my fave 1L muses on legal writing...

my favorite 1L's blog, which has made appearances here and here, has a lovely post up decrying the need for his legal writing class:

What I hate about my class is all the mundane, high school crap we have to do - meet to talk about sources, do a library tour, do a library "run-around" where we find useless sources, sit in class and take notes on the blue-book. I know that all of this stuff helps, but it's just so babyish. My philosophy is just throw us in the water and see who drowns and swims - we are in law school.

Assign a memo, set a date, that's it. If people have questions, they can come and talk to the professor, otherwise, let everyone turn in something. Then grade them, grade them hard, and do it again and again until they learn. I mean, if you think about it, that is exactly what we do in class. The first day, I didn't know torts from my ass, but that didn't mean the Professor was nice to me when she called me out.

I don't blame the Professor, I know she's just trying to be nice and wants to do her job etc., but the tension is that when you on your own for everything, and have this one area that still has "parental" control, you get pissed. And I'm pissed. Now, I'm going to watch Seinfeld.

now, i'll give him that some of the legal writing assignments can be a little on the law-library-scavenger-hunt side, but the very stark reality is that legal writing is not a sink-or-swim kind of endeavor. i came to law school last year assuming that i'd be a naturally good legal writer. i'd always been good at writing, have always enjoyed writing, and can be a real pain-in-the-ass about spelling and grammar.

BUT, what i figured out real quick-like, when all i got on my first semester legal writing memo was a B, was that the writing i was accustomed to doing had little to do with legal writing. when you write in an academic setting, and even for most other non-legal purposes, you can make assumptions about your reader, you can allow your reader to make inferences of her own. not so in legal writing. i was saying to a new friend the other day that in some way, i really think students who come to law school with a mathematics/science/numbers background are better suited than those of us with our liberal arts degrees. because legal writing is very much step by step by step, every crack must be filled in, every foundation must be laid. otherwise, you leave your arguments vulnerable to attack. and vulnerable to attack is not the stuff that good lawyers are made of.

so, while my dear little 1L friend (who is sure to destroy me as soon as he realizes i'm using him for personal gain) may think he's better off being "thrown in the water" on his own, i'd like to see him make sense of string cites or shepardizing or appellate briefs without a little guidance. the bluebook, even its much more user-friendly 18th edition, is best not handled blindly.