Let’s slow down. Do less. Aim low. This may be controversial to say, but I believe we legal writing professors need to accomplish less in our first-year courses.           

Being a teacher of legal writing can be overwhelming and intimidating. A legal writing teacher has so much work to do prior to getting in the classroom, and then once in the classroom, a legal writing teacher must manage what happens during class. Moreover, a legal writing teacher must divide time between tasks that occur after class, such as grading students’ work and conferencing with them.

1. Introduction

Theme is vitally important in persuasive advocacy, whether written or oral. It took me several jury trials and a few seasons coaching high school mock trial to feel like I understood how to persuasively use a theme as a lawyer. Thus, I wanted to develop an exercise that helped first-year law students begin to grasp the idea of using a theme to advocate for their client. I created an exercise using opening statements from prominent criminal jury trials.

The last two years have been unprecedented for most legal skills faculty. Having to flip the legal writing classroom and teach in online Zoom rooms became the norm. Gone were the days of seeing colleagues in the hallway, faculty lounge, or stopping by someone’s office. It became harder to stay connected and build relationships. But to a select few, such as myself, the asynchronous and synchronous online teaching modality is where we began.

(originally published May 1997)

What writing teacher has not encountered bizarre and incoherent sentences, sentences that seem to teeter on the very edges of syntactic and semantic psychosis?

1. Vulnerability in the Classroom

Students who feel vulnerable because of their backgrounds may struggle in law school. Even smart and competent students can be defeated by a lack of self-confidence caused by a feeling that they do not belong in a world dominated by a more privileged class. I have found that being vulnerable and sharing my own experience with exclusion can help bridge the gap between students from different backgrounds and foster inclusivity and a sense of belonging.

The end of the academic year is a natural time for reflection. As I complete my fifth year teaching Lawyering Skills at Boston University School of Law, I am taking time to reflect on my experience. I came to teaching mid-career, after practicing in the litigation group at a Boston firm for fifteen years. I enjoyed mentoring and training junior associates, so teaching was a logical next step. As I reflect on my work as a Lawyering Skills Instructor, I realize that many of the lessons I learned in practice also apply to teaching.

As a Legal Writing professor, I am always looking ahead to how my students will use what they have learned in my class when they are eventually asked to apply those skills in their other classes, clinics, internships, and jobs. And yet, I find it easy to lose sight of the importance of transfer in the midst of all the other demands of my course.

In the Spring of 2020, one of my first-year legal writing students introduced me to the Underground Scholars Language Guide for Communicating About People Involved in the Carceral System (“Language Guide”).[1] I was not familiar with the Language Guide, or the terms included in it, but I immediately understood its value as a tool for eliminating bias and vowed to use it in my classroom the following year.

The law school admissions process identifies a group of people that to a large degree have the same level of academic capability.