representation: Advocacy (Advocacy), a three-credit, one-semester, graded course. Full-time faculty members with status identical to other full-time faculty members coordinate both W&R courses, and both entail some large-group class meetings taught by the coordinators and reference librarians. Most of the teaching occurs in small classes taught by adjunct professors, who are highly experienced lawyers and judges carefully selected from the rich pool of legal talent in the Twin Cities area, trained, and supervised by the WRAP and Advocacy coordinators. For example, WRAP professors attend three seminars on teaching and gather with the coordinators for up to a half hour before each class.

Each twelve-person WRAP homeroom has both a writing professor, with a minimum of three years of post-J.D. experience, and a representation professor, with a minimum of five years of post-J.D. experience. Each week, students meet for two hours with the writing professor or the representation professor. The writing professor teaches research, analysis, and writing of office memos, advice letters, contract clauses, and motion practice memoranda and meets one-on-one with each student at least twice. For every scored paper, there are preliminary projects, e.g., research notes and outlines. Students write multiple drafts of one of the office memos and the motion practice memorandum. The representation professor conducts workshops in client interviewing, counseling, and negotiation; he or she also evaluates exercises in client interviewing and counseling, contract negotiation, mediated negotiation, and motion practice oral argument as well as the papers prepared for these exercise, e.g., a counseling outline and a pre-mediation submission. WRAP students also take a research and citation test.

Each twelve-person Advocacy writing group has an appellate professor who teaches and evaluates research, analysis, and writing of an appellate brief. Numerous trial skills professors conduct and evaluate exercises in deposing a witness, examining a witness, cross-examination, and making a closing argument. The course concludes with an appellate oral argument before the appellate professor and two trial skills professors, acting as a three-judge panel, and a full bench trial before a trial skills professor acting as judge. Several of the trial exercises are videotaped and reviewed by a second trial skills professor.

In both courses, students communicate regularly with coordinators and adjunct professors through office visits, phone calls, and e-mail. Furthermore, both WRAP and Advocacy students have access to writing tutors for half-hour consultations if they feel the need for additional assistance in such areas as organization and citation.


Nearly all of the texts and course materials used in the W&R courses have
been written by William Mitchell faculty members:

* The Process of Legal Research by Christina Kunz, Deborah Schmedemann, Matthew Downs, Ann Bateson, and Susan Catterall (Aspen Law and Business 6th ed. 2004);
* Synthesis: Legal Reading, Reasoning, and Writing by Deborah Schmedemann and Christina Kunz (Aspen Law and Business 2d ed. 2003);
* Lawyering: Practice and Planning by Roger Haydock, Peter Knapp et al. (West Publishing 2d ed. 2003) with accompanying videotapes and manuals;
* Advocacy (four volumes) by Roger Haydock and John Sonsteng (West Publishing 1994).

In addition to completing the Writing & Representation courses, students take least two elective skills credits, from a wide range of simulated and clinical courses, and complete the advanced research and writing requirement, typically through a scholarly paper.

Contact information: Professor and Associate Dean Deborah Schmedemann at dschmedemann@wmitchell.edu and Professor Ken Kirwin at kkirwin@wmitchell.edu.