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