Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Teaching Students How To "Think Like Lawyers": Integrating Socratic Method With The Writing Process, Mary Beth Beazley, Mary Kate Kearney

Scholarly Works

Professor Beazley begins this article with an overview of how Socratic method and the writing process have traditionally been used and how they can be integrated in the legal writing course. The remainder of the article is devoted to an analysis of how this integration can be achieved in a five-step structured dialogue. She and her co-author identified these five steps as: (1) the assignment, or "instigating question"; (2) the student's written answer, in a series of "focused drafts" with "private memos"; (3) the teacher's written response, using Socratic questions whenever possible; (4) the conference, where the teacher can use …