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Full-Text Articles in Law
Standing In The Judge’S Shoes: Exploring Techniques To Help Legal Writers More Fully Address The Needs Of Their Audience, Sherri Keene
Standing In The Judge’S Shoes: Exploring Techniques To Help Legal Writers More Fully Address The Needs Of Their Audience, Sherri Keene
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
One Small Step For Legal Writing, One Giant Leap For Legal Education: Making The Case For More Writing Opportunities In The "Practice-Ready" Law School Curriculum, Sherri Lee Keene
One Small Step For Legal Writing, One Giant Leap For Legal Education: Making The Case For More Writing Opportunities In The "Practice-Ready" Law School Curriculum, Sherri Lee Keene
Faculty Scholarship
Legal writing is more than an isolated practical skill or a law school course; it is a valuable tool for broadening and deepening law students’ and new attorneys’ knowledge and understanding of the law. If experienced legal professionals, both professors and practitioners alike, take a hard look back at their careers, many will no doubt remember how their work on significant legal writing projects advanced their own knowledge of the law and enhanced their professional competence. Legal writing practice helps the writer to gain expertise in a number of ways: first, the act of writing itself promotes learning; second, close …
Bridging Gaps And Blurring Lines: Integrating Analysis, Writing, Doctrine, And Theory, Susan J. Hankin
Bridging Gaps And Blurring Lines: Integrating Analysis, Writing, Doctrine, And Theory, Susan J. Hankin
Faculty Scholarship
This article is an outgrowth of the author’s participation in a July 29, 2009 panel presentation, “Change in Legal Education: Practical Skills,” at the Symposium, YES WE CArNegie: Change in Legal Education after the Carnegie Report. The article responds to the Carnegie Report’s call to “bridge the gap between analytical and practical knowledge” by presenting two models for integrating skills with doctrine in the first-year curriculum. The first model, built into the curriculum at the University of Maryland School of Law, involves teaching the first semester Legal Analysis & Writing course by pairing it with another required first-semester course, Torts, …
Statutory Interpretation In The Age Of Grammatical Permissiveness: An Object Lesson For Teaching Why Grammar Matters, Susan J. Hankin
Statutory Interpretation In The Age Of Grammatical Permissiveness: An Object Lesson For Teaching Why Grammar Matters, Susan J. Hankin
Faculty Scholarship
This article uses an unpublished case interpreting New York’s animal cruelty law as an object lesson to teach why grammar matters. In People v. Walsh, 2008 WL 724724 (N.Y. Crim. Ct. Jan. 3, 2008), the court’s interpretation of the statute turned, in part, on the serial comma rule (sometimes called the “Oxford comma” rule). The court followed a mandatory approach to interpret the statute’s meaning, even though most contemporary grammar and style books make such use of a comma optional. One of the many benefits of using a case example to teach why grammar matters is that it focuses students …
Using Actual Legal Work To Teach Legal Research And Writing, Michael A. Millemann
Using Actual Legal Work To Teach Legal Research And Writing, Michael A. Millemann
Faculty Scholarship
Legal research and writing (LRW) teachers should use actual legal work to teach their courses, including (indeed, especially) first-year courses. The legal work might come from a planned or ongoing lawsuit, transaction, or other matter. What is important is that it is real, although in my model, the teacher can add hypothetical features to customize the legal work to the particular LRW course. For example, in an appellate advocacy course, the teacher could present the legal issues arising out of a pretrial matter by summarily “deciding” them in a hypothetical trial court opinion, thus allowing the students to fully explore …
Teaching Legal Research And Writing With Actual Legal Work: Extending Clinical Education Into The First Year, Michael A. Millemann, Steven D. Schwinn
Teaching Legal Research And Writing With Actual Legal Work: Extending Clinical Education Into The First Year, Michael A. Millemann, Steven D. Schwinn
Faculty Scholarship
In this article, the co-authors argue that legal research and writing (LRW) teachers should use actual legal work to generate assignments. They recommend that clinical and LRW teachers work together to design, co-teach, and evaluate such courses. They describe two experimental courses they developed together and co-taught to support and clarify their arguments. They contend that actual legal work motivates students to learn the basic skills of research, analysis and writing, and thus helps to accomplish the primary goals of LRW courses. It also helps students to explore new dimensions of basic skills, including those related to the development and …
Legal Writing And Academic Support: Timing Is Everything, Dionne L. Koller
Legal Writing And Academic Support: Timing Is Everything, Dionne L. Koller
Faculty Scholarship
The conventional wisdom is that legal writing and academic support go hand-in-hand. Most law schools assume that struggling students can be reliably identified for academic support through their first-year legal writing course, and that first-year legal writing instructors can fairly easily and effectively provide this support. Indeed, this is the prevailing view in current academic support and legal writing scholarship. Professor Koller's article challenges the conventional wisdom and instead points out several issues that should be considered if a law school relies on the first-year legal writing course as a component of, or in lieu of, an academic support program. …