Legal Writing: Craft & Style
Joan Magat (J.D., Ph.D., English) leads this series of workshops for 2Ls and 3Ls who wish to hone their legal writing or editing skills. "Legal Writing: Craft & Style" is the new moniker for the "Advanced Legal Writing Workshop." Half of each of the thirteen workshops consists of a teaching component that focuses on topics from clarity to cohesiveness to effective style. The other half is spent working as a group on exercises—flawed sentences or passages from legal documents or articles. In addition to the exercises, required written work includes three short written assignments and peer reviews of each of these using criteria developed over the course of the workshop. These peer reviews will be reviewed in turn by me. In addition, I will be available to work one-on-one with any workshop participant who has a lengthier piece on which he or she would like feedback. The workshop offers two credits. It is not graded.
The workshop might be particularly useful to
- law review editors,
- students on moot court,
- students writing law-review notes or independent-study- or seminar papers (with the permission of the guiding professor),
- students wishing to polish their writing samples, and
- students wishing to improve the effectiveness of their writing for any reason whatsoever.
