Teaching Case Law Vocabulary with Bingo
“I like good strong words that mean something.” Little Women[1]
The Teaching Bank is an online resource center. It includes writing problems and exercises, syllabi, grading rubrics, teaching ideas, and other materials. Access to the Teaching Bank is professional teachers of legal writing.
LWI has nearly 3,000 members. Members represent all ABA-accredited law schools in the United States as well as law schools in other countries. LWI members also come from undergraduate schools and universities, the practicing bar and the judiciary, and independent research-and-consulting organizations. Anyone who is interested in legal writing or the teaching of legal writing may join LWI.
Learn MoreBecome an LWI Member:
Become a MemberApply for our Teaching Bank Membership:
Teaching Bank Membership“I like good strong words that mean something.” Little Women[1]
My jaw dropped. She nailed it. She explained to our class not just where—but how—this 1L’s memo could be more synthesized, more precise, and more logical. I could not have done it better.
But remarkably, she was herself only a 1L. In fact, she was the 1L who authored the memorandum only a week earlier. And even more remarkably, several of her colleagues did the same thing with their own work in that same session, only a few weeks into the semester.
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. I benefit from the students’ relationships with one another: they enliven and enrich the class discussion and the classwork.
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.