Law Commons^™

Hitting The Wall As A Legal Writer, Elizabeth Fajans

Elizabeth Fajans

This article tries to answer a question students frequently ask, but which I often find hard to answer, namely, how they can move from a “B+” or “A-” on a paper to an “A.” Papers at the “B” level or lower have clearly identifiable faults: they lack thoroughness, misstate authority, draw imperfect analogies, make implausible arguments, or contain organizational, grammatical, or citation errors. In contrast, a “B+” or “A-“ paper may make none of these errors; they just lack a certain something, some value-added factor not captured by standard rubrics. Not only are the value-added factors harder to identify and …