<p><span><span><span>While you can never be certain you’re accurately tracking changes in student performance over time (damn you, Heisenberg!), it’s uncontroversial to note that today’s students often struggle to master the metacognitive skills required to write. Thus, today’s LRW teacher must help students develop their own practice of writing, in addition to teaching the specifics of legal writing.

<p><span><span><span><span><span><span>Professors—and perhaps law professors more than most—can usually rely on the architecture of the place, the costuming of the participants, and even the nature of our audience for at least some of our success in the classroom. In a normal year, I know I benefit from the kind of people in the room: a captive audience who have been rewarded for sitting quietly and attentively for sixteen years.

<p><span><span><span><span><span>When we set out to plan our fall remote legal-writing course in summer 2020, we found ourselves in a bit of a panic. We covered it well on the surface, sharing exercises and tips with colleagues to ground ourselves and show that we had concrete ideas for the fall. Beneath that surface, however, we each frantically researched <annotation class="annotation-title" data-summary title="See, e.g., HARV. BUS. PUBL’G: EDUCATION, ONLINE TEACHING RESOURCES, https://hbsp.harvard.edu/teaching-online-resources/.

<p><span><span><span><span>Of the many types of correspondence that lawyers write, demand letters are one of the most common, but demand letter assignments seldom appear in legal writing courses. Adding a demand letter to a legal writing course creates opportunities for the professor to reinforce persuasive writing skills, to discuss ethics and professional responsibility, and to teach professionalism and civility.

<p><span><span><span>The two most prominent citation manuals for legal writing, the Bluebook and the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation, tell us that we may place full citations to legal authority in a <annotation class="annotation-title" data-summary title="THE BLUEBOOK: A UNIFORM SYSTEM OF CITATION R. B1.1, at 4 (Columbia L. Rev. Ass’n et al. eds., 21st ed. 2020) [hereinafter BLUEBOOK]; ALWD GUIDE TO LEGAL CITATION R. 34.1(a), at 294 (Ass’n of Legal Writing Dirs. &amp; Colleen M. Barger, eds., 6th ed. 2017) [hereinafter ALWD].

<p><span><span><span><span><span>Most students come to law school with a vague sense of the acronym IRAC (the traditional legal writing format of issue, rule, analysis, and conclusion), and some reluctant willingness to use it: they know they are graded on writing in IRAC form and they want to get good grades, so they try to use it.

Each fall, I tell my incoming class of law students that succeeding at legal writing will require them to shed many of the writing habits that they acquired in college. I tell them that the process of learning to be an effective legal writer will start in my class but will continue throughout their careers. I tell them not to get discouraged because learning to write like a lawyer is hard work.

<p><span><span><span><span><span><span>I’ll admit it: I was afraid to try peer review in my Legal Practice class. I’ve been teaching legal analysis, writing, and research for 17 years. I know all of the benefits of peer review. I’ve read plenty of scholarship about why and how to do it well. I have space in my syllabus to incorporate it into my teaching. But I’ve been reluctant. I worried that students would be averse to sharing their work with a classmate.

<h4><strong>Introduction</strong></h4>