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.
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School: University of Akron School of Law
Date: Friday, November 30th
Theme: “Moving from the Brief to the Podium: Teaching Oral Advocacy.”
How do you teach oral advocacy skills in your first-year writing course, appellate advocacy course, or moot court program? Do you have particular videos you use? Do you start preparing students for oral arguments before they submit their briefs? Do you have them practice their arguments with you or other students? Do you incorporate technology, such as video recording student arguments? We want you to share whatever, tips, tricks, or techniques you use to make your students better oral advocates. We also plan to use part of the lunch hour to have an informal discussion about innovation in the LRW classroom, tentatively titled “What I Tried in Class That Didn’t Work and What I Learned From It.”
School: Chapman University Fowler School of Law
Date: Friday, November 30th
Theme: “#amwriting: Reaching the Next Generation of Legal Writers”
Generation Z – the generation after the Millennials-- is about to arrive in our law school classrooms. Chapman University Fowler School of Law invites presentations addressing how this generation of learners with be different from and similar to past law student cohorts, how best to reach these students, and how to prepare them for the current landscape of legal practice. Presentations might address the following: teaching Generation Z; the needs of current law practitioners and judges, and how law schools can better prepare students to meet those needs; alternatives to the traditional office memo assignment (or arguments for retaining it); the benefits (and pitfalls) of social media for law students and lawyers; reaching distracted readers and students – adjusting for the rise in digital readership; how AI affects (or will affect) legal research and instruction; helping students cultivate a professional identity; and promoting student wellness and growth mindsets.
School: Loyola University New Orleans
Date: Friday, November 30th
Theme: “‘Help Me Help You’: Improving Communication Between the Bench, the Bar, and the Academy to Produce Practice-Ready Legal Writers”
As teachers of legal writing, we strive to prepare students for the realities of the real world and a real-life law practice. Some principles of research, reasoning, writing, and advocacy remain constant over time; others present new challenges. Practitioners and judges can help us adapt to prepare students for today's legal world. This One Day Workshop will feature individual and panel presentations, primarily focused on how to best prepare our students for today’s legal world. Some suggested topics that you might explore include the following. These are just some ideas. Please be creative.
All proposals that fit within our general theme are welcome.
School: Mississippi College of Law
Date: Friday, November 30th
Theme: “Teaching and Assessing Professional Communication Skills in Law School”
Possible topics could include:
School: University of Oregon School of Law
Date: Friday, November 30th
Theme: “Teaching Scholars”
Our theme is broad to appeal to anyone who wants to attend, and it has several meanings: * We are scholars and teachers, so the literature in our discipline informs what we do in the classroom.* We teach students to write scholarship and practice materials, though we don’t discuss the former as much as the latter.* We need to be more intentional about teaching our newer colleagues to become scholars, which will boost their careers.
School: University of Pittsburgh
Date: Friday, November 30, 2018
Theme: “Leveraging Technology in the Legal Writing Classroom to Prepare Law Students for Practice”
For our workshop, we encourage a broad range of topics examining the use of technology and the decision not to use technology in the legal writing classroom. Some potential topic ideas could include:
School: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Date: Saturday, December 1st
Theme: “Legal Writing Across the Curriculum: Opportunities for Students to Write More Over Three Years of Law School”
Legal writing is one of the most important tools in a lawyer’s arsenal. Incorporating legal writing throughout the three years of law school will help sharpen a student’s skill set to help students become practice ready. While traditional upper-level writing courses afford students this practical understanding, not all students have the opportunity to take these courses. However, courses offered throughout the curriculum may afford unique opportunities for students to put their writing skills to work. This One-Day workshop will focus on these opportunities.
Presentations might address the following:
School: University of Tennessee College of Law
Date: Saturday, December 1st (with reception Friday, November 30th)
Theme: “Whose Job Is It Anyway: Examining the Role of Legal Writing and Academic Support in Bar Preparation”
This year LWI created the inaugural LWI Academic Support committee. Now is a great time to reexamine the relationship between academic support, legal writing and the bar exam. Most legal writing and academic support teachers agree that preparation for the bar exam starts at the onset of law school and is a collaborative effort of faculty, staff, administrators and students. Presentations at this workshop will answer questions like: In addition to the MPT, what experiential assessments are legal writing and academic support using to bolster student success? What skills are transferable to bar exam success? How can academic support and legal writing collaborate to improve student success?
School: Northeastern University School of Law
Date: Friday, December 7th
Theme: “Increasing Critical Engagement - How to Get Students to Get Serious”
Increasingly, law schools, and law students, are recognizing the importance of skills teaching. Law students in particular understand the critical role that skills learning has in their law school career, as preparation for co-ops, internships, and post-graduate employment. But the practice of law is evolving, and the student body is changing. How can we adapt our teaching to meet these new demands?
What innovations can we adopt to make our teaching even stronger, so that students stay engaged in their learning?
We encourage applicants to think broadly about the theme. Possible proposal topics include teaching students how to engage in self-reflection and self-evaluation, developing interactive teaching exercises, expanding students’ professional development, devising innovations in critique and feedback, and incorporating social justice issues into LRW pedagogy.
School: University of Louisville
Date: Saturday, December 8th
Theme: “Have Mercy: Showing Empathy for your Audience”
This theme inevitably encompasses a wide variety of ideas, but the focus is on empathy and thinking of our audience. This can include teaching students to be mindful of their readers, placing the student experience in the forefront of our teaching, and even incorporating client- centered or social justice concepts into our classes. Proposals can include full panel programs or single presentations that work with our theme.
School: Ave Maria School of Law
Date: Friday, December 14th
Theme: “Elevating Your Program to the Next Level”
This conference will focus on meeting the challenges that face legal writing faculty in engaging millennial learners by enhancing critical reading and thinking skills, incorporating experiential learning opportunities in the classroom to comply with ABA requirements, the effective use of technology, and using scholarship to elevate your program.
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The Committee is currently accepting proposals for presentations at the Workshops. To submit a presentation proposal, please email your proposal to Laura Graham at grahamlp@wfu.edu by September 7, 2018. Your proposal should contain (1) the name(s) and email address(es) of the presenter(s); (2) the name and email address of the contact person, if your presentation is a group or panel presentation; (3) the title of the presentation; (4) a brief description of the presentation (one paragraph is fine), and (5) your top three law school site choices, in order of preference. Also, if you are interested in presenting at more than one school, please let us know that, too.
After September 7, the host schools will select the presenters they want to invite to their workshops, and then we will post more detailed information about each workshop on the LWI site and let you know how you can register to attend a Workshop.
Meanwhile, if you have any questions about presenting at a One-Day Workshop or about a school’s theme, etc., please email Carolyn Williams at cvwilliams@email.arizona.edu or Laura Graham at grahamlp@wfu.edu for more information. We look forward to reading your proposals and seeing you in late fall!
The LWI One-Day Workshop Committee