Law Commons^™

Toward A Writing-Centered Legal Education, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

The future of legal education should bridge the divide between learning and practicing the law. This requires three things. First, tuition should bear some reasonable relationship to graduates’ employment outcomes. Perhaps Harvard is justified in charging $50,000 in tuition, but a fourth-tier law school is not. Second, no school should resist infusing more practical skills training into the curriculum. This does not mean that law schools should focus on adding clinics and externships to the curriculum. The focus should be on developing critical thinkers and persuasive writers that can solve real-world legal problems. Third, law schools should be transparent about …

Experiential Legal Writing: The New Approach To Practicing Like A Lawyer, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean

Adam Lamparello

Law students engage in various types of “experiential” learning activities while in school, such as clinics and externships, but they graduate without the experience necessary to practice law. This is traceable to a glaring deficiency at most law schools: a writing program that is comprehensive, properly sequenced, and integrated across and throughout the law school curriculum.

First, most graduates have never drafted the documents they will encounter in law practice. Additionally, they have not drafted and re-drafted such documents while also participating in real-world simulations as they would in actual practice. Instead, students graduate having drafted an appellate brief, a …

No Shoehorn Required: How A Required, Three- Year, Persuasion-Based Legal Writing Program Easily Fits Within The Broader Law School Curriculum, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

In this article, we incorporate our proposal into the broader curricular context, and argue for more separation, not more integration, among the analytical, practical, and experiential pillars of legal education. All three are indispensable—and independent—pillars of real-world legal education:[1] (1) the analytical focuses on critical thinking; (2) legal writing combines—and refines—thinking through practical skills training; and (3) experiential learning involves students in the practice of law. To help law students master all three, the curriculum should be designed in a largely sequential (although sometimes concurrent) order, to embrace, not blur, their substantive differences, and to approach inter-foundational collaboration with …

Legal Writing - What's Next? Real-World, Persuasion Pedagogy From Day One—It’S Not What You Offer; It’S What You Require – Part Ii (In A Three-Part Series), Adam Lamparello, Charles Maclean

Adam Lamparello

This essay (part two of a three-part series) strives to begin a collaborative discussion with legal writing, clinical, and doctrinal faculty about what “change” in legal education should mean. In Part I, the authors rolled out a blueprint for transformative change in legal writing pedagogy, which includes: (1) more required skills courses that mirror the actual practice of law; (2) a three-year program that includes up to four writing credits in every semester; and (3) increased collaboration between legal writing professors and doctrinal faculty. In this essay, we get more specific, and propose a three-year legal writing curriculum that builds …

Legal Writing - What's Next? Real-World, Persuasion Pedagogy From Day One, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

Law schools have an ethical duty to train effective legal writers who understand that the skills acquired in law school are intended to serve something greater than themselves — the bench, bar, and broader community. Training good writers — and good people — can happen by creating a writing curriculum that focuses on persuasive advocacy, public service, and honest legal representation from the first semester to the last. This change will be a challenge to legal writing professors everywhere, but with proper institutional support and collaboration, law schools can prepare their students for a profession “that depends on flawless writing, …

Requiring Three Years Of Real-World Legal Writing Instruction: Law Students Need It; Prospective Employers Want It; The Future Of The Legal Profession Demands It, Adam Lamparello, Charles Maclean

Adam Lamparello

Part I of this three-part series set forth a blueprint for change. In this essay, we get more specific and propose a three-year legal writing curriculum that is designed to mirror the actual practice of law, from start to finish, and provide alternative paths for students who prefer to focus on transactional drafting or alternative dispute resolution. In so doing, we include: (1) required courses for each of the six semesters of law school; (2) a discussion of the practical skills that students will acquire in each course; (3) electives that students may take to complement their required courses; and …

Show, Don't Tell: Legal Writing For The Real World (Chapter Outline), Adam Lamparello, Megan E. Boyd

Adam Lamparello

Show, Don’t Tell is designed to help all members of the legal profession learn to effectively draft the most common litigation documents. Far too many books offer tips and advice about good writing, but don’t actually show the reader specific examples of good writing or show the reader why examples offered are effective. The authors have read many books on legal writing, but once we learned the basics of legal writing, we didn’t learn anything in those books to make us better writers. Why? We were exposed to the best theories, but never given practical, how-to tips to turn book …

Legal Writing--What's Next? Real-World Persuasion Pedagogy From Day One, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean

Adam Lamparello

So, why didn’t they teach me this in law school?” The problem has nothing to do with ‘bad’ or uncaring teachers, but with a pedagogical approach that mistakenly divorces the acquisition of legal knowledge—and practical skills training—from their functional roles in the real world. In law school, students are typically required to write a memorandum or an appellate brief, but without knowing how each document fits into the broader context of actual law practice, the student’s ability to put that knowledge to practical use is limited. Every litigation document, whether it is, for example, a legal memorandum, complaint, motion to …