Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Finishing The Job Of Legal Education Reform, Mary Beth Beazley

Scholarly Works

In this article, Professor Beazley advocates for the extension of tenure to skills faculty for the good of law faculty and of legal education. She argues that extending tenure to legal writing and other skills faculty will help to advance the goals of education reform in a variety of ways. First, equalizing the power of skills faculty will allow law schools to get the full benefit of their teaching and scholarship, a benefit that is currently blunted by ignorance and bias. Second, fair treatment of skills faculty will advance the values of equality, diversity, and inclusion: law students will benefit …

Book Review: “The Good Lawyer: Seeking Quality In The Practice Of Law”, Linda H. Edwards

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In their first collaboration, The Happy Lawyer, the writing team of Nancy Levit and Doug Linder tackled a crucially important subject: how to have a happy life in the law. As part of that project, they interviewed more than two hundred lawyers about what makes them happy in their jobs. Levit and Linder noticed that happy lawyers nearly always talked about doing good work. Curious about the connection, the authors turned to recent research in neuroscience and learned, not to their surprise, that a key to a happy life is, indeed, the sense of doing good work. It is …

Joining The Conversation: Law Library Research Assistant Programs And Current Criticisms Of Legal Education, David Mcclure

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Law libraries should play a greater role in addressing the current crisis in legal education. Proponents for educational reform often view libraries as a vehicle for cost savings, while overlooking the ability of libraries to train students in the skills and competencies that are essential for the practice of law. Libraries’ research assistant programs can be particularly effective in imparting workplace values and lawyering skills beyond the traditional law school curriculum. This article encourages libraries to build on the strengths of their research assistant programs as a substantive way to equip law students with essential skills for today’s legal marketplace.

Legal Writing: A Doctrinal Course, Linda H. Edwards

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Legal writing instruction in American law schools has come a long way. Although scattered experiential courses and co-curricular activities have existed since legal education moved into a university setting, the modern era of skills education began in the 1950s and 1960s, with the creation of live-client clinics at many law schools. Early legal writing programs soon followed, moving into the main stream of curricular reform during the 1980s and 1990s. As these new courses and new instructors moved into the academy, the language of legal education naturally changed. Law faculties found themselves wanting to describe these new additions to the …

Studying And Teaching “Law As Rhetoric”: A Place To Stand, Linda L. Berger

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This article proposes that law students may find a better fit within the legal culture of argument if they are introduced to rhetorical alternatives to counter narrowly formalist and realist perspectives on how the law works and how judges decide cases. To support this proposal, the article describes and evaluates an upper-level elective course in Law & Rhetoric, which I have offered at two law schools since 2003.

The article makes a two-part argument: first, introducing law students to rhetorical alternatives allows them to envision their role as lawyers as constructive, effective, and imaginative while grounded in law, language, and …

Where Have All The (Legal) Stories Gone?, Nancy B. Rapoport

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This essay examines whether law schools are doing a good job of teaching the art of storytelling to law students.

Better Writing, Better Thinking: Using Legal Writing Pedagogy In The "Casebook" Classroom (Without Grading Papers), Mary Beth Beazley

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In this Article, Professor Beazley proposes that a Legal Writing revolution is the next revolution in legal education, and that the revolution is not just coming, it has begun. She offers first steps for law school faculty to take in furtherance of this revolution. Professor Beazley argues that the pioneers of this new revolution are Legal Writing faculty. Section I of this Article examines some ways that the law school culture that segregates Legal Writing faculty has both promoted their opportunities to develop innovative pedagogies and inhibited their ability to share those pedagogies with other faculty. Section II explains certain …

Do Best Practices In Legal Education Include Emphasis On Compositional Modes Of Studying Law As A Liberal Art?, Linda L. Berger

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Reporter's Notes on "A Liberal Education in Law: Engaging the Legal Imagination through Research and Writing Beyond the Curriculum."

Applying New Rhetoric To Legal Discourse: The Ebb And Flow Of Reader And Writer, Text And Context, Linda L. Berger

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Applying New Rhetoric to law school pedagogy, this article suggests an ebb and flow of reader and writer, text and context drawn from New Rhetoric theory, research, and teaching practices. Almost all legal writing scholarship now focuses on some aspect of New Rhetoric. Yet it is likely that the product approach still prevails in the places where the papers are graded, in part because it is the more familiar and straightforward way that papers have always been graded. What follows is an initial attempt to more fully apply New Rhetoric theory and research to the teaching of legal reading and …