By Colin M. Black Prior to teaching LPS, I practiced law with a mid-sized Boston firm. Part of my responsibilities included facilitating professional development courses, including a course on advanced legal writing.  While developing that course, I surveyed senior attorneys for their biggest writing pet peeves. Here are a few of the top violations. Wordiness… Continue Reading Legal Writing Pet Peeves—From the Trenches

By Anya Richard Coming into law school, I knew that legal writing and oral advocacy were two key aspects to being a well-rounded lawyer. It was not until I had to face my fear of public speaking during my Legal Practice Skills oral argument assignment, however, that I realized that it is impossible to truly… Continue Reading From Mock Oral Argument to Real-World Jury Trial: Getting Over My Phobia of Public Speaking

By Dyane O’Leary Technology has always helped lawyers — just think of typewriters, fax machines (remember those?!), and e-mail.  But technology is no longer just helping.  It’s doing.  In some ways, technology is just as much a part of lawyering in 2018 as legal analysis or client counseling. So why, then, aren’t law schools teaching… Continue Reading 1Tech Year

By Samantha Moppett When we stand—hands over our heart—to say the pledge of allegiance, we pledge allegiance to a nation with “liberty and justice for all.”  Yet, in the United States, all people do not have access to justice as there is no constitutional right to counsel in civil cases.  Although legal aid agencies exist… Continue Reading Research Blitz to Address the Access to Justice Crisis

By L. Danielle Tully Dear 1L, You and I both know that the person you are about to interview isn’t a “real” client.  This is an imaginary legal playground of my design.  I made up a story, a legal dilemma without any clear answer, and I have anointed you lawyer.  But suspend disbelief for just… Continue Reading Preparing for Your First “Client” Interview

By Sammi Elefant John Lasseter and Ed Catmull were an unlikely pair. Catmull began his career as a computer scientist, Lasseter an animator. The two innovators are now respectively at the helm of both Walt Disney Studios and Pixar Animation Studios. However, at the time they co-founded Pixar, the computer-animation industry did not exist. Many… Continue Reading Where Creativity Meets Legal Writing: Bridging the Gap

by Wayne Schiess   You’re about to enter law school, so you’re about to take a legal-writing class. I’m jealous. I didn’t have a legal-writing class in my first semester of law school. My Civil Procedure professor gave me an assignment to write a paper but provided no instruction or guidance. A teaching assistant gave… Continue Reading Some best practices for your legal-writing class

By Samantha Moppett Currently, some of the hot-button phrases in the legal field are “access to justice” and “closing the legal aid gap.” Yet, the issue of how to address the failure of the justice system to adequately serve all people irrespective of wealth and position is largely neglected in the law school curriculum. To… Continue Reading Legal Writing Matters: Addressing the Access-to-Justice Crisis

By Sabrina DeFabritiis In anticipation of Massachusetts’s adoption of the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE), Suffolk Law is incorporating into the first-year legal writing program a Capstone, modeled after the Multistate Performance Test (MPT).  Historically the Massachusetts Bar Exam has been comprised of the Multistate Bar Exam and 10 state specific essays.  July 2018 will be… Continue Reading Legal Writing Matters: How Legal Writing Prepares Students For the Bar Exam

By Dyane O’Leary 2 days. 8 hours. 5:00 p.m. 2 hours. 30 minutes. ASAP. When a lawyer is asked to complete a project in a fast-paced legal practice, these deadlines are what he or she may face.  While a student has weeks, if not months, to complete a memorandum assignment, an attorney may have hours,… Continue Reading Legal Writing Matters: Hurry Up & Write

Joan Rocklin is a legal writing professor at the University of Oregon.  She is a co-author of two text books, A Lawyer Writes and An Advocate Persuades, and she is the 2015 recipient of the Orlando J. Hollis Teaching Award. If you are a law student and you feel stressed, you are not alone. More… Continue Reading Legal Writing Matters: Coping with Law School Stress

by Rebekah Hanley One of the most-consulted reference books in my home is The Joy of Cooking, a timeless classic.  The book’s title reminds readers that cooking is work that can be deeply satisfying. The title also reminds me of the joy of legal writing, because preparing written legal analysis can be just as gratifying… Continue Reading The Joy of Legal Writing

A law professor once said that starting law school is like learning Chinese by being dropped from an airplane into a community where only Chinese is spoken. (Thank you, UNLV Professor Terrill Pollman for this analogy.) It can be difficult to listen when you are just getting started with legal concepts and language. But effective… Continue Reading Tips for Listening Well in Your First Law School Classes

By Merry Sheehan During the first year of law school, every student is required to take legal writing. For most first-year law students, legal writing is completely new and very challenging. For me, learning how to write like a lawyer has been one of my biggest challenges in law school thus far. At the beginning… Continue Reading Student Voices: Learning to Write Like a Lawyer