Joining the Club Without Paying Its Dues: Newcomers View Their First LWI Conference

At the opening session of this summer’s Legal Writing Institute Conference at Seattle University, LWI President Jane Kent Gionfriddo asked people attending their first conference to stand and be recognized. I and (what seemed like) a majority of those in the auditorium rose from our seats. Looking into the sea of faces, I began to wonder: all of us newcomers had become LWI members gratis by dint of becoming legal writing teachers, but had we really joined the club? When I left Seattle a few days later, chock full of teaching tips, the latest in LRW research and scholarship, and insights into the organization, I was curious about what others took home from their initial LWI meeting.

Like all good professional gatherings, the Seattle conference provided a forum for putting faces with names. “It was good to see others as enthusiastic about their work as I am about mine,” said Michael Santana, an Assistant Professor of Legal Writing at Vermont Law School. While not quite the meet and greet frenzy of Sundance or even the annual law school orientation picnic, the conference created opportunities to see in person the people whose books you’ve taught from and listserv advice you’ve relied on. Not only does it satisfy your curiosity, it brings you that much more into the fold.

Moreover, the substance of the LWI sessions showed the concern for good teaching and caring collegiality that exemplifies this organization. It was clear from each session that experienced teachers saw the conference as a chance to mentor those just starting out, to help newcomers learn how to teach students positively. Numerous sessions focused on pedagogy, from how to create assignments and critique student work to drawing lessons from different disciplines to enrich our own teaching. Especially popular was a workshop on critiquing student papers, coordinated by Daniel Barnett of Boston College Law School. Judy Giers, who became a legal writing instructor at the University of Oregon last June and attended the conference in July “before
teaching a day,” benefitted from the hands-on conference sessions and found the Basics track very useful. While taking a break from critiquing a stack of 54 first-year memos, she happily acknowledged that “I took part of the problem on covenants not to compete [used in the critiquing session] and incorporated it into my curriculum this fall. I already had sample memos to use as a baseline.”

Ben Bratman, Associate Director of Legal Research and Writing at the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law, also found the session materials and insights remarkably helpful. “I could take these tangible ideas back to the classroom and apply them,” he recently observed after a long day of student conferences. “The session on critiquing student papers led me to read additional articles on the subject, review the approach I developed last year in my first year of teaching, and develop a new style this year.”

Other sessions reinforced this spur to read and think more about what we do each day in the classroom. I came away from Laurel Oates’ session on teaching students how to “transfer” earlier acquired knowledge feeling like I’d grounded in the relevant learning theory what I sometimes do without much thought. For example, something as simple as reminding students of the specific lessons drawn from an earlier assignment and how they apply to the current one can be consciously and systematically incorporated into one’s teaching, and a whole body of research supports doing so. In a different way, Terri Pollman’s look at key themes in clinical scholarship challenged us to think “outside the box” about our approaches to teaching LRW, by seeking cross-over lessons in pedagogy and politics offered by other disciplines. Fundamentally, gaining knowledge of not only what to teach, but the theory and research on how and why some approaches are more effective than others, enhances our professionalism.

A more subtle but equally powerful lesson from the LWI conference comes from the way in which sessions were presented. Presenters not only lectured on the what, how, and why, but challenged participants to get up and actively learn in the classroom, via small group exercises, short writing assignments, and brief presentations on team work. In this manner, the master teachers not only offered the substance of what to take back to our classrooms but also modeled how to do it.

Despite the pervasive sense of collegiality and professionalism throughout the conference, some newcomers noted residual bitterness from long struggles for respect within the academy. The result was apparent in references to the academic hierarchy and employment caps. Judy Giers felt fortunate to attend the conference with colleagues who could provide background on the 20-year history of struggling for more status for legal writing. She noted that newcomers need to hear about the positive changes that have taken place in legal writing programs in addition to learning about some of the negatives, adding “it looks to me like this piece of the profession has come a long way.”  

 This insight rang true for me, for after teaching legal writing for almost five years, working hard to remove a cap, and discovering a salary scale that starts at half that offered to tenure-track faculty, my microcosm of the “struggle” indelibly marks me. But at the same time, as one of those newcomers who had earlier stood in the crowd of initiates, I realized how exciting it is to be a card-carrying member of LWI—precisely because of the sense of solidarity that the LWI exudes. For while this professional group was born of a need to fight for its rights (and what is right), it more fundamentally arose from a set of common goals and aspirations: that is, imparting a core lawyering skill, with high expectations and positive teaching.

For while this professional group was born of a need to fight for its rights (and what is right), it more fundamentally arose from a set of common goals and aspirations: that is, imparting a core lawyering skill, with high expectations and positive teaching.

I came away from my first conference realizing that I had already paid my legal writing dues, not to LWI but rather outside it. For unwittingly, after less than five years of law school teaching, I had grown to accept others’ description of LRW’s place in the hierarchy of legal education—that place where scholarship receives more kudos than teaching students (one-on-one and to the diverse learning styles of the whole class) and courses teaching legal doctrine are valued more than those teaching core lawyering skills. I left Seattle invested with a renewed sense of professionalism, for LWI’s focus on both pedagogy and professional advancement provides legal writing teachers a version of Woolf’s room of one’s own—a place where we can say, do, and show what’s important in helping students develop their individual voices in the law. This community—whether described as a room or a club—can use its common sense of purpose to keep good things in as well as keep the bad out.  

 Now this group has come of age. As a result of banding together, legal writing teachers have gathered and shared information, and used it to advocate for better work conditions and concomitantly, better legal writing teaching to law students. Jo Anne Durako’s presentation of the 2000 ALWD/LWI survey results bore powerful witness to where this cooperation may still lead. Perhaps, as caps give way to long-term employment and LRW teachers are decreasingly viewed by fellow faculty members as fly-by-year professors, some of the battle scars will fade. In the meantime, newcomers can look forward to future LWI conferences— a splendid “room” where congeniality and collegiality remain the norm as we focus on, and receive acclaim for, the progressive teaching of doctrine and skills that forms the backbone of legal writing teaching.