By Sarah J. Schendel When I decided to go to law school, it was partially because I wanted a profession where I was “always learning.” After 3 years of law school and a few years of practice I remember thinking: when does the learning stop? When will I just know everything? Law is a rewarding… Continue Reading Smart Students Ask For Help

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

By Abigail Perdue So often I hear first-year law students admit to allocating less time to Legal Writing because it “matters less” than other “substantive” courses. Nothing could be further from the truth. After all, Legal Writing is a substantive course. “Substantive” is defined as “possessing substance, having practical importance, value, or effect.” Doesn’t Legal… Continue Reading Legal Writing Matters: Bridging the Gap between Substance and Skill

By Gabe Teninbaum Can you format a pleading in Word, or create a formula in Excel? Think it doesn’t matter for lawyers? Think again. I’ve noticed in my years of teaching that many law students aren’t always very good at using the tools they’ll use every day in the practice of law. I admit, it’s… Continue Reading Legal Writing Matters: Being Prepared for Law Practice Means Being Able to Use the Everyday Tools of Lawyers

By Saige E. Jutras When I received my first legal writing assignment, I was confidently ambitious. It was the end of summer before my 1L year, and I thought to myself, “If there’s one challenge I won’t face in law school, it’s legal writing.” After writing undergraduate and master’s theses, challenges with writing were the… Continue Reading Learning to Love First-Year Legal Writing