The purpose of this seminar is to provide students with the opportunity to improve their writing skills. Students will prepare a variety of practice-related documents based on a single fact pattern. Some legal research will be necessary, but the emphasis will be on writing, not on research. Students will also have the opportunity to edit other students' papers, with the goal of improving their own writing skills. The class is designed primarily for those students who will not have the writing and editing opportunities provided by membership in a law school journal, but who, nonetheless, are interested in improving their writing skills.
Actors will perform a scenario for the class, from which students will extract the pertinent facts. From this fact pattern, students will draft an inter-office memo, a letter or memo to a nonlawyer client and a trial or appellate brief. Students will edit each other's papers and then will write a second draft of each of their documents. Students will be graded on the basis of their written work, editing work on their classmate's papers and on their classroom performance. There will be no final exam.
Note: This seminar does not satisfy the Upperclass Writing Requirement.
A student who fails to attend the initial meeting of a seminar (designated by an (S) in the title), or to obtain permission to be absent from either the instructor or the Registrar, may be administratively dropped from the seminar. Students who are on a wait list for a seminar are required to attend the first seminar meeting to be considered for enrollment.
