Contracting Hoop Dreams: Using Sports Law to Teach Transactional Practice*

One of the places I find the most joy in teaching legal writing is problem development—writing compelling factual scenarios that give students interesting legal issues to work through is rewarding and fun.  The best prompts will motivate students to really jump into their role representing their client and encourage them to think about the “big picture”—how the law ties into social, political, and economic structures in society at large.  Much has been written about the best ways to do this in the context of litigation assignments (briefs, memos, etc.),

“What page limit should I aim for?” Or why I don’t give page limits, and what I do instead

I hate page limits. I also hate overlong legal writing, but I don’t think page limits are the best solution for that problem. Overlong legal writing happens for three main reasons: wordiness, writing about irrelevant issues, and providing too much rule explanation or rule application on relevant issues. Much has been written on the first of these,[1] and we all work with our students on avoiding the second by teaching them how to identify relevant issues.

Grade Expectations: Helping Students Process Feedback Better

Most students are unpleasantly surprised by their first set of law school grades. After working diligently and expecting whatever worked well in undergraduate classes to work in law school classes, many well-intentioned students are disappointed that they did not get an A on their first legal writing assignment. I was. I came to law school expecting to receive glowing praise on my writing assignments. After all, I had a lot of undergraduate academic writing experience.

Big Deal: Using Transactional Assignments to Teach Persuasion in the Legal Writing Curriculum

Motions. Briefs. Oral arguments. For students interested in a transactional career, a typical legal writing semester focused on persuasion sometimes feels like it is centered on inconsequential litigation-style assignments. What many students do not realize, however, is that many skills learned in a persuasive semester, including through the context of litigation-style assignments, are transferrable to transactional contexts and help students prepare for careers in transactional practices.

From the Dojo to the Classroom: Applying Martial Arts Coaching Skills to Teaching Legal Writing

     When it comes to martial arts, I’m definitely a late bloomer. My husband convinced me to try Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (“BJJ”) during my first year of teaching legal writing at Pepperdine, when I was just shy of my thirty-ninth birthday. I was hesitant, having no prior martial arts experience; he told me it was a good way to get in shape (leaving out the part about rolling around on the ground trying to choke people). But like many BJJ practitioners, I quickly became obsessed with the sport.