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That is the best idea for LRW I've ever heard. I go to Tulane Law, and the course is as much of a disaster there. Similar to the one semester objective, one persuasive. All crap. We never know what we're supposed to be doing, and we never have a clue about the topic we're researching. For example, my brief is on Copyright Law. Um, I'm a first year. I know Crim and Torts and a little Contracts at this point. Combining LRW with a substantive course would be ideal. (Ideal as far as anything having to do with law school goes).

Well, that makes two. A few thousand more and we can revolutionize Legal Writing instruction.

This is the best idea I've heard re legal writing. Thank you.

I go to George Washington, across town from you, and what you've described is actually kind of what we have. Civ Pro is a year long course, and starting next year, they are breaking it down into small sections for all first semester 1Ls (about 30-40 people each), and they are going to have the LRW professors work with the Civ Pro professors to give the writing assignments more context. Personally, I haven't felt too lost in the issues that we've had to write about this year, but I know that all our LRW sections have different topics, so other students may feel differently. Also, I am sorry for you guys who have to learn Civ Pro in one semester: it's probably my favorite class, but it is a lot of information to absorb as is.

Interesting idea. I posted about how our program works at my blog and linked to this post. I'm not sure it's a good idea to stretch out civil procedure and have less of it in any particular week, though, since that will just make it harder to learn....

My school attaches LRW to a substantive class, though it is not actuallt part of the class as you have described. Everyone still complains about LRW, though not for the reasons you do. Doing it this way might alleviate some problems, but the nature of the class is that people will find more complaints.

Your proposal is essentially how we teach legal research and writing here at the University of Iowa. There are separate lectures conducted by the library staff, but the written assignments are integrated into the small-section substantive classes. For example, I teach a small section of Con Law I right now, so the first writing assignment consisted of having my students research and write a bench memo analyzing a statutory interpretation issue and a Klein/Plaut issue. I was responsible for grading and evaluating the papers and meeting with the students to discuss their papers.

Thanks for all the feedback. A few thoughts.

1. I'm not suggesting this will solve everything that is wrong with Legal Writing. The biggest problem with it is that it's a lot of work and not always interesting. I came to law school anticipating that about some of my classes and I accept it. However, that is not sufficient reason in my eyes not to make improvements where possible.

2. Another1L -- Many schools already have Civ Pro for a full year anyway. Again, I don't suggest significantly altering the curriculum of Civ Pro (or any other subsantive class integrated with Legal Writing). The changes I advocate would affect Legal Writing instruction more than the other class, I think.

3. Professor Yin -- I'd love to hear what you consider the pros and cons of the U of I system. As I said in the original post, I've not thought it through entirely, so I'm sure there are cons I haven't considered.

LRW is simply a boring class people will always find reasons to hate it, but it is CRUCIAL to becoming a good lawyer. I dont think that anything we do/write about in LRW is so complicated that you really need to combine the class with another section. If you dont know anything about copyright it provides you with a good chance to learn something on your own. The things you write are not all that complicated that you need to go out and become an expert on the subject to write about it. There were plenty of class im my under grad days that I had to take that taught me nothing but were required deal with it. I got to NYU and things are no different here.

No doubt that the class is crucial. It's one of few classes that actually has anything to do with practicing law. But I see no reason to simply accept that it will suck when there might be ways to improve it, helping us learn more. It would be more efficient and would acutally let us apply something we've learned, which I think most students find rewarding.

Nothing we wrote about was so unbelievably complicated that we couldn't do it. We're all in law school and we're going to learn the material eventually anyway. But when a writing professor has to spend time teaching and clarifying the substantive law, it can get in the way of teaching and critiquing writing.

I acutally think that only a 1L would think that your suggestion is a good idea. You'll soon discover that in the working world, you rarely know the substantive material that you are researching. The point is that you learn it while you research it. In fact, that is the whole point of lawschool in the first place. The substantive classes you take really do not teach you what the law in a particular subject or in a particular jurisdiction is. They simply give you a roadmap.

You'll soon discover that in the working world, you rarely know the substantive material that you are researching.

But in the working world, you've already been taught legal writing. The point, as I understand it, of a legal writing class is not to teach the substantive law, but to teach technique. My suggestion is not meant to improve a 1L's understanding of the substantive law but of the writing methods.

This is also a reason why I suggest tying it to Civ Pro, rather than something like Torts or Property -- the F.R.C.P. will still be relatively applicable, even with local rules.

Maybe I'm just being defensive because it's my idea. ;-)

The program at Chicago, described by another1L at least addresses one of my concerns. Their first assignments are strictly writing-focused, with no research requirements. After they learn a bit about legal writing, they start research. I see a lot of benefit to that.

I see your point, but I still think you are missing the main idea. The current structure require legal writing, as well as the research, so that you will learn them together. Thus, you do not have two distict skills to learn but one. Namely, how to research areas of the law you know nothing about and still be able to produce a comprehensible memo about it. Removing the mystery of researching unknown law would significantly reduce the overall learning experience.

No doubt I've still got some learning to do, and maybe you're right that work experience will change my mind.

Legal writing aside, Buddha please make contact.

JFB

Jack, I got the email and will respond at my leisure. Posting here and telling me and my readers to put our conversation aside is no better than spam and isn't going to convert anyone.

Legal writing aside, Buddha please make contact.

What are the advantages/disadvantages of the UI system?

Advantages: More substantive critique of the legal analysis; the problems can be integrated into the subject-matter; technical writing issues (grammar, syntax, etc.) can be handled through our "writing center" instead of taking up the time of the legal research conferences (which we have with the students).

Disadvantages: I suppose if faculty were less available, that would be a problem; also there may be some danger that profs get out of touch with practice and start to teach students to write more like profs than like lawyers.

Obviously, overall, UI feels that the pros outweigh the cons. I'm just in my first year of teaching, so I'm still feeling my way through the process. I did TA LRW when I was in law school, and clearly I feel better prepared to review papers today than I did 9 years ago.

I disagree that combining LRW with a substantive course would only appeal to an inexperienced 1L. I have spoken to some of the writing fellows at my school who agree that the present system is ineffective. It's not so much that the concepts we had to write about were difficult. I think it's more that, as Buddha said, the combination with another course could be more rewarding and cohesive. Yes, as lawyers we will have to research and learn as we go. But that shouldn't mean we have to jump right in that way in law school. I think a lot of sloppy lawyering would be avoided if people took it just a little bit slower at the beginning.