Course Goals

When this course is over:

• You will know the basic principles of effective legal writing.
• You will understand the key concepts, such as a mind-map, outline, paraphrase, summary, citation, plagiarism, argumentation, document format, etc.
• You will know how to structure and manage multi-step writing projects.
• You will understand the concepts of critical, creative and practical thinking.
• You will be able to focus the topic of your writing, state the purpose of the writing and identify your target audience.
• You will know how to gather ideas for your writing project, and analyze and evaluate information.
• You will know how to integrate different perspectives.
• You will learn to collaborate with others, contribute to a team, provide and receive feedback.
• You will know how to work with internet resources.
• You will know how to cite and quote written sources in an ethical manner.
• You will be able to evaluate, revise and edit your own writing.
• You will know how to use writing to help you study.
• You will seek out examples of good legal writing and continue improving your writing skills.
• You will set on a path to become an effective communicator.

Course Outline

I. Introduction to Legal Writing.

In this introductory lesson, we will become familiar with different types of legal writing in the U.S. We will peek through the doors of lawyers’ offices to see what types of documents lawyers write when they practice law. We will also find out what kind of writing law students do in U.S. law schools. We will unwrap the mysteries of legal writing and determine what distinguishes it from any other kind of writing you may have done or encountered.

What you can expect to learn:

• You will be able to distinguish a legal memorandum from an appellate brief. (OK, that’s easy, you just have to read the title.)
• If legal writing were a person, you would recognize this person in a crowd. In other words, you will be able to identify the main features of legal writing and understand their significance.

II. Plain English.

There is nothing plain about “Plain English.” Do you want to imitate the style of the last century’s legal opinions that are difficult to read and even more difficult to understand? Judges and clients hope, you don’t. Even though the last century was less than a decade ago, there have been some significant changes in the legal writing style. In this section, we will take a closer look at a recent trend of “Plain English” to see how it is changing modern legal discourse.

What you can expect to learn:

• You will understand the goals of the "Plain English" movement.
• You will know the characteristics of "Plain English."
• You will know how not to write if you want to be easily understood. Your goal from now on is to be clear and concise.

III. Planning your writing.

Do you know what the similarities are between cooking a dinner for your guests and writing an article? You will find out in this section, when we discuss various stages of the writing process, such as gathering ideas, organizing your writing, drafting, revising, and editing.

What you can expect to learn:

• You will know how to structure your writing process.
• You will know how to write “On TAP”: how to choose your topic, align your writing with the needs of your target audience and identify the purpose of you writing.
• You will get familiar with several techniques for collecting ideas, including mind-mapping.
• You will learn what the outlining is all about.

IV. Units of Writing

Do you know what book holds the record of the longest book ever written in the world? It is Yongle Dadian -- "The Encyclopedia of Yongle Emperor's Reign in Ming Dynasty." It took 4 years for 3,000 scholars to finish the compilation of 11,095 volumes and 22,877 chapters in 1408. The encyclopedia has an estimated 370 million Chinese characters.

But even the longest books consist of words, sentences and paragraphs. In this section, we will zoom onto these building blocks of writing. We will uncover the 23 principles of morphology, syntax and grammar that will enable you to write in a clear, effective and grammatically-correct manner. To continue with our cooking analogy, they are the ingredients of your writing. We will also review any additional points of grammar or syntax if need be. (Hint: This will be you chance to brush up on the English grammar lessons you may have forgotten.)

What you can expect to learn:

• You will understand and apply the 23 principles of effective writing.
• You will use the 23 principles as a checklist to edit your own writing.

V. Development of writing

Now you have your flour, sugar, eggs, butter and apples. But how do you make an apple pie out of all those ingredients? In this section, we talk about the recipes and instructions for good writing. In particular, we will discuss how to develop your writing. We will go through the modes of exposition, travel down the argument slide and tour the garden of fallacies. So book your seat.

What you can expect to learn:

• You will know the modes of exposition, such as narration, description, examples, definitions, analogy, comparison and contrast, process, classification and division, cause and effect, argumentation.
• You will understand and recognize common logical fallacies.

VI. Using written sources

Here we are talking about etiquette and table manners. You want to make an excellent point in your writing. The problem is somebody already made this point earlier in another piece of writing. What do you do? You follow the conventions for paraphrasing, summarizing, quoting and citing written sources.

What you can expect to learn:

• You will recognize the importance of giving credit to other authors.
• You will understand the concept of plagiarism.
• You will know how to paraphrase, summarize and quote written sources.

VII. Mechanics

Appearance matters when it comes to document design. It is not just about looking good. Just like the presentation of food works up the appetite, good document design makes it easy for the readers to follow the material, access the needed information and work with the text. In this session we will talk about the principles of document design and formatting.

What you can expect to learn:

• You will know how to meet the document format requirements.
• You will recognize the significance of typeface, margins, indentation, citations, footnotes, headings and subheadings.

VIII. Tips for taking essay exams

This is a cherry on top. In law school, you will have to deal with the reality of essay exams. This session will give you a preview of the challenges you may face during an essay test and the tips on how to handle them.

What you can expect to learn:

• You will know how to approach an essay exam.
• You will know what to do at the reading, planning and writing stages of the examination process.
• You will understand the importance of time management.

Let the learning begin!