Introducing First-Year Legal Writing Students to the Multifaceted Nature of Facts

Introduction

Each Fall, legal writing professors introduce students to the structure and format of the interoffice memo. The memo, of course, is the product we ask students to create to show their mastery of producing a written legal analysis. Before the Discussion section of the interoffice memo, however—the section in which that analysis is communicated—there is the Statement of Facts. I have not spent much time instructing students on the Statement of Facts beyond providing them with strategies for organizing facts clearly and effectively.